UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

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THE SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS AND

COMMUNITIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING

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Monday

March 19, 2007

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The meeting was convened at 8:00 a.m. in the Barnard Auditorium at the
Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Washington, D.C.,
David Long, Chairman, presiding.

[COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT]{.underline}:

DAVID LONG, Chairman

KIM DUDE

FREDERICK ELLIS

MIKE HERRMANN

RALPH HINGSON

MONTEAN JACKSON

RUSSELL JONES

SHEPPARD KELLAM

SUSAN KEYS

TOMMY LEDBETTER

BERTHA MADRAS

SETH NORMAN

DEBORAH PRICE

BELINDA SIMS

HOPE TAFT

HOWELL WECHSLER

[ALSO PRESENT]{.underline}:

DONNI LEBOEUF, For J. Robert Flores

PEGGY QUIGG, For Dennis Romero

CATHERINE DAVIS, Executive Director and Designated Federal Officer for
the Committee

WILLIAM DUNCAN, the Committee's Writer

WILLIAM MODZELESKI, Associate Assistant Deputy Secretary for OSDFS

**I N D E X**

[PAGE]{.underline}

Opening Statement and Announcements 4

Public Comment 6

Discussion - State Grants Program 8

Lunch

Discussion - Unsafe School Choice Option 212

Discussion - Data 267

Summary of Findings and Recommendations

Closing Remarks 352

P R O C E E D I N G S

Time: 8:12 a.m.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Welcome, everyone. Is this on? Okay.

First of all, I want to \-- Peggy, would you mind introducing yourself,
sitting in for Dennis today. Would you introduce yourself to the group?

MS. QUIGG: Good morning. I am Peggy Quigg, and I am the Director of the
Division of Community Programs at CSAP, SAMHSA, and basically I have the
Drug Free communities Programs and our HIV and Methamphetamine Programs
in our portfolio, and happy to be sitting in for Dennis this morning.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And we did that on purpose. As she was shutting that off,
Fred was just telling me. Dave, just as you are getting ready to start,
I am going to do that so it will remind you.

If you will \-- For some of you, to your right, some of you to turn
around and look, on the table on my extreme right up against that wall,
you will see a row of notebooks, and those notebooks are filled with all
of our meetings, minutes of all of our meetings and all of our
conference calls.

So that if there is a need or someone has \-- As we talk about some of
these things and making recommendations, if that comes up, we do have a
back-up to double check.

That is a perfect segue into \-- and Bill, thank you very much. I
thought you did an excellent job. I know this is very difficult. What
you really received and have in front of you, the potential
recommendations. It is about a five or six-page document.

What you have there in front of you is a synthesis of all of the things
that are contained in all of those books up against the wall. So, Bill,
an excellent job in bringing that from several thousand pages to five or
six. We appreciate that.

First of all, I want to go to public comment, and then after public
comment we will talk about what we will be doing for the day and how we
might approach it and what we are looking for when we walk out of here
this afternoon.

So first of all, I would ask: Is there anyone that wishes to make a
public comment? Hearing none, we will then go to talking about what will
happen \-- or what we are looking for, for today. That is this.

As indicated earlier, Bill, excellent job with all these sheets in front
of us. We have the three areas and the questions that the Secretary
asked. So what we would be looking at today as an objective would be to
take those three areas that we have talked about and head hearings
regarding and have \-- start to put down some very specific
recommendations.

Now these recommendations will be, as you know, what you as experts
sitting around this table think and feel, and then putting that together
and correlating them with the things we heard in the hearings. You will
be the filter. So what you say because of your years of experience and
expertise will then be the recommendations that we are going to put
down, and it will be in those three areas that we spent so much time on.

Those three areas, of course, State Grants Program \-- we will start in
that order. First, we will have the State Grants Program, then the
Unsafe Schools Choice Option, and then thirdly, Data.

So if we could concentrate on the recommendations, I am not sure that we
need to spend a lot of time going back over just the findings or the
facts, but we might have to discuss some of those, of course, to get to
the recommendations.

So with that in mind \-- and I will stop right there. Any other comments
that anyone has from the committee? Yes, Russell?

DR. JONES: Yes, just a question. I am wondering where does the
additional issues tie in, the non-public schools and trauma on the last
page.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I think that, if time allows, we can do that, and also
since we did spend some time on that, that we can also offer up some
recommendations, bearing in mind that the Secretary had three very basic
questions she wants answered. But we did spend time on that. So to come
up with recommendations on those two areas or at the end then to ask if
there are other areas or other recommendations the committee wishes to
make in general; because this will come, of course, from you. Yes?

So having said that, as indicated, if we could start with the State
Grants Program, and again try to be \-- Our objective is to try to pull
it in so that we have some very clear, succinct recommendations to the
Secretary as we go forward in these three areas, and then based on
Russell\'s question, the other two areas toward the end.

So first of all, State Grants Program. We can do this many ways. I
hesitated there, because many of us in this room were teachers for so
many years that, as soon as I get to something like this, I actually
looked at the imaginary flip chart up there to start writing things
down, because we just are used to that as classroom teachers.

So if we could start with recommendations in this one area of State
Grants Program. Hope?

MS. TAFT: I would like to see a strong statement linking alcohol and
drug use to academic achievement or lack thereof, to set the framework
that this is a very important issue to be discussed and to look \--
that\'s why we are looking at it, because in General Dean\'s testimony
there was a whole page and a half of the relationship between alcohol
and drug use and academic outcomes. So I think that is very important to
set the stage that ways.

Then I would like to see that the principles of effectiveness be seen as
an entirety and that this whole program is the portal \-- is the
school\'s portal for the community to be involved with the schools,
because it is very important for the school and the community to join
hands in an effort to reduce alcohol and other drug use.

There is research in Ohio that shows that those communities that have
done that have far less alcohol and drug use than those schools and
communities which have not linked up.

CHAIRMAN LONG: As I was listening \-- and this is \-- and I can only
speak for myself. This is going to be difficult for me. I am a visual
learner. So this is going to be a tough day \-- I am just going to say
it up front \-- for me, and I see about three or four others of you
going like this, because we are used to seeing things, and are visual.

Would it be helpful \-- I will ask those of you, those of us that are
the same that way. Would it be helpful if we went down through what Bill
has set up so that we have an outline, and then pull recommendations
from the questions?

Some of them might not need to be answered. We can just say we don\'t
think so. We will just go on to the next one. That is up to you, but for
example \-- and I am just taking what Hope said; it made me think \--
the very first box on the left currently is implemented where the
strengths \-- and then it talks about findings and recommendations.

The one thing that I heard, and I\'ll ask you, Hope, was that second
bullet. I mean, it could be wordsmithed and so forth, but it is like an
umbrella over the top, and I think we would probably all agree that we
would want to make that a pretty strong statement that that umbrella \--
that Safe and Drug Free Schools is absolutely critical for student
learning to take place.

MS. TAFT: And the State Grants Program is really the backbone of
prevention across this country. If it disappears and becomes a
non-universal program, everybody and their brother who we don\'t want to
have access to our children\'s brains will. You know, it is really the
stopgap measure between kids and only pro-use messages.

CHAIRMAN LONG: So from that first area, if we take that \-- and I\'ll
leave it up to you as to the language. We will put this down and then,
of course, this will come back to us for wordsmithing and adding and so
forth, but today we are going to try to get those recommendations out.
But I heard backbone and stopgap and that umbrella with that second
bullet.

I am going to go on, but if I am going too fast or you have things to
say, you just step right and say, Dave, hold it, let\'s talk about that.

DR. KEYS: Could I just add a point to clarify, that I think we are
making that as a recommendation, not as a finding as it is listed here.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Right. Yes, everything we do today, we are going to be
coming \-- The objective is to get it to a recommendation, and good
point, Susan. Even though it is listed as a finding here, this has now
been 180, and it is becoming a recommendation.

MS. PRICE: But what is the recommendation? I mean, it was a statement
that was given, and a statement is not necessarily a recommendation
unless it has a \"therefore X," and so what would the recommendation
piece of it be?

MS. TAFT: Therefore, the State Grants Program or Safe and Drug Free
Schools should be continued and should be funded.

MS. PRICE: I think we have to talk about that more than just blanket
acknowledge that that is the way it would be worded.

MR. ELLIS: Because the question is what are the strengths of the
program, not is this program worthwhile. The question is what are the
strengths of the program? What we have suggested is kind of a blanket
statement that we all really like the program, because safe and drug
free schools are a precursor to education. Well, of course, they are,
but what are the strengths of this program? I think that is the point
that needs to get put in there.

MS. TAFT: My comments were kind of geared as an introduction to the
whole report or an overarching statement that there is a connection
between safe and drug free schools and academic performance, and that
the program is a backbone to prevention and everything else hangs off of
that.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Russell?

DR. JONES: I guess I just need a point of clarity in terms of how we are
going to proceed. If we are going to go, you know, Item 1, Item 2, Item
3, Item 4, Item 5, one of the things that I didn\'t see in here was the
rich discussion on page 13, 14 and 15 of our last meeting where there
were some broad, overarching recommendations made. I didn\'t see any of
that included in the discussion, which I think has implications for how
this information is framed.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Let Mike, and then I will respond. Mike?

MR. HERRMANN: In terms of a strength, I think \--

DR. JONES: Wait, wait. I\'m sorry, I didn\'t get a response to my
question.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay. The response, Russell, is that we can pull 13, 14
and 15. As we start out, I don\'t want confusion on what we are talking
about as far as clear recommendations and also introductory statements.

So what I was taking as Hope was saying some introductory statement, we
can get \-- we will have to get 13, 14 and 15. I don\'t have that in
front of me, and as I \--

DR. JONES: No, go ahead. I\'m listening.

CHAIRMAN LONG: As I indicated, all the minutes are right over here up
against the wall. So if you can, in a couple of sentences, tell us what
pages that is on.

DR. JONES: Yes. Well, you know, there are a number of things just in
terms of the framework, the conceptual model. We were talking about \--
I think Shep made a number of very interesting recommendations in terms
of the data systems, the connection of the data systems with the
outcome, screening, intervention, etcetera.

I thought that was a very rich discussion in terms of making a very bold
statement to the Secretary in terms of, you know, how we are framing
this.

You know, I guess we want to be careful that we don\'t set round data in
square holes. You know, do you see what I\'m saying, because \--

CHAIRMAN LONG: I see what you are saying, but that was also one of the
questions. Data is one of the questions, and when we get to data, then
we can talk about, I would think, a recommendation that could tie all
these things together.

What I am concerned about is that we start crisscrossing questions, and
we have the three very distinct areas, if I am seeing this correctly:
State grant, persistently dangerous. There is school choice and data.

So as I heard that, I think that is a very important point in my mind,
but I\'m asking. This is not a statement. I\'m asking. It\'s a question.
In my mind, that would come under data, and then we would say, well, we
could tie that together.

DR. JONES: To me, it\'s broader than data, but I submit to the Chair.

MR. ELLIS: I think we talked a little bit about this last time at our
last meeting, about what form this discussion was going to take, because
I think this, obviously, is probably the most important discussion
we\'ve had to date and we will have as a committee. But it seemed to me
that I thought we came to an agreement that our first charge, our first
responsibility, was to answer the Secretary\'s questions, i.e., this
committee was put together for a specific purpose.

It was charged to answer specific questions, and I think that was the
purpose of the template. I think Montean had suggested that last time,
and I think that is useful to accomplish that required, if you will,
task of the group.

Then we are done with that. When we get done with that piece, then I
think there are some other issues that came up. A couple of them were
highlighted in the back in terms of the trauma piece and the non-public
schools, and I know Shep \-- you know, I\'m sure we will hear more from
Shep on his piece.

Then, you know, we also talked about having an opportunity to talk about
funding recommendations or comments or whatnot. I mean, that is the way
I had conceptualized this process today. You know, let\'s do our
obligations to the Secretary, answer her questions, and then the quicker
we can get through that piece, the quicker we can get to some of the
additional ones.

MR. HERRMANN: In terms of a recommendation, to address, I think, what
Hope was saying, the recommendation is that we maintain the
infrastructure that is provided through the State Grants Program that
enables every school district in every state department of education to
be engaged in the struggle to maintain safe and drug free schools.

I think the recommendation is to maintain the infrastructure.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And I want to get back to Russell, too. You said
acceptable. I want to \-- didn\'t want to just leave that hanging.

DR. JONES: Certainly. I just want to make sure that there is time left
to integrate some of those other \-- some of what I think are core
issues. But, yes, I\'m in total agreement.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Thank you.

DR. KELLAM: Well, let me just agree on one hand and say, if you take
this as we have decided, you know, one question at a time, we have three
tasks. The problem is that for me as a public health \-- or the
recommendation for safe and drug free schools is that we have to have
guidelines as to how to spend the little bit of money that there is
available, and those guidelines, from a public health perspective, are
very, very, very clear.

You put the money where the problems are, and you weight the local
infrastructure, the nature of the partnerships that exist in each
locale, to allocate the money. That means that you use the data we are
gathering at great cost as a basis for understanding where the problems
are and where the partnerships are and where the opportunities are.

So that means that the recommendation I would make is exactly that, that
we go to the next stage. We declare victory over the last, and we say in
this next stage we can be very much more pointed as to how we spend this
money and what we create as incentives for local additional funding, but
that the core of the next stage should be using the No Child Gets Left
Behind statewide assessment systems, for example, as a basis for
allocation, along with qualities of infrastructure at the local level,
including partnerships, particularly.

So I think that we can make these recommendations, but they will be
crosscutting. We shouldn\'t worry about it. We can take these as three
important issues and, as we come to the data at the end, we will
necessarily have a good sense of how the data fitted into the
recommendations, if we agree that they should. So we should proceed as
we are saying, but not with the idea that these are, in fact, as
separate as they may seem.

The Secretary did ask us, is it possible to create an integrated data
system which will, in fact, be then used to pinpoint children\'s needs
over time as we use academic records currently in every school building.
Is it possible to extend such an information system?

Last time, we learned from staff and others that it is possible to
protect civil liberties and parent roles while we are doing that kind of
recommending.

MS. PRICE: When it comes to recommendations, I do think that each
recommendation needs to have a discussion about a recommendation.
Because someone offers it doesn\'t necessarily mean it is the
recommendation of the Advisory Committee, and we need to come to
consensus on those recommendations. We can\'t just blanket accept that a
recommendation is put forward, therefore it is a recommendation.

That would fall more under the category of a finding. Recommendations
need to have discussions and receive consensus of the Advisory Committee
to be considered a recommendation.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Howell?

DR. WECHSLER: I have to have questions about the recommendation to
maintain the infrastructure as exists. Clearly, this group was formed
because this program is receiving flunking grades repeatedly from the
powers that be. So there are two options.

One is to challenge the validity of the grading system, which would
entail a lot of recommendations. The other is to develop some kind of
new and improved approach, but to just say accept the existing
infrastructure is just going to go back and flunk again.

MS.PRICE: And I would \-- You know, I\'m in a bad position in one way,
because I am in charge \-- My office is charged with implementing this
program, and I feel very positive and strong about the program, and I
like very much that we address these issues. But in all honesty, I have
to say there are significant problems with the State Grants Program, and
we can\'t just \-- You know, to respond to it by saying let\'s just
continue to do what we are doing isn\'t addressing the issue. It is not
realistically looking at what the circumstances are.

You can say, we will just fund it more. It isn\'t going to get funded
more. The Department of Education is getting a certain amount of money,
and those dollars have to be spread around the programs, all of the
programs, and you know, it is push and pull.

Is one program better than the other? Not necessarily so, but programs
get different amounts of money. So as we look forward to what our
recommendations are, if we recommend that we get more money, maybe we
can keep it where every LEA gets dollars, but right now we heard \-- You
know, I won\'t forget that one person said \$300-some dollars is what
their LEA got, \$750 is what their LEA got, and we have to ask the
question, is the value of spreading the dollars so thin, while it gives
some money to somebody and they can actually do something, but can they
do anything significant, and would it be more beneficial if some of the
\-- you know, if they were spread in a different scenario where there
were larger numbers of dollars.

I think that we have to \-- You know, we can present a recommendation to
keep it the same, and we have to say but for that to be a viable program
the dollar have to improve. If the dollars don\'t improve, then what do
you do about it?

I think we are shortsighted to just say same old, same old. Am I
concerned about every student in this country related to drugs and
alcohol? I absolutely am, but we have to realize this is the only
program, besides one other program at the Department, that funds in the
manner that it does. That other program is funded at \$3 billion. It is
hugely different.

I get excited, because I do \-- I am very \-- I am part of Safe and Drug
Free Schools, because I have a heartfelt interest in it, and I really
want what is best for students. I do not want students involved in drug
use and alcohol or all of the negative behaviors. But when we look at
how the program is addressed, we have to look at those elements.

The Federal role in education is not equivalent to the state role in
education. Look at the Federal role. Look at what the reality about the
dollars is. If we could get double the dollars, I think that would be
great. We could make certain recommendations. That is probably not going
to happen, no matter what we do.

If that is not the case, then we should offer a recommendation for what
we do if it isn\'t, so that we can get the best value and make the
biggest impact in those communities and in those states.

MRS JACKSON: Okay, here goes my passion, Deborah, with regard to a
little bit of money stretched a long ways. I think one of the problems
perhaps has been the lack of good data collection or good dissemination
of that information from the state level to the national level.

We have sat for almost a year now and heard some wonderful presentations
of people that are doing some great things across the nation with regard
to Safe and Drug Free Schools funding, and I believe we all would agree
here around the table that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure.

So for the LEA that receives \$378 to a village that may receive \$78
and the pulling together of a community to address an issue that is
facing our most valuable asset in our country, which is our children,
and to get the tribal leaders and elders and other folks to begin
talking about inhalant abuse or whatever might be going on in our
communities, I think, again I\'m not quite sure how we measure all of
that, but the societal costs, I think, and the benefits long term as we
take a look at our nation that we are actually reducing the onset of
use, we are educating our communities and our children about the harmful
effects of any kind of substance use, I think, is imperative.

So again, the cost effectiveness of a prevention education and awareness
and intervention program, I think, outweighs the cost of treatment and
other societal outcomes long term.

So I wanted to say that. So I believe that there are things that we do
that just have not been totally measurable by this program, but what has
been a benefit and has been a strength as we look at the strengths of
the program has been the flexibility to take a look across communities
in our nation and be diverse and flexible in determining what are the
needs of the program on an annual basis, taking a look at the needs of
the community.

I believe that at the local level that that has been very effective. I
believe it loses something as we move it up to other levels that need to
make those decisions and those determinations, but at the local levels,
I think we have reflected here over this past year that we have been
doing a great job.

With regard to funding, as we look at substance use as a health issue, I
would like to make a recommendation that the dialogue really does need
to begin at the Federal level for some perhaps broader connectivity and
linking to Health and Human Services, for instance. This is looked at as
a health issue, but yet and still, it is the Department of Education
that is funding the program.

Again, as we have added other components onto the Drug Free Schools, the
Safe component, again that is put on the national Program of Safe and
Drug Free Schools and maybe not necessarily tapping into Homeland
Security.

On page 2 we did make a recommendation for some additional, I believe,
dialogue to improve the coordination of various Federal resources
related to school safety, etcetera, and etcetera. So that is in the
first box, and I think it is the third bullet, fourth bullet down.

So again, I would like to say that I believe that we need to expand
really at the national level what types of funding comes in to fund the
program, and that maybe it shouldn\'t have only been the Department of
Education ever, as this is a health initiative. Thank you.

MR. HERRMANN: Just a clarification about my previous recommendation,
because I was basically trying to move us off of where we were at. It
would be my thought that, clearly, there are some issues with the State
Grants Program that need to be addressed.

I think the thing that I wanted to say is I think it is important in any
overall scheme of what is being done with the broad Safe and Drug Free
Schools Program to recognize the importance of that infrastructure of
engaging local education agencies and state education agencies in the
process.

It is my assumption that, as we ran through the rest of these \-- the
rest of the chart here, we were going to identify some changes. So \--

DR. KEYS: In listening to the discussion and to the reality that Debbie
paints, I think I concur with what Shep was saying about, if you only
have so many dollars, you need to use those dollars where you are going
to have the greatest need.

Montean was suggesting that we do greater partnerships at the Federal
level, and I don\'t think that those partnerships only need to be about
bringing more dollars to the table.

I think that SAMHSA\'s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention has created
through their strategic prevention framework a funding system at state
levels that funds using epidemiological data to determine how you drive
the priorities of your program.

So a partnership of this program with the Center for Substance Abuse
Prevention at SAMHSA to not just look at it in terms of dollars that
come to the table but programs that are already there that could help
local communities do the kind of prioritizing that we are maybe
recommending or states doing the prioritizing that we are recommending
to see where they want to deliver the dollars that they have.

It may be that not every community is going to get \$300. It may be that
those dollars are delivered to areas that have been identified as most
in need and that that identification process can occur through maybe a
partnership with SAMHSA.

I don\'t know what the Department of Justice is doing, but I guess maybe
the long and the short of it is I think need-based delivery of dollars
is good, and that moving forward and investigating what leverage points
exist with other Federal programs may strengthen this program.

MR. LEDBETTER: The first two meetings, the way I remember the first two
meetings, we dealt primarily with the State Grants Program. The initial
meeting when we were called here, it was we have to look at this
program; we have to determine if it is working. If it is not, we have to
make some judgment as to whether or not it could be fixed and, if it
could be fixed, how can it be fixed. That\'s the way I remember the
first meeting.

The second meeting when we spent all the time hearing from State Grants
people, I never heard anybody make a presentation that the program
needed to be eliminated. I never heard that, though it was strongly
inferred by the Department that the program was broken and it needed to
be fixed.

Now what was broken about it \-- and this is how \-- I am going to go
back to what you said a moment ago. I agree with you totally that what
we need to do here today is to look at the program and make some
determinations along those lines.

If it is broken, can we fix it, and how can we fix it? A lot of the
discussion that we had \-- again, I\'m trusting memory, but a lot of the
discussion we had was about the money. I think all of us agree that
there is not enough money. The money was spread too thin, and that is
noted here as a finding.

Now we discussed matching money. We discussed grants from the state
rather than a blanket grant that everyone could receive, the LEAs having
to apply for grants with the states, where the states would pick and
choose who would get those grants.

Now whatever we decide to do, I think we need to lay this thing to rest
today on the State Grants. I don\'t think we need to spend any more time
on State Grants. We have spent two meetings talking about State Grants,
and surely we can reach some consensus here this morning,
recommendations, as a committee about what we need to do with State
Grants.

Another thing that I heard was that the way the grants were evaluated,
the effectiveness of the grants \-- the way they were evaluated, there
was no consensus from state to state about that.

Again, I\'m trusting memory, but I thought that the Department did not
want to say in the beginning that this is how you need to use your
money. They left that up to the states, and that created part of the
problem. When the Department allowed the states to determine what their
needs were and then the Department came back to evaluate it, from one
state to another the needs may have been different, and that made it
very difficult. It is not like comparing apples to apples, and that was
part of the problem.

I think that we need to just go ahead and look at those things and try
to make some recommendations this morning and move on and leave the
State Grants, because the State Grants \-- we have spent a third of our
time or more just on State Grants.

DR. KEYS: Could I just make a suggestion? It would really help me to
move that newsprint, and I would be happy to just take some notes of
what I\'m hearing are the key points, so that we can go back and say,
yes, this is the point we want. You know, I\'m happy to do that. It
would help me enormously, because I can\'t \--

CHAIRMAN LONG: Thank you. I\'m glad to hear there\'s at least one or two
others out there, but we are used to this type where we have something
in front of us. So if that could be brought \-- And the scribe is? Okay,
thank you. Thank you very much. Russell, then Hope.

DR. JONES: Yes. Just in terms of process. I can see our time getting
away from us quickly, and I\'m wondering if it would be beneficial to
provide a certain amount of time for each recommendation, to make sure
that we don\'t run out of time; because I hear over and over and over
again the importance of infrastructure, the importance of
partnership-ing, the importance of evaluation, etcetera, I think, which
cuts across the various recommendations.

So I can understand and appreciate the need to run through the
recommendations, but I think we need to do that in a timely fashion so
that there is time for the rich discussion that I think encompasses
everything that we are attempting to do.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I don\'t have a problem with that at all. You set the \--
if we say one and a half hours per for the three, that is four and a
half hours, and then that which is left will be for the overall and the
infrastructure. Would that \-- I\'m just going to throw that out as a
starting point, which would mean, Russell, that we now have seven
minutes left for the first one, but that we then would \-- if we start
that clock now, we have used approximately \-- so if we say until
quarter of ten to wrap this up on the State Grants \-- or 10:00
o\'clock, State Grants, and then go from there, because I agree with
Tom.

To your point, is that acceptable? That would give us another one hour
and 10 minutes on State Grants.

MS. TAFT: So that would be changing the schedule and the agenda that we
delivered to us.

CHAIRMAN LONG: No. I think I said \-- I\'m sorry. I was looking at the
ten o\'clock. The answer to that is yes.

DR. KEYS: Could I take a stab at just summarizing for our notetaker what
I think our key points are that we want to keep in mind?

I think we heard that the infrastructure of state and local community
linkages is important to this program. I think we heard that the program
is important to continue, and it is important to rethink how it is
currently structured.

I think we heard that it would be important for limited dollars to
target prioritized needs. I think we heard a recommendation that there
be greater collaboration at the Federal level, not only in terms of
dollars but also in terms of the kinds of programs that can bring
services and already created infrastructure to bear on the problem. And
someone help me if I\'m leaving one out, but I thought those were sort
of the key points.

MS. JACKSON: Susan, could you restate the one on need?

DR. KEYS: That if we have limited dollars that those dollars should be
directed toward areas of highest priority need. We are not going to have
dollars for all students, all schools, and I think someone said that
possibly instead of having dollars go right to the local communities
that it go through states, and states do some priority. I don\'t know.

I\'m just trying to recapture, and I might be wrong, but I just think it
would be helpful if we got something up there.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And just for the sake of everyone, as soon \-- I can only
speak for myself, but we have a broad felt tip on the way as we speak.
Yes?

MS. TAFT: I feel conflict between some of those two statements, because
how can you keep your infrastructure, which is basically every school
district gets something, and then yet say but since we don\'t have
enough money, we are going to leave some of these school districts out.
That, to me, just doesn\'t add up.

Maybe we ought to think about keeping that infrastructure in place so
that every school gets something so that they have a portal to their
community to get more to go with it, and encourage coalitions among
school districts or consortiums among school districts to pool their
little amounts of money to get more amounts of money, and also to make a
range within the formula so that there is some flexibility within the
states to maybe take a little bit from the school districts that are
getting humongous amounts to give a little more to the school districts
that are not getting so much.

In Ohio, it ranges from \$1,000, which is our base low, to \$700,000.
Now I would think that some of the schools are having a hard time
spending \$700,000 effectively. But every school gets something.

MS. JACKSON: I just wanted to speak to the need for the funding. I know
within our state grants program that there is a needs assessment that is
completed annually with the application process for the funds and what
your plans are for utilizing those funds, etcetera. So that is done, no
matter how much money you receive. Everybody has to do that needs
component.

So I was confused by that one as a recommendation when that is already a
part of the application process, determination of need.

MS. PRICE: But doing a survey for need and then having the results of
the survey show where the greatest needs are \-- is/are \-- are two
different elements. I mean, everyone does the survey, and that is
significant, but then the results of the survey show what areas have the
greatest need. I think that is what they were \-- I\'m just dialoguing.

MS. JACKSON: Then what would be the criteria that would be set for which
LEAs have the greatest and most significant need? Would it be based on
violence? Would it be based on \--

MS. PRICE: That\'s part of the recommendation process or, you know, one
of the strong elements of the structure that show up in almost all of
these is the importance or the significance of the SEA, the State
Education Agency. That may be a determination of that state education
agency to determine and define how they define the need. It may be a
Federal role of defining the need.

Again, the state may make a \-- You know, the Federal role could do, as
Hope suggested, a cap, a minimum cap and a basement and a ceiling range,
but then the state could do that. The individual state could possibly
receive the funds, and that state determines whether they are going to,
by whatever formula they decide, give those dollars down to the LEA or
the state could do a need-based assessment and do it by need.

I mean, you know, I think that there\'s a lot of perspectives that you
can take on how it is done, you know, and how that falls into place.

MS. JACKSON: And then here goes my \-- I get to be the devil\'s
advocate. It\'s probably the most vocal. Anyway, then do we lose our
flexibility that currently is part of the program by allowing the SEA to
make a determination that one size fits all or this is the criteria we
want to address this year. You know, again the flexibility has been for
the local LEAs to take a look at their discipline data and a number of
things that are going on in a particular community, and focus their
efforts toward those things. It isn\'t just the survey. It isn\'t just
the needs assessment.

So if it is at the SEA level, I think we lose some flexibility that has
been a part of the program, and that\'s made it successful in a lot of
our communities.

MS. PRICE: Yes, and you may. You know, flexibility comes with two sides
of a coin. You know, in one sense, as Tommy mentioned, it gives you so
much flexibility that you can\'t make the judgment about \-- from state
to state about if the program is effective, and then we end up with a
bad review or whatever. But you know, that flexibility \-- I mean,
there\'s good parts about flexibility. There\'s bad parts about
flexibility.

Sometimes you give entities the ability to be flexible, and they don\'t
make wise decisions. I mean, so that, I think, is part of the
conversation of figuring out who sets the criteria for the flexibility.

DR. KELLAM: One of the conundrums we have \-- Just to repeat with the
light on, one of the conundrums we have nationally is that we collect an
enormous amount of data of all kinds, and it has no relationship to
anything we do. That\'s a fact.

We see Lloyd Johnson\'s data on drugs nationally. We see all kinds of
data. We are spending huge amounts of money as we speak in every state
in how things are going across these states.

We have not learned how to use that data, in Susan\'s term, epidemiology
data, to tell us where to put our attention. Now there are two criteria
that we need to do.

One is we need to make the infrastructure of the Safe and Drug Free
Schools \-- Hello? I\'m trying to be serious, and I guess what I\'m
saying is I hope we can come to an understanding of how these fit
together.

The solution to Safe and Drug Free Schools infrastructure is to make it
(a) data based, (b) multiple levels of partnering across the Federal,
state and local agencies and partners, including community
organizations, so that there is in fact a common vision about how we are
spending our money. It is not just pieces here and there.

The thing I think we have to learn about as a group is how the data can
inform the need. If we didn\'t have epidemiology, we wouldn\'t be able
to do public health programs against any other diseases, and from my
point of view as an M.D., drug abuse and violence are diseases. They are
pathological responses to environmental demand, and people respond in
the best they can, which is often not so good.

You do this solution by using your data to tell you where the problems
are, what are the opportunities in each locale for partnering to bring
focus and integrated services to bear with children.

The only thing I could say is that, having worked in public schools for
40 years, it is very important that we also understand that the schools
already collect data in grades and conduct which are highly relevant,
and that we need to somehow see how this data and the No Child Gets Left
Behind kinds of data we are spending many dollars on can inform where we
put our resources.

I am not opposed to giving some token or some encouragement to local
communities so that they don\'t feel left out of the scene, but I do
believe that we need to be needs based, and that is a very different way
for our infrastructure to go than it has been going. We have not used
our data in any way to solve problems, whether they are violence or
whatever they are.

DR. HINGSON: If I could just make a suggestion, too, sort of for
heuristic purposes. If I think about areas where we have made progress
in terms of improving public health, one is in reductions in tobacco
use, and the other is in the area of reducing drinking and driving.

I\'m a little bit more familiar with the latter. So let me offer some
suggestion about that.

The Mothers Against Drunk Driving has a very interesting program called
Rating the States where every two or three \-- about every three or four
years, rather, they give each state a report card, and the nation a
report card on how well they are doing in reducing alcohol related
traffic deaths.

It turns out that over the last two decades, alcohol related traffic
deaths in the United States have been cut in half on a per population
basis, and even more so on a per miles driven basis.

So one of the things that they try to do is to say not only where is the
need, and I think need, of course, is important in determining how money
is spent, but also where is progress being made.

There has to be some level of consensus about what are the objectives
that we are trying to achieve from an epidemiologic point of view. They
set targets. They say, look, we are going to try and reduce alcohol
related traffic deaths. Their initial goal was 20 percent by the year
2000. They surpassed that.

So I think that one thing we need to do is we need to develop some
consensus on what are the objectives of this program? What would we call
success? And then what evidence do we have that certain types of
programs or certain types of initiatives can help us achieve that? Then
are those programs being put in place?

One of the things that Mothers Against Drunk Driving does is they base
part of their grade for each state on what is the proportion of fatal
crashes that are alcohol related, and since the last report card has
that proportion gone down. And they look at what laws are there where we
have evidence that, if you pass that law, it will reduce alcohol related
traffic deaths, like raising the drinking age or lowering legal blood
alcohol levels or administrative license revocation or primary
enforcement safety belt laws.

Then they look at what proportion of those laws have been passed in a
given state and, of the unpassed laws, what proportion were passed from
the last time the report card went out. So they set sort of an agenda.

Now that is not to say that every state has to follow in lock step
fashion the agenda. Most of the grade that they put out is based on are
you making progress? Have you been bringing the problems that you have
targeted down? Less of it is based on the specifics of these different
laws, but what they try to do is make sure that each objective has a
data measure to it, and it is objective, so that it is not just sort of
we don\'t like this particular party that happens to be in power or this
particular effort that these people in this particular administration
are doing something. But it is objective, and you can really chart
whether or not progress is being made.

I think maybe part of our charge here ought to be to try and identify,
well, what are the objectives that we think ought to be the ruler by
which we are measuring whether or not we are making any progress and
offer that to the states. Not to say to the states, you know, there is
only one way to skin a cat, but rather to say, look, if you are not
making progress in reducing these problems, then maybe you are going to
have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a different plan
and come up with a different application.

DR. MADRAS: I would like to echo both of the two previous comments. Data
is what drives policy, but the second component is efficacy of outcomes
measures, and I think both are needed, and both have to be part of any
policy decisions.

DR. JONES: I agree totally. Again, I think that goes back to the
questions of infrastructure of the program, the relationship of data to
outcome and how that impacts policy.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I have to \-- this is housekeeping. I\'m getting agita,
and it has nothing to do with you. Is there a possibility to get like a
big black felt tip or something with big letters, which is a great segue
into what I am talking about.

I think that we are getting to the nuts and bolts of this, and I am
hearing it over and over. Here is where the recommendation will come
out, I\'m sure, and that\'s why I appreciate, Susan, you getting that up
in front of us there.

Data driven and that that becomes the evaluation tool, and that
recommendation \-- and these things are really already up there, I
think; just trying to put them together \-- that then it goes to areas
of greatest need, and that the evaluation system has to be looked at,
revamped, improved from what it is right now.

The other thing that \-- and I have to say this. It is up to the
committee how you want to \-- \$100 million? Are we going to say
anything about the money or are we just going to leave it at 100
million? That\'s up to you. I think that is a cruel joke. I think we \--
and I\'m just going to say this, and I hesitate to say it. I mentioned
it when we were having coffee.

I just had a conversation last week with the Governor and a few of \--
and with the CTA, which was very large in our state, the union; and the
discussion was based around where do we spend the \$3 billion, B as in
Billion, this year for Title I and II schools to improve achievement?

As I sat there, I have to tell you what I was thinking about. I was
thinking about us. I was thinking about this committee, that we are
sitting here talking about \$100 million to spread across the United
States of America for this important endeavor that we are all sitting
here for.

If that is a reflection of what is thought about the children of the
United States of America with substance abuse, we need to say it, and to
talk about \$100 million, I think, is an embarrassment.

I suppose this will all be recorded now. All for the want of a felt tip.
I just throw that out, because if we are going to \-- We also want to
throw that \-- I didn\'t see it up there. That\'s the only reason say
it, and it\'s up to you.

If the amount is okay, but if not, we need to say it, and I think we
have to have strong language that says think about the children of the
United States.

DR. JONES: Man, I love the way you said it. Hear, hear. I mean, that\'s
right on, and I think it goes back to that discussion that we had and
one of the statements that Shep made, just in terms of a bold approach
and some Secretarial level discussion.

I don\'t know if any of you guys were able to capture \-- to see C-SPAN
last week where the Secretary was discussing the No Child Left Behind
program, but, boy, did she get slammed. I mean, it was just \-- I don\'t
think anyone in the room was pleased with what the No Child Left Behind
Program was doing.

No, no, I shouldn\'t say that. Not what it was doing, but the level of
funding, and I think you are right on. I mean, that\'s why I said
earlier on trying to put square data in round holes, and boy, I think it
really \-- It raises the issue of where do we go from here.

MS. TAFT: One hundred million dollars is not very much, but it might be
enough to get the door open in some of the communities, but one way that
\$100 million might go farther is if some of the extraneous things that
are in that bill that this money can be used for were narrowed down or
eliminated so that the \$100 million was more targeted, keeping kids
away from alcohol and drugs and keeping that interpersonal safety that
is so important to helping them learn, and we could make a list of
those, I\'m sure, of things that we could eliminate.

DR. MADRAS: One of the most obvious questions that I have asked since
coming to this position is does every school poll the use of drugs in
their children, and they don\'t, not to the best of my knowledge,
because I have been to the Baltimore school district, the L.A. school
district, and have asked whether or not those data are available.

They say they don\'t have them. So there are gaps either in my knowledge
or transfer of information to me or they don\'t exist. I don\'t know.
But from my vantage, this is a very simple task that can be done, that
can be used to drive implementation of prevention and intervention
programs.

Hope, you say that every school does the polling. I don\'t know. Debbie,
do you know?

MS. PRICE: I don\'t believe they do, because I think in many cases it
takes time, and it takes money, and they do not see themselves as having
either the time or the money to do it. And it is an issue of priorities.

DR. MADRAS: Well, in terms of taking time, it is a \-- For
self-reporting, it is a simple questionnaire that can be handed to every
child in the school and completed in one hour; and even if it is not
electronic, that information can be shifted to an electronic database
readily. And with that kind of information, you can begin to address
what are really specific and local needs.

In some of the school districts that I have visited, the superintendents
and/or the principals have said they don\'t want to know, and that, to
me, is part of the problem. We have to have that data on a
school-by-school basis, and we should have it every single year.

MS. TAFT: Well, all I can talk about is Ohio, because I am very familiar
with it. We have more census surveys done in Ohio of their school
population than you can shake a stick at, and I would bet that every
school district has data, maybe not on a yearly basis but on a two or
three-year basis.

Many of those are done by community coalitions, so that the coalition
keeps the data, so that the schools don\'t have to answer those
difficult questions that the principal doesn\'t want to answer, but the
data is there for schools to use.

I can\'t believe that L.A. and Baltimore don\'t do surveys.

DR. MADRAS: Well, I won\'t specifically mention any schools that have
not done it, but I can assure you that in some of the areas that I have
been, it is not done. That, at the Federal level, should be obviously a
policy decision.

DR. HINGSON: I think that that is a very good example of the type of
thing that I was trying to get at earlier, is that if we know that
having these data are important, that should be a condition for funding,
and being able to track over time should be a condition for funding, if
schools are not willing to take those steps to do that.

Now may be that will give an advantage to Ohio where they are doing that
already, but the other states may then look to Ohio and say, well, gee,
why are they doing better than we are, and what can we do to come up to
snuff.

So I think that that is a very good suggestion, that we should \-- that
should be a condition of receiving funds, is that schools be willing,
and communities be willing, and we should, when we get into our data
section later today, set up what we consider to be the most important
sources of data that need to be collected, and that is part of \-- that
communities will be more likely \-- part of the criteria for funding.

The more of these data the communities are able to access, the more \--
the greater the likelihood that they will be able to receive some
funding.

DR. MADRAS: Well, and precisely because in any scientific survey it is
pre/post data that counts in terms of efficacy outcomes. If you don\'t
have pre data, you have no idea whether or not what you are doing works,
and without the pre data you can\'t possibly assign a value of efficacy
to the post data.

So I more than second that. I think that that begins the development of
a rational approach to what is missing in these programs.

MR. LEDBETTER: I am stunned. We have come up with at least two
recommendations: More money \-- are we agreed on that, that one
recommendation needs to be that there is more funding? I see the arrows
up and down on the 100 million. So let\'s start with that, just a nod of
the head or anything, more, more money. Is that \--Okay, that\'s one
recommendation. All right.

Now the second one is the data. Lord, if there is anything we have
talked more about than the State Grants Program, it has been data. I can
only speak for Alabama. I know that we survey \-- Sometimes I think we
survey to death, but we survey there.

I agree that you have to have data to begin with. If you don\'t have
your pre data, you don\'t \-- there is no way of measuring your
outcomes. So are we agreed that a recommendation needs to be data, that
the data \-- You have to have the data. You have to be able to survey to
receive any state grants money. Could we agree on that?

DR. MADRAS: I would like to modify that. I think that in order for
Federal funding to be allocated to programs such as this, the kind of
data that is collected on a state by state basis should, in fact, be a
national dataset and should be uniform; because if every state
establishes their own questionnaires, they may or may not be validated
forms of questionnaires.

What we need is a national consensus on the type of information that we
gather so that we can look at it from a global perspective.

DR. HINGSON: If I could offer, I agree that there ought to be a common
core, but I think there ought to be some flexibility state by state so
that they can measure particular and special initiatives that they want
to pursue. That is the only way we are going to learn, because it is not
going to be one size fits all in terms of what will work.

What will work in Massachusetts may not necessarily work in New Mexico.
So I think \-- But there should be a common core of questions that are
asked and a certain minimal standard for sampling and response rates.

We ought to have certain basic methodologic criteria that have to be
met, but then allows the flexibility.

DR. SIMS: Right. Thank you. I was going to bring that up, that we have
been discussing this over time, and it seems to me, when we had one of
our panels of the \-- I don\'t know \-- the contractor who did the
initial part, a lot of it was around the accountability, but it was
unclear to me if that was the state level accountability.

It seemed like it was, not necessarily at the local level of what was
actually being done. So that is something to think about. What are going
to be \-- What will the recommendations be, specific recommendations, to
the states around these core questions, core data questions, that should
be captured as part of the Safe and Drug Free Schools state grants
program?

I don\'t think we have talked about that in terms of what the specific
recommendations would be for that core dataset, if what is there is
adequate or if other things need to be added to that.

The other thing was around the actual programs themselves that were
implemented. From what I recall, on the local level there was a lot of
evaluation going on just based on the panels that were here. However,
because there was this uniform management information system, there
became sort of a mismatch.

You know, they have to input certain data for the overall evaluation of
the program, but what is in that dataset doesn\'t really capture what
they have documented as the outcomes of the programs that have been
implemented.

So somehow we can maybe think about what recommendations would we make
about reducing that mismatch between what local level evaluators might
be doing and how it is being captured at the state level.

Then the other thing is one of the other comments made by the initial
part evaluation about the program is they may be effective, but we
don\'t know why.

I think another issue that was brought up that we should consider making
some recommendations about was around how the programs are being
implemented and whether or not we could be sure they were being
implemented with fidelity. The researchers who presented talked about
that a little bit.

So maybe one of our recommendations would be around not only documenting
what programs are implemented, but also ensuring or recommending that at
those local levels they are actually using some kind of process measures
to documented how the program is being implemented.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I apologize. We had \-- About three or four hands went
up, not simultaneously but close, and I think, Shep, you had \-- and I
think I missed you. That was not intentional, I assure you.

DR. KELLAM: I\'m glad to hear that, Dave. I have nothing but confidence.
I just wanted to make a couple of points.

One is that I like the way our recommendations are moving. They are
talking about infrastructure for Safe and Drug Free Schools and
including information as a way of guiding policy and practice.

The second thing I think that it is very important for us to emphasize
is the nature of multiple levels of partnerships. At the local community
level, we are talking at the minimum of bringing the health department
and the school district into one place, which is traditionally a huge
problem, in addition to which we have child welfare agencies and the
like who need to be partnering, and we have local community
organizations that can enhance or inhibit the political support at the
local and state and national levels for this kind of work.

I wanted to say my second point is that, as we think about data, we
shouldn\'t forget the public school records that we already collect on
every child. The fact is we collect academic records and behavioral
conduct reports in every school and every child quarterly or in some
systematic fashion over time.

The two biggest important antecedents, aside from poverty and more
global issues, for drug abuse in the adolescent and later years are poor
academic performance early on and conduct problems early on. Those are
very important antecedents replicated many, many times.

So we have, in fact, an opportunity by connecting the information on
adolescent drug use to the developmental records the schools are already
collecting. That is an extremely important understanding. We are not
talking about creating whole \-- necessarily, whole new information
systems yet again.

A lot of it can be integrated into the developmental records we are
currently collecting on each child, again with proper partnering and
proper safeguards for parental roles and the like, which is a very
important part of what we can build on, we already have.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Could I go, so that I catch him, and I apologize for this
\-- I think it was \-- You decide. Who was it here first?

DR. JONES: It was me.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I knew you were going to say that. Okay, Russell, Hope
and Susan.

DR. JONES: Yes, I\'ll be brief. But I echo Shep\'s comments. I like the
direction that we are moving. You know, we are really talking about
bringing our science to the table, understanding and appreciating the
benefits of methodology, critically evaluating what we are doing, and
letting that inform intervention and inform decisions that are being
made.

I had a process question. These recommendations will be made to the
Secretary. To what extent will this committee be involved in the
discussion of those recommendations and the forward movement of those
recommendations?

MS. PRICE: You mean once the recommendations go forward?

DR. JONES: Yes. Right.

MS. PRICE: What will your involvement be? It will be whatever she asks
of you. Any advisory committee provides recommendations on whatever the
subject is, and that is the function of the advisory committee, is to
provide findings and recommendations.

If the Secretary chooses to ask for additional information or additional
involvement, that is supplementary to what a role of an advisory
committee is. An advisory committee reviews and provides information.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Could I ask a piggyback question on that, Debbie. With
the tremendous movement in the last two or three weeks by four or five
states moving primaries back to now a Super Tuesday which will be
February 5, what that has done \-- and here comes my question.
Politically, what that has done is pulled everything back to about ten
months from now.

What effect does that have on conjecture, on reauthorization and what
will happen with this committee and the recommendations; because all of
a sudden, things went like this. As soon as I saw that in the paper, I
thought, whoops. But I just thought about that when you asked that
question.

MS. PRICE: I\'m not sure I exactly understand your question, but because
the primary season is moving forward at a greater rate than before and
\--

CHAIRMAN LONG: Lame ducks have shorter time to be lame ducks.

MS. PRICE: Well, that is true. I mean, if you asked the Secretary, and
our organizational assessment of which the entire Department is assessed
is one of those standards that we will be measured by is reauthorization
of No Child Left Behind, and there are different levels of that
depending on the principles that the Secretary is put forward and the
blueprint that you all saw.

That is the goal of the Department, to have reauthorization done by
September 30 of this year, and they are all \-- The Secretary and the
Secretary\'s staff are working on that.

Reauthorization is in the hands of Congress, and Congress is the one who
will determine when that will be done. I mean, I could sit here, because
we\'ve spent 16 years in the Senate \-- I can sit here and speculate
about what I think Congress is going to do. That is not my role, and it
is not appropriate for me to do at this point. But reauthorization is in
the hands of Congress.

The Secretary will certainly answer questions that they have about
reauthorization, but we do not write legislation. The Hill writes
legislation, and they will ask questions. They have the President\'s
budget he put forward. They have the blueprint that we put forward, and
they will do the business of the legislature.

It may be done this year. It may not be done this year. It may be done
next year. It may not be done next year. It may be done the third year.
If you look at the timeline on the current No Child Left Behind, we did
not reauthorize elementary/secondary education Act in the year it was to
be reauthorized. We reauthorized it, I believe, three years later, and
reauthorizations can happen in the year they are supposed to happen.
There is no mandate that they have to, but it is the goal of the
Department to have it reauthorized by September 30th.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I think we were \-- Let\'s see now. Hope, Susan. Is that
right?

MS. TAFT: I would like to put forth a recommendation based on what I
have heard around the table, that the local school \-- the LEAs be
required to institute local advisory councils like they had before No
Child Left Behind, because that local advisory council brings in the
community, brings in the hierarchy of all that we have been talking
about to get those partnerships going.

If I remember reading No Child Left Behind correctly, it requires all
the LEAs to do a principles of effectiveness process which gets in the
survey process. It requires a core dataset. It requires the U.S.
Department of Education to come up with a uniform information management
system.

If that was implemented, we wouldn\'t be having a lot of this
discussion. So maybe we ought to recommend that the law that is in place
now be implemented as it was intended.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Thank you. Susan.

DR. KEYS: I just wanted to clarify, when we talk about using data. So
often when we see grant applications come in, the communities \-- you
know, they have all kinds of data, but they don\'t use that data to make
decisions. They don\'t use that data to connect and justify why they are
doing the programs that they are doing.

There is often not a linkage, and I think we are talking about really
using data to connect what it is you end up doing and to prioritize what
you are doing.

We have a really excellent example, I think, of what we are talking
about in Montgomery County Public Schools where our superintendent
there, when he came in, he really looked at what was going on in the
county, and he recognized that there was a pathway of very high need
that extended in a very definite geographic area. And he used dollars to
target that area and those needs, recognizing that if he could improve
achievement for those kids, he could make a significant impact on the
overall outcomes for his system.

I think that we have to get away from the idea of everybody gets
something. I think we have to recommend that the grant program support a
process where priorities are set from state to local communities where
the needs are the highest and that those needs get mapped to the
programs that are actually put in place.

DR. HINGSON: I would like to say that I agree with that. I think that
there\'s multiple levels at which the data needs to be used. One,
certainly, is the state has to have an overall plan and an overall
yardstick that they have set up on how they are measuring progress, and
then communities can respond to that and say, well, this is what we are
going to do to reach X, Y and Z goal and change the number from time one
from A to B at time two.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is that, as we have talked
about what types of data should be collected, there certainly was
initially consensus around the notion of doing surveys in every
community that wants to be eligible to receive funding.

Surveys can tell you about the individual use behaviors of the student,
and that can be linked to academic performance, and you can have
questions on the surveys about academic performance. But there also are
things that the communities need to be doing, and we shouldn\'t be
putting all of the onus on the students. We need to be talking about
what can communities collectively do.

So when Hope, for example, talked about having advisory councils, well,
there is certain representation that needs to be at the table, and that
ought to be part of the criteria.

If the communities don\'t have the school department, the health
department, social services, the police department meeting on a regular
and meaningful way and all of those different systems collecting data
that are being put into a collective effort to try and deal with this,
that is part of the data that we need to have some standardizing on.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Howell, before you go, Debbie wanted to clarify.

MS. PRICE: I just wanted to clarify. When Dr. Madras asked me the
question about surveys, I really \-- Why it wasn\'t on my mind, I don\'t
know. But the Department \-- All school districts have to do the
consolidated report.

I\'m sorry. These questions \-- There are elements of Safe and Drug Free
Schools as part of the consolidated report. I was thinking of a separate
survey. So I gave a shortsighted answer, and I apologize.

There are a lot of questions that people would like to see in a report
on drugs and alcohol. They are not all in the consolidated report,
because of multiple reasons, trying to figure out which questions are
the most appropriate questions to have in there on all the segments of
the Department, to keep a manageable tool for school districts to use.

So you know, there are a limited number of questions as part of the
consolidated report, but, yes \-- and those go to every public school
district.

I\'m sorry. It just like over the head, and thought of it later. So I
apologize.

DR. WECHSLER: If we are talking about data to assess the effectiveness
of the state grants program, I think we have to be very careful and not
\-- Even if we quintupled this budget, it would be very unrealistic to
hold this program accountable for all these changes that have been put
on the table in terms of substance use, behaviors, in terms of academic
performance and so forth.

So we need to \-- While looking at that bigger picture, a lot of the
data that needs to be collected relates to whether they are implementing
what the science shows us are the best practices.

So the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools programs need to bring the
experts together and identify a long menu of what they consider to be
the best practices from which states can choose.

Now while it is nice where we have gotten so far, I think we are still
avoiding the two fundamental issues that have been there from the
get-go: Number one, what is the best delivery mechanism?

It seems to me that the people around the table talking about the public
health approach seem to be leaning toward something fairly similar to
what the Department has proposed, and that is giving \-- pooling the
money together, letting the states decide from their perspective of the
needs of how to disseminate it, while there are still others at the
table who feel that we need to preserve the existing infrastructure, in
essence the entitlement program where every district gets some.

I think we have to address that, once and for all.

Then secondly, Hope put a bombshell on the table that I don\'t think
anyone has addressed, and that is \-- and correct me if I\'m wrong, but
it seemed to me you were suggesting that we go back to make this the
Drug Free Schools program. That is a concrete issue.

How can we have the resources to keep this going to every district?
Well, that\'s one way to do it. That is what she has put forward, and I
think it merits a debate. Should we narrow dramatically the scope of the
program?

MS. QUIGG: To come back to both of those comments, I have been doing
this work from the community perspective since the inception of the Safe
and Drug Free Schools Program. One of the things that we said when this
program was created in the beginning, looking at school principals,
school board members, school teachers who were standing there begging
don\'t put the burden of this problem onto the schools \-- we\'ll do our
part, but we can\'t the be-all, do-all, everything, and yet we continue
to come back with this program and put the burden back on this program
and back on schools when, in fact, this is the most complex problem that
we have that can only be addressed from a community perspective, and the
schools taking responsibility of their piece of this.

You know, I agree with you. How do we narrow the scope and put back in
perspective what is realistic, what the schools\' role for this program
is within a larger context? I think all the things that we are talking
about are needed pieces. We need data, but what is the data telling us,
and what do we expect it to tell us?

The data should not be used against the schools in any way, shape or
form, or be targeted to show that the school\'s program is succeeding or
failing.

We need data at the programmatic level to talk about whether the program
is in place or performing well. We need surveillance data to tell us
where our problems are, and we need to look at this program of what do
we expect it to do in terms of needs.

We talk in our world about universal, selected and indicated programs,
targeted audiences. I have always personally seen this program as being
the best universal program that we have in place, and I think back to
our heritage and roots of this program.

The design was we needed basic substance abuse education and lessons in
our schools as part of the school\'s response to this, not the be-all,
end-all, and that we have other targeted programs that are coming down,
not only through education but through public health, through safety and
other places to look at problems.

Then lastly, in my own state I argued for a long time with our policy
makes about our discretionary dollars were targeted to go out to do a
community enhancement piece to the Safe and Drug Free Schools Programs.
when they looked at shutting those down because we were funding
communities at a \$5-\$10,000 level and having this same argument \-- we
couldn\'t show outcomes and couldn\'t prove that those dollars were of
any value; so let\'s just close that down, reallocate those dollars \--
the argument came back to we were funding about 150 communities to do
that, and oh, by the way, in those 150 communities our problems were not
getting worse.

Methamphetamine was not coming to those communities in a state where
methamphetamine was running rampant, because we had enough dollars and
enough attention in small communities with these minimal dollars to hold
the line.

Where we needed more dollars was targeted dollars at an increased level
in places where we had the problem. So when we talk about surveillance
data, it is knowing what we are trying to do. Are we trying to prevent?
Are we trying to reduce? The answer is we are trying to do both, and we
need to be very strategic and very targeted at doing it.

I think we do need to look at this program, as we do anything, what is
the expectation that a single sector of our community can do with a
single section of dollars that makes sense, and bring this back to that
kind of perspective, back to our roots and our heritage.

MS. DUDE: I agree so much with everything everybody said that my list of
what to do talk about is significantly decreased.

I think Peggy made an excellent point when she talked about the
prevention aspect of it, because I think when we put so much emphasis on
data, it is very hard to measure what you have prevented from happening,
because it didn\'t happen. So I think we have to be very, very sensitive
to that issue.

I guess the main thing I would add that hasn\'t already been exactly
said is that I think, when we do have \-- like I would love to have the
power to decide who gets money and who doesn\'t. I mean, I think that
would be such an awesome responsibility, because I think that can guide
so much of what the efforts actually are.

I think data \-- I think, for us to be able to say this is how much
money we have, here is a grant application, here are the things you
minimally have to do \-- you have to collect data; you have to have an
advisory committee or a coalition or something like that, but you also
have support from the top. The principal has to say absolutely, I
believe totally in what we are going to do here, and I\'m going to be
behind it.

So I just feel sorry for this poor little prevention person that I have
made reference to before, that this is like one-eighth of their job
responsibilities, and they suddenly have to write the grant. They have
to implement the grant. They have to collect the data. It is an
impossible situation that we are putting them into.

So I think, if we can show that there is a collaborative response to
utilizing whatever money they are given so that we can show that there
is going to be curriculum infusion, so we can show that there is going
to be partnerships, and we can be guaranteed that parents were being
involved and that we get data not only from the students themselves but,
as others have said, from the community, police data and all those kinds
of \-- all that other information that is out there, and academic data,
all those kinds of things together. But I think, for us to make either
principles of effectiveness to say you have to do these guidelines in
order to have access to this money would be a smart way to go.

I absolutely believe in going back to Drug Free Schools as opposed to
Safe and Drug Free Schools. So I agree with much of what has already
been said and, obviously, a lot more money than 100 million.

DR. MADRAS: A few comments. With regard to the much used word data now,
your comments on making this a public health issue where it should go
into the records of the child: I think we should divide data into two
components. One is an anonymous survey of each school, and then a
different component which is a public health approach; because I am
quite aware of scientific data that indicates that, if it is not
anonymous, we are going to get vast underreporting from children.

So if we put a survey that is broadly based, we will \-- and anonymous,
we will not get into reporting. Another survey which is a public health
approach, which could involve screening, brief intervention, either
verbal or biometric testing. That would go into a more linkage to an
identifier for an individual child.

With regard to whether or not drugs are going to help improve academic
performance, there is very strong information that a reduction in drug
use reduces absenteeism, increases grades, increases completion of
homework, reduces violence. There are so many indicators that are
associated with drugs that I think, if you reduce drugs in schools, you
are going to de facto reduce a lot \-- a shopping list of adverse
consequences for the individual.

Even college graduation rates are associated with drug use in high
schools. So that children who abstain from marijuana are twice as likely
to graduate from college, if they abstain during high school.

So I think we have to \-- And then we talk about perhaps five to ten
thousand dollars; what can we possibly get out of this? In schools that
have implemented random student drug testing for three to five thousand
dollars, their positive tests have gone from, in some cases, down to two
percent positive tests. That is a huge return on an investment in some
schools.

I do completely echo what Hope said in terms of community involvement.
One of the things that every community could do is find out whether or
not the schools, are in fact, giving prevention programs and parental
involvement; because we are aware, again data driven, that drug use
amongst children whose parents do not condemn use can be as high as five
to seven times greater than in homes in which parents have a very strong
negative opinion about drug use. So communities are critical. Families
are critical in driving and helping the system.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I would like to propose that we take approximately a
10-minute break, which will allow us to put \-- to codify some of the
\-- put some big bullets up here so that we can start to pull this
together for not just a recommendation but a series of recommendations
based on some of these large areas that we are talking about, and then
if we have left something out. Would that be acceptable?

Then we will come back, and then everyone will have a chance to throw in
other comments, but I think now it is time to start bringing this
together for these recommendations, and we are starting to hear some of
the things over and over, which is a good thing, because now that means
we are starting to pull information out.

Before we break, did you have \-- I\'m sorry.

DR. HINGSON: Thank you. I\'d like to raise two points. The first one I
am going to be making stronger. The second one is one for \-- The first
one I am recommending. The second one will be something that I would
like us to think about. I would like to hear the committee\'s thoughts
on it as a whole.

The first one is: I don\'t want us to fall in the trap of just talking
about drugs. We must leave alcohol on the table. The younger people are
\-- When they start to drink, the greater the likelihood that they will
develop not only alcohol dependence, they get heavily involved in the
use of other drugs and all of the sequelae that go along with that.

So I want to make sure that we don\'t \-- that the word alcohol be
included in whatever the name of this program is.

The second thought that I had was that, you know, a lot of what has
happened in the past has been that the Department of Education has given
monies to schools, and that SAMHSA has given monies to the single state
agencies, maybe through the health department, whatever, that the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has given monies to the
Governors Highway Safety bureau. Yet all of those different agencies
share common goals in terms of reducing substance use and share common
goals in terms of a particular focus on youth.

Perhaps what we ought to be thinking about is whether or not there
should be some sort of not just school application to Department of
Education or single state agency department to SAMHSA or Governors
Highway Safety through NHTSA, but rather some collective community
application that goes into a collective body that gets integration
across different Federal agencies, so that we can really get the various
people at the table at different levels, at the community level, at the
state level and at the Federal level.

So I just want to toss that one out as a possible thing for us to
discuss.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Let\'s take that approximately ten minutes to give us a
chance to put some bullets up there, and we will come back and pull
these together.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the record at 9:50 a.m. and
went back on the record at 10:11 a.m.)

CHAIRMAN LONG: As we get started, in case some of you missed, I am going
to use this to segue into our beginning. If you didn\'t notice \-- and
Seth, I want to congratulate you \-- Seth was over there reading the
minutes from the booklets over there that I was describing.

As a way to start to synthesize some of this information and come to
recommendations regarding the first area, State Grants, the areas that
were discussed \-- and not implying that this would be a list of all of
them, but that\'s why you will have an opportunity to say, whoa, wait a
minute, we missed one big area there \-- there is an opportunity to put
those up there. This is just an attempt to start to pull our
conversation together.

Some of the bullets that were heard over and over: That would be data
driven, dollars, access thresholds, and mentioned two or three or four
things under that, scope, the delivery system, whether or not it
continues to be universal, community or community involvement and
collaborations, and a spinoff, integration of agencies that could help
all of those things.

First of all, is there a big area that was just simply left off? I\'m
sorry, go ahead, Susan.

DR. KEYS: I think the basic question that Howell raised \-- I\'m not
sure, unless it is under scope, whether we should be recommending that
funding go through states to local communities based on need versus
funding all school systems. Is that what you mean by scope?

CHAIRMAN LONG: I\'m sorry. Yes, scope as to whether or not it would be
just \--

DR. KEYS: As it is now or changing the \-- Okay.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And we might put in parentheses to illustrate that. I\'m
sorry. I said scope. It would be delivery systems.

DR. KEYS: The other question that he raised and that Hope raised, I
think, was a scope question, whether it should be drug and alcohol free
or safe and drug.

CHAIRMAN LONG: That was the intent of the scope. When the discussion
turned to when Howell said a very important was just raised, that\'s
where the word scope came in. Yes.

DR. KELLAM: Yes. Two points. One is I think that we have to continue to
think developmentally, and we are just learning, I think, as a group to
do that.

This came up very briefly, but the early risk factors for later drug
abuse, violence, tobacco, alcohol, really come out of \-- and there are
huge gender differences in this in the research. But for males they come
out of a lot of data on early aggressive, disruptive behavior in
classrooms.

Aggressive, disruptive behavior in classrooms coupled with poor
achievement have been developmentally the early antecedents. A lot of
the prevention programs have been directed at various stages along that
developmental trajectory.

So in a sense, we have to recognize the separateness, but at the same
time we have to recognize their developmentally important integrating
origins. So by separating, in a sense, we perpetuate one of our major
problems, which is what do we mean by partnerships, and I don\'t see
partnerships up there as importantly as it needs to be up there.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I\'m sorry. If we put community/partnerships?

DR. KELLAM: Well, let me elaborate that a little bit, because the Safe
and Drug Free Schools is one program. The Safe Schools, Healthy Students
is another, and they are dramatically different in the degree to which
they go across agencies at the Federal level.

So we are talking about partnerships at multiple levels. I don\'t mean
to be vague about that. At the local community level you need community
participation in terms of community organizational leaders, along with
child welfare, public health and the school district, recognizing their
common interests in supporting kids growing.

At the state level, on the other hand, we need coordination with state
departments of like sort, and we have a lot of work to do at the Federal
level. The Healthy Student, Safe School \-- what\'s it called, Healthy
Schools \-- Safe Schools, Healthy Students \-- You know, it took a
tremendous amount of effort to bring those, Justice, CMHS and Education
together.

So we have to recognize that the kids we are talking about don\'t come
in these boxes and that every time we make these distinctions we make a
problem at the community level, and it is perpetuated by problems at the
funding at the Federal level, and so on.

So part of our need is to bring these into a focus, and multiple levels
is an extremely important part of that, not just a level. So we are
talking about community, state, and Federal level partnerships that
bring together potentials for integrating resources and services and
evaluating impact.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Perhaps the sixth bullet, community and partnerships, the
last one, the integration of agencies, and perhaps just pull those
together that talks about multi-level of partnerships, what those two
bullets would indicate.

MS. KELLAM: Yes.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay. I think we had Hope, Fred, Kim.

MS. TAFT: If I could talk about the scope one, I think we could be more
specific in that. I sometimes feel like the Safe and Drug Free School
Program has become a Christmas tree with a lot of big, heavy branches
and its same original little bitty trunk, and that the trunk is not big
enough to hold up all the branches, such as pandemic flu, preparedness,
homeland security, crisis intervention things, transportation from
unsafe schools, just to mention a few of the things that have been
attached to this program that the \$100 million is not going to fund in
any way, shape or form.

So I think that, if we could narrow down the scope of Safe and Drug Free
and Alcohol Free Schools, we would be more in line with the original
intent of the legislation from the 1980s, and help us with the delivery
system; because in 1980s the original delivery system was that all kids
are at risk, and all kids are still at risk, and that we needed to do
something about that, and that, to me, it is not an either/or, but it is
a both/and.

We need to have a base for every \-- so that every child has a chance to
get some prevention activity, but that base could be enhanced in a
number of ways through additional funding or through this funding, but
it is not \-- It shouldn\'t be a competition between this school gets a
whole bunch, and most of these schools get nothing, but something that
there is a base and that can be built on through \-- whether it is
through local funding or match or through money from other departments
or from a universal community-wide application that goes to a lot of
different departments. There\'s just a lot of different \-- or a range
of funding options. It\'s just a lot of different ways you could do
that, but if you don\'t have that base, you have no way for that school
to be part of the community that they need to be part of.

MS. PRICE: I think it is important, because the overall legislation that
addresses my office is for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, of
which a piece of that is the state formula grants program that has a
very similar name, State Safe and Drug Free Schools and Community State
Grants, that we \-- You know, in talking about the two, it is so easy to
use the term and not know which of the two you are talking about.

Are you talking about both? Are you talking just about state grants? I
could not disagree more that focusing in the entirety of the office
strictly on drugs and alcohol, I think, is narrowing it down so much
that we are missing massive need that, in the long run, gets into drugs
and alcohol.

So I just would \-- The Safe Schools, Healthy Students is part of my
office. I mean, it is not separate from Safe and Drug Free Schools. It
happens to be a discretionary grant program, and many of the
discretionary grant programs that we have are focused on specific
aspects of safe and drug free, and drug free includes alcohol, you know,
mentoring, character education, Safe Schools, Healthy Students, multiple
programs.

Depending on the year, we can have between 13 and 19, depending on what
Congress gives us dollars for.

So I really caution us to be clear in what we are talking about so that
we don\'t \-- You know, are we talking about the overall program or are
we talking about the state grants program?

Even in the state grants program, it is \-- you know, there is a
stipulation in the state grants program that says, in order for an LEA
to receive these dollars, they have to have a crisis plan in place. They
have to address the issue of safety in the school.

At the younger age \-- I think Shep was stating this a little bit, that
in the younger years in school, it is those issues about students
feeling safe and secure and those issues being addressed that is a
preventive for the drugs and alcohol at the later years.

So pulling drugs and alcohol out exclusively, I think, is shortsighted
in addressing the issue. I know that the issue of pandemic is getting a
lot of play these days, but it really is a piece that we ask people as
they are developing their crisis plan, make sure that you are addressing
that, and not to get just into pandemic, but a pandemic will happen.
They happen every 10 to 40 years. It will happen. The magnitude of it,
we have no idea what it would be.

Should you be prepared for it? Probably so.

MS. TAFT: But should that money come out of here or should it come out
of Health and Human Services?

MS. PRICE: We are schools. I can honestly say \-- and this will be my
experience in my office. They no more have any idea how a school
functions than the man in the moon. I cannot tell you, not just in this
idea, but I cannot tell you how many times they come over and say we are
going to do this; we are going to have this program, and we are going to
do this, and this is what we are going to have schools do. And we say,
schools don\'t work that way.

They do not know the community they are working in. We have had that
with Homeland Security. We have had that with the EPA. We have had that
with Department of Health and Human Services. I cannot tell you, schools
are a unique environment in and of themselves.

The other thing I will caution you is every time there is something, a
need \-- I mean, I\'ll pick on the EPA \-- or I\'ll pick on
Transportation right now, because the National Highway Safety
Transportation Board mandated in law that they must work with Education
in developing a driver\'s education program.

Well, schools don\'t have driver\'s education programs. So now we have
been asked to draw ourselves into that, to investor \-- because we are
mandated by Congress to do that. We have no role in that.

So what we can say to them is, you know, we would be happy to get that
information out to schools for you; we can help you in our understanding
of how students learn, but you know, one way of keeping things within
the Department is protecting schools from having to do every ding dong
thing that people think is a nice thing for schools to do.

You all know \-- I mean, how many times \-- you know, because somebody
has a great new idea, well, let\'s just do it in schools. You know, I
think that one of the issues that directly affects us, and in anything,
I\'m sure, are the emerging needs that are developing as things and
circumstances change.

In the 1980s there were certain things that we were addressing, and some
of those are the same. Some of those have varied in those years, and you
have to have good judgment about what emerging needs that you invest
your time and dollars on, because some of them are fads, some of them
are significant. But you have to be able to address the emerging needs
that are occurring so that you are really meeting the needs of students
and teachers and parents.

So from the standpoint of scope, I think to just educe the overall
program down to just drugs and alcohol is too narrow. I think that we
can articulate the significance of drugs and alcohol in what we are
doing without making it an exclusive program addressing drugs and
alcohol.

I think, as we have discretionary grant programs that address many
subjects as a supplement to this state grants program \-- and that\'s
kind of how I look at them, they are supplementary \-- drugs and alcohol
can be addressed in those same ways as well, to give clear articulate
dollars.

Anyway, I\'m rambling now. I should stop.

MR. ELLIS: Maybe it\'s just me in terms of my regimented personality,
but I feel obligated to bring us back to my original point when we
started this morning, was that the committee, at least in my opinion, is
charged with answering some very specific questions.

I realize we have had some great discussion, and I think that we are
coming up with \-- we are developing answers to some of these questions,
but some of them, we have not. We haven\'t addressed. Are we going to
ignore them?

My feeling is that we owe the Secretary a response to every one of the
questions she asked us about. Unless we make some progress on that, we
are not going to get far through this matrix, which again I think is an
important obligation of this committee.

I would echo Deborah\'s comment about how much we want, for instance,
Homeland Security being the only Federal entity dealing with issues such
as emergency management at the school level \-- refer to the FEMA
document and many of the DHS recommendations for schools.

Just one that comes to mind is that all schools should be equipping
their exterior window glass with films of bomb resistant coating at a
cost of \$20-\$60 a square foot. I\'ll tell you that we have over 25
million square feet. That is more than four Pentagons. So unless they
are going to come up with that money, it ain\'t going to happen, and I
even question the absurdity of it.

So anyway, I think the Department of Ed. does speak well for schools,
because they know schools. They know SEAs. They know LEAs. So I think
that is an important piece to keep in mind.

So anyway, my point is, unless I am the only one that feels this way, I
really feel obligated that we should be answering some of these specific
questions, and again I think we\'ve got a good start on some of them.

MS. PRICE: Let me just complement. We have no option other than to
answer \-- We can\'t pick and choose from the questions. These are the
questions the Secretary asked us to answer.

I was mentioning to Dave during the break, I think a lot of these
answers are the kind of finding things and then, therefore, the
recommendations come at the conclusion sort of answering them. But we do
need to provide some response to the questions \-- each of the questions
that we have been asked.

It is not the maximum of what the report will have. It is the minimum of
what the report will have.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Now I am confused here now, because I\'ll be honest with
you. We can answer these questions, and many of the things we have
talked about up there \-- I thought that is what the discussion was
about.

If it isn\'t, we can sure answer these in about three minutes. What I am
saying is, I think that the important part of this is to get
recommendations down, and I think you\'ve got the bullets, the backbone
of them, up there.

Two things. One, we can go back through and do that, Debbie, if that is
what you would like, and we can do that very quickly. But to me, this is
really the important part with the recommendations, and I am guessing
about 80 to 90 percent of the answers are on those \-- I think that is
what Fred was getting to, too - right there and up on those bullets.

The other part of this is that, with all three of these areas, not just
with the one we are on now with state grants, we aren\'t going to get
all the recommendations down. That\'s the attempt to put the bullets up
so Bill can then come up with the recommendation, so that when we have
our conference call, that then we can start to hash these out. So this
is to put the meat on some potential recommendations.

I didn\'t frame that previously.

MR. LEDBETTER: I asked David right before we broke if we could just poll
the committee to see how we feel about the state grants money leaving it
where every LEA gets some versus a grants program within the State
Grants Program where you would have to apply for that money and submit a
proposal.

I would just like to see \-- I mean, we have talked around it and around
it. I would like to see where our feelings are with that so that we
could move on past that.

DR. HINGSON: I think that this is a difficult question in the sense that
it sort of draws values into conflict. On the one hand, everybody wants
everyone to have an opportunity. On the other hand, we don\'t want to
create sort of an entitlement where money just gets frittered away.

So I think the challenge here is for us to figure out a way that people
\-- that everyone can have an initial opportunity to have access and can
have repeated opportunity to have access, but at the same time we don\'t
just let it be there\'s a certain percentage of money or a certain
amount of money that is funneled to every school district automatically.
That is, I think, the challenges in front of us.

MR. HERRMANN: One of the things I wanted to bring up, because trust me,
I\'ve been giving this a lot of thought, and I think one of the things
that we talked about earlier was low hanging fruit, and we talked about
things that, really, universally every school district should be doing.

Part of \-- I think, when we think about structuring the grants, in my
mind there are some fundamental things that every school district ought
to be doing, particularly as it relates to the whole issue of planning
for safety and being involved with community groups. In my mind, that is
a foundation thing.

If a school is willing to do those things, does those things well, then
I think they should receive funding. I think the issue is we have not
held people accountable, and I think it is at the local level. It is at
the state level. It is at the national level. We have simply not
followed through on, really, what is already in the legislation.

So I think there is that piece of it, but then I think beyond that, some
districts are not going to be willing to go beyond that. They are not
going to be willing to invest the energy that it takes to do anything
more than that, and I think that is where another level of funding ought
to be in place; because we do have communities that are doing tremendous
things with very small amounts of money, and I think we need to be very
cautious that we don\'t lose the opportunity to support those programs.

So I guess kind of what I am suggesting is that we look at kind of a
two-phased model, neither of which would be entitlements, because I
think at any level there should be expectations about who gets the
dollars and things that have to be done to get the dollars.

So I think, you know, as opposed to a straight yes or no, I wanted to
throw out some more kind of structural ideas, because I think that is
important.

I think the other structural piece is you\'ve really got to consider the
State Grants Program in the context of the larger Safe and Drug Free
Schools Program and the national grants piece, and really look at what
are you trying to do with each pot of money, because if you don\'t do
that, you are missing the boat, and I just think we\'ve got to do that.

MS. PRICE: Just let me jump in and add one more element to that, that we
haven\'t really touched on, but is something that I think needs to be
viewed.

Currently, the State Grants Program is divided into two pots of money.
Twenty percent goes to the Governor for their use; eighty percent goes
\-- divided to the LEAs.

You know, if you make a recommendation to still have something where the
dollars are going to the LEA in some form or fashion, do you want to
keep that 20 percent to the Governors? Do you want that possibly for
state activities?

So we have not mentioned those dollar breakdowns, but if we talk about
similarity in the current program, that is an element and should be
brought into the mix.

CHAIRMAN LONG: If we could start down that line, because we can answer
some of these questions. So let\'s start with that one. With the State
Grants Program currently, 20 percent and 80 percent, anyone wish \-- How
many wish to \-- and I am going to ask on these, because we do have to
\-- If we are going to \-- and I want to ask you, Debbie, do you want us
to answer all these questions. We can do that, but I\'m going to make it
\--

MS. PRICE: I should say, in our dialogue we have answered many of them.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Right. Right.

MS. PRICE: But what I was trying to say is that, yes, we do have to
answer these questions.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay. We will do that for you right now.

Twenty percent, 80 percent \-- how many wish it to \-- No, no. I\'ve
said let\'s just start with that, since Debbie asked that question. This
is the model.

So how many wish to have it stay 20/80, if that is the only question? I
want to see your hands. Twenty/eighty, stay the same?

DR. KEYS: I think it is hard to vote on that until we know what it is we
want to fund. I mean, are we talking about the funds going to local
communities? Are we talking about the funds going through the states to
local communities? I mean, we haven\'t answered Mike\'s question first
to know how we want the money then divided.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I\'m sorry. I was using that as an example of how we are
going to do it. Then I will take that example off.

DR. KEYS: Okay. I\'m sorry.

CHAIRMAN LONG: That is why I characterized it that way, yes.

MS. JACKSON: And, David, one other piece. If we use that as more than
just an example, explaining what the 20 percent at the Governor\'s
level, would actually \-- would the scope of that particular funding
change to provide something different than what it currently \-- how it
is currently being administered, disseminated?

CHAIRMAN LONG: That was a poor example of using.

MS. PRICE: But it is one of the questions. It is the second question on
the second page.

CHAIRMAN LONG: To answer the question, I am going to start and then,
Debbie, I am going to need your suggestions here. If we start right at
the top on the first page, what are the strengths of Safe and Drug Free
Schools \-- excuse me, the State Grants Program. Is there anything \--
addition there that is needed? I am talking about just specifically to
answer these questions, because then I want to get back to the
recommendations, because there is quite a bit there.

If the committee has anything, just jump right in.

MR. ELLIS: Frankly, I don\'t think much of the stuff in the right-hand
column actually answers the question. What are the strengths of the
program? We heard from panelists that talked about the collaboration
that the programs \-- that these grants provide, the leveraging of
those, infrastructure.

All those kinds of things, I think, should be included as findings and,
like you say, Dave, I think we\'ve got some recommendations up there,
and I would suggest that these first two questions are, in fact, one and
the same.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I want to be clear that in asking now are there other
things that should go in here. My concern as we sit here is, if we now
\-- We have been doing this for an hour and a half, and if we now are
going to answer each one of these and spend another hour and a half to
two and a half on those \-- So I am going to need some help here as to
how much time we spend on these, so as we go through these how much can
be derived from what we have already talked about and how much needs to
be added.

I see a lot of heads shaking that I think we would agree that there has
been very good discussion and that a lot of the answers are in here.

I hate to lay this on you, Bill, but with many of the things that are
here \-- and I was just listening to what Fred was saying \-- can be
derived from some of the things that we have talked about from the
minutes. But I would also like to give any committee member an
opportunity on any of these to say hold it, I think we need to make sure
that that is in there to answer the question for the Secretary. Does
that make sense?

So having said that and what said Fred \-- what Fred said \-- excuse me,
just renamed you, Fred \-- and the additions \-- and, Bill, if you would
also jump in and say I hear what you are saying, but on some of these as
we go through and say I\'m not sure I have enough, I need some more
direction. So you jump right in also.

So having said that, can you put number one together or do you need to
hear more? Okay.

On the second one, the elements of the State Grants Program that are
working, addressing the needs of students and schools today. Now I see
that\'s a blank.

MS. TAFT: Well, in the testimony we heard from General Dean, he had
answers to all these questions that I don\'t see anywhere. One of the
ones that he commented on in that area is that the principles of
effectiveness, the core data system, the things that are outlined in the
law give the schools a \-- are elements that are working, if the schools
go by them.

So I think we \-- You know, there is information in our testimony that
we received in the past that could fill that in.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Did you make the comment for all of them or did you mean
for that one and the next one? I wasn\'t clear on that.

MS. TAFT: Well, he went right down the list of questions and answered
each of them. So there is information for all of them, but I pulled out
a few things in specific that we can mention as we go down.

MS. JACKSON: And I just wanted to agree with Hope, that I believe that
it is already written in the legislation. On the principles of
effectiveness, the activities that are there, I think it is all there,
and it answers all of those questions. So I would say yes.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Next \--

MS. DUNCAN: Dr. Long, let me just \-- The reason we didn\'t include a
particular person\'s testimony in the recommendations is that they are
not a member of the committee. This has to be the answers from the
committee. So if there is something someone said in testimony, that
needs to be repeated by this group or it won\'t go in.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Good point.

MR. DUNCAN: So if we like something \-- I shouldn\'t say we. If you like
something that someone said, it needs to \-- You need to say it. Then it
will be included, but otherwise it wouldn\'t be. And of course, everyone
has to agree.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Right. Hope, hearing that, do you want to read?

MS. TAFT: Well, some of them are things that we mentioned in the first
question.

DR. JONES: Just a question. So who are these from? I need a context,
please. I think it is moving us along, but I just need a context.

MS. PRICE: Well, they are from General Dean, who is the head, president
or CEO \-- I forget his exact title \-- of CADCA, which is a coalition,
Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America, CADCA, which is an outstanding
group and, you know, we do have the transcript over here that you can
look through.

Nothing against General Dean \-- I think he is a fabulous person, and I
am very supportive of CADCA \-- but to just blanketly take somebody
else\'s answers, I don\'t think is appropriate.

So you know, I think pulling out those pieces of the answers that you
think are significant and apply, I agree that is appropriate, yes.

MS. TAFT: He just happened to be the only one that answered all the
questions in a logical, laid out order. That is why, when I was going
through my past information over the weekend, that is what I pulled out
because I thought, oh, yeah, this is what we are needing and where the
gaps are.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes, Shep?

DR. KELLAM: The question is how to proceed, and I think that we are
doing a little bit what we did with the money a few minutes ago, until
Dave caught us up when we were talking about ten cents per kid is enough
or what do we think about money.

If you looked at these questions and you said, currently as implemented
what are the strengths, the only strength, I think, that we all agree
about is that a beginning has been made in addressing a problem, and
that if we don\'t go much further to elaborating how to do it right, we
are going to be continuing to flunk; and just the initial groundbreaking
\-- we ain\'t there, by any stretch of the imagination.

I want to change the question a little bit, I guess, which of course, is
illegal. I want to say that, in fact, there ain\'t no strengths if we
don\'t go any further than where we have got; and I would say that is
true for the first three questions, and the difficulties in determining
effectiveness, a lot of what we said about accountability, data driven,
you know, setting goals and so forth \-- all of that, in fact is up
there on the board in terms of what we have been saying.

So I guess what I am proposing is that we say very pointedly that Stage
1 is groundbreaking, but is a failure in terms of if we don\'t go
further, and what we want to do is go further, not just get rid of it.

That brings us down to measuring effectiveness. I think we have answered
that very beautifully. I was surprised and pleased at the degree to
which we have come to understand that we could be data driven in regard
to policy and program.

The mechanisms that we proposed, I think we have addressed. There are
\-- All those issues on the white board have addressed them.

Are there emerging issues? Yes. Schools are overburdened. We have talked
about the fact that you can\'t put everything as a dumping ground on the
school, but on the other hand, school is the place where children either
succeed or don\'t and, therefore, we have to integrate strengths around
schooling as a way of understanding what the next stage would look like.

You can\'t have child psychiatry, which I know intimately about, people
trained in child psychiatry have never been a classroom. That is a bad
idea.

So the integrating of child welfare, public health, mental health, with
schooling with the idea of aiding and supplementing and responding to
coherent, integrated programs is a good thing. And I think we have
talked about that.

So I mean, I think we have done pretty well as long as we \-- Well, I
don\'t know. I guess that\'s what I think.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Keep going, Shep.

DR. KELLAM: Well, I am on the next page. You know, what we have talked
about in terms of focus on safety: We\'ve had a heck of a lot, including
a site visit that really talks about safety. I don\'t think that we \--
Maybe we haven\'t really picked up the single elements.

Violence is, in fact, a product of a developmental trajectory that
starts with failing and continues to elaborate as a consequence of
failing. Again, the issue is how to get the academic performance up and
the behavior appropriate.

We had said that drug abuse \-- reducing drug abuse and alcohol and the
like improves academic achievement. It is also the case developmentally
that poor academic achievement in the first few days of schooling sets a
track that leads toward drug abuse and violence. Kids who fail don\'t
feel good, and they don\'t behave right, and there are huge gender
differences again.

So there is, in fact, something we can say about these are intimately
related to each other. The problems of violence and safety in schools is
a problem that is intimately involved with a whole set of issues that
kids experience in success and failure in the context of broader issues
like poverty and the child welfare issues, racism and so forth.

So I think that, in a sense, we have touched on these things. I don\'t
know what Bill thinks about all this that we have done.

The State Grants Program: We have talked about needing to bring the
State Grants Program and the local areas and the Federal program into a
partnership, a set of partnerships, interrelated.

That\'s up there, and that we think that that is intimately or
importantly related to kids\' progress, and we have examples in Safe
Schools, Healthy Students where we have gone cross-departmentally and,
in fact, we need to follow up and pursue that strategy, because at the
local level, that really required partnerships and indeed evaluation.

The one partnership, by the way, we have not addressed is a very
important one, and that is the partnership between the research groups
and the public institutions. It is the case, we still train people to do
research who have never been in a school or who go into school under
very special circumstances and really don\'t understand, let along
schooling, but even public health agencies or child welfare agencies.

Our research has been too removed from the missions of these public
institutions, and the collaboration between research groups and the
institutions we are talking about, particularly in schooling, is a
fundamentally new structure for science, which shouldn\'t get off scot
free. It is too free floating in space and needs to be anchored in the
missions of public institutions. That is indeed a very important issue,
and we have not discussed that, I think, sufficiently.

I don\'t know. I mean, I feel embarrassed.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I will just \-- I want people to get involved and keep
talking here, but the balance between flexibility and accountability
contained in the statute working? The way that question is being asked
\-- I am not trying to be facetious here \-- no.

DR. KELLAM: Well, the issue that Ralph addressed interestingly this
morning \-- I haven\'t sat in the committee with Ralph for a few years,
but the fact of the matter is that the data that drives policy and
program tells you where the hot spots are and the problems are and
directs your attention there, and then sets goals for how you know if
things got better.

That integration of data for policy and program and accountability
having goals that you can measure is something we have discussed, and I
think is very important.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And that is the part that \-- and we did not talk, but
that \-- and I\'m talking with you, Bill. It is no, and the reason \--
The part that could make it better was just mentioned.

MR. LED BETTER: Could we back up a second? The state grants \-- The
breakdown of the state grants, the 80/20 breakdown \-- can we discuss
that for just a second, because this 20 percent that goes to the
Governor \-- I\'m just one member of the committee, but I\'m opposed to
that.

The reason I am opposed to it is because sometimes that can become
political money. I don\'t see that from the money that comes from the
state departments of education, but since the inception of this program
I don\'t personally know of anyone who received the state grants money,
that 20 percent, that their school \-- that that money would come down
to a school.

Now I know that some of that money goes to civic organizations and so
forth that are working in that area, but as far as the money actually
coming to the school, I don\'t see it in my state. It just doesn\'t
happen, and I think that the intent of the law is schools. It is not
necessarily community groups.

I agree, we need to have these partnerships and so forth with the
community groups, but I can only speak from my perception of how that
money is handled within my own personal state. So with that said, I know
that \-- and I\'m not trying to create controversy with that, but I just
don\'t believe that that money, that 20 percent \-- I think it should
all be lumped into the state money with the state grants, because all
the way through this whole report we keep going back and forth to the
fact that there is not enough money, and then we are cutting 20 percent
out right off of the top.

CHAIRMAN LONG: But if we could stay to that point just for a second so
we can get an answer to that. So if the comments could stay to that
point.

MR. HERRMANN: I think you bring up a great point, and what I will say
about that is I think any program that is 20 years old, part of the
challenge is you\'ve got to trim off the dead weight.

When a program gets 20 years old, you start to have funding that is kind
of institutionalized, and people get the money because they have always
got the money.

I think, by changing the funding formula that we are talking about, I
think you have an opportunity to trim that dead weight. Part of what I
was talking about in terms of trying to look at sort of a two-tier thing
would be kind of a replacement of the SEA Governors sort of process to
where potentially all of those funds could go to the SEA as opposed to
the Governor\'s share or some other mechanism within the state that
ensures that you\'ve got a more data driven decision being made about
how the funds are being used.

I think it is important that the Chief Executive continue to play a
role, if for no other reason than to ensure that \-- The reason the
Governors funds are in there is to try and ensure that there is
cooperation across state departments, and the original intent of the
Governors funds was to serve students that are not served through \--
normally served through school based programs. I mean, that is what is
in the legislative intent.

So I think there needs to be a mechanism to ensure that that
coordination occurs at the state level, but mandating 20 percent funds
to the Governor\'s office may not be the best way to do that.

In Tennessee, you know, that 20 percent is actually administered by the
Department of Education anyway. So I mean, the Governor has the
authority to determine where that money goes, but personally I wouldn\'t
object to that being changed.

MS. DUDE: I guess I don\'t feel like we have enough information to make
that decision, because I don\'t think we know how that 20 percent is
spent in the various states. So I feel a little uncomfortable jumping to
the conclusion that it is not used correctly.

I believe in my state often the money is used to do statewide data
collection, and so if that money wasn\'t there, I\'m not sure that would
happen. I\'m pretty sure \-- and, Peggy, you probably remember from your
days in Missouri that \-- It went to the Missouri Division of Alcohol
and Drug Abuse, and I feel pretty confident it is used for minimally
data collection.

So I don\'t feel like I have enough information to vote on whether or
not I think it should be a 20/80, because we have learned a little bit
from all of our panels about what that 80 goes to, but I don\'t think
any of us have been informed on what that 20 percent. goes to. So I feel
a little uncomfortable making that decision.

DR. JONES: Yes. You know what, that was my issue exactly. The monitoring
of what happens to that money is a more initial question, because I am
not sure what happens with it.

MS. TAFT: I can tell you what happens in Ohio. From there, it goes to
community treatment programs almost that send people into the schools to
help kids that are in special needs. So it is add-on money to those
areas that we have been talking about of how to increase funding to
special populations.

The two are kind of tied together in the discussion with question number
four, which is what are the difficulties of determining the
effectiveness of the program. A lot of that, to me, is \-- from what the
people in Ohio are telling me, is that there is really \-- The
guidelines aren\'t clear enough from levels above them on what are
really effective prevention strategies and what they really should be
doing with their money.

So somehow another, we need to encourage the Federal level and then the
state level to give the local level some clearer guidelines on what are
bona fide, effective strategies, prevention strategies.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Would it be appropriate to \-- Hearing different
comments, would it be appropriate to plug it into some of the things we
have already discussed and ask that the money \-- Now we are talking
about the 20/80 \-- that there also be access thresholds with that, and
that it be data driven, and evaluated so that \-- And then if it
doesn\'t work out \-- but that could the recommendation. That way, 100
percent is going to be held accountable.

Then I think that might \-- because I hear your comments, and I also
hear Tommy\'s. I think that might be the way to solve that.

MS. TAFT: And going back to Mike\'s comment, if you don\'t have that
base with outlined things for the schools to do, how are they going to
get the data? We keep talking about data and wanting them to get data
and everything they do has to be based on data, but if you don\'t get
them any money to collect the data, they are not going to be able to get
into the system at all.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I\'m sorry?

MS. JACKSON: I just wanted to say, are we making an assumption that the
evaluated piece is not place for the Governors funds? Are we making a
blanket statement? I\'m like Kim. I don\'t have enough information.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I would never say that.

MS. JACKSON: Okay. That\'s why I wanted to ask that question, because
again how do we know that is not already in place for many of our \--
for our Governors funds, that they are not already evaluating the best
use of it, because I have heard different individuals say how those
funds are used.

I know in my state some of it is used for data collection, but I also
know there is a Governor\'s grants program where they disseminate some
of the monies out to the LEAs or out to communities with LEAs partnering
with other community groups.

So again, I think maybe there might already be some of those.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Therein was my point. I think, if we as school people are
going to be held accountable and it is going to be data driven, it\'s
going to have access thresholds, I don\'t think there is anything wrong,
since we don\'t know, because as we sit here, we talked about the
varying states. They would all be different, a little different.

So if we have a common thread here that it be data driven, there be
evaluation and have access thresholds, I don\'t think there is anything
wrong with that. Governors should be held to the same accountability
level, quite frankly, that the schools should.

MS. PRICE: And in all honesty, they actually are held slightly to a
higher accountability, because where the 80 percent of the dollars that
go to the LEAs, they are required to be using effective programs that
they are implementing with those dollars. They can receive a waiver from
the Governor, allowing them to use a program.

So, say in a little town they have managed to develop some program that
just really works for them, but it is not a scientifically based program
but it does work for them. They can continue to use that program,
because they get a waiver from the Governor to allow them to use it.

That is not an option in the Governor\'s pot of money, although he has a
variety of ways \-- he or she has a variety of ways they can use that.

As Montean mentioned, they can do their own grant program, and a lot of
times those will go out to community based organizations similar to what
Hope was saying, and they provide services to schools or they can go to
an agency within the state government, but they are held responsible to
be using those dollars for proven, scientifically based programs. They
do not have the waiver option.

We do monitor them, just as we monitor the LEAs. You know, we go out and
we monitor the State Grants Program. We monitor it from the state level,
look at the Governor\'s office, look at the SEA, and then have \--
because we don\'t have the ability to go to every LEA. There\'s too
many.

You know, there\'s always some governors that do it better, some
governors that the same old/same old programs get the dollars ever year
kind of blanket. So there is some accountability. But as you were
looking at some of the \-- I see here some of the thoughts you are
having about how can the program be better, and there have been a
variety of ways that we have touched on that, that in each one, you
know, dollars going to an SEA.

There is a need, I think, a significant need, for \-- you could refer to
it as state activities dollars, dollars for training, dollars for
whatever, that could be identified in that pot. So it could be
restructured so that you are giving those dollars rather than for them
to do the grants to different things. So that\'s a thought as you are
developing your thoughts.

MS. TAFT: Debbie, what you just said triggered a thought in me, is that
now the administrative costs are very small. Is there any way that we
could increase the percentage of the administrative costs and suggest or
require, whatever you do, that the states do some of those things that
some states are doing but other states don\'t feel like they have enough
money for?

MS. PRICE: And just \-- Even though I know that some of you aren\'t
particularly fond of the President\'s proposal, that is what was
proposed. That \$100 million is for state activities, not dollars going
down to the LEA but to use for data collection for a variety of state
activities, including potentially providing dollars to those school
districts that have been found to be persistently dangerous, to help
them meet those needs, but it would be state activity dollars is what
that was designed for, you know, and articulating what those activities
are, kind of a next step.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Mike, were you going to say something? I didn\'t want to
\--

MR. HERRMANN: Yes. I guess, you know, again we\'ve got this challenge
between structural issues within the legislation, so to speak, and
really administrative issues, I think, in terms of \-- There\'s a lot of
stuff in the existing law that addresses a lot of these issues, and it
gets to be a question of will at the Federal and state level to follow
through and hold people accountable to these things.

So I think it is important to at least include some sort of a statement
about the administrative side of it so that we don\'t lose sight of
that. I think that your statement, Mr. Chairman, about the funding is
sort of a piece of that, but beyond structural changes, I think we\'ve
got to sort of get to the commitment level of the Federal government and
states to push these changes.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I am not sure where we are with the 80/20. In closing
this one out so we can move on to the last two questions and get right
back to these on the recommendations, I hear what everyone is saying. I
still think it would always be nice for the community at large out there
to hear that everyone is being held to the same standards.

I hear what is being said about it, but I think Governors should be held
to the same standards as elementary schools and districts. That would be
put in maybe just that way, but I think the message \-- and I heard you
saying that right there, Mike, that the message and the things that we
say will also be important. I mean how we say it, so that people receive
it out there.

So for right now, Bill, if we could leave that in there, because
remembering \-- and I say for right now, because all of this, as I had
indicated earlier, will be put in recommendations, will be coming out to
you so that we can react together. Many times it looks different when it
is in black and white.

I\'m sorry.

DR. HINGSON: Yes. I have a comment that really is just a nuance on what
you just said, but I think it is quite important. You used the term that
the Governors should be held to the same standards as the schools.

I think that there need to be clear standards and that Governors need to
be held to the standards for the Governors, that the schools need to be
held to standards for the schools, and one of the things we haven\'t
discussed yet, but I think we should, is do we want to have different
standards for different types of schools and school systems.

So, for example, should we be expecting the same kinds of changes and
performances and standards from rural schools where there are small
numbers of students as we do from large urban school systems?

I think, to me, the answer is probably we need to set a different set of
standards, but the important thing is that they are clear from the
outset, so that people know what performance they have to achieve in
order to receive their funding.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Good point. Maybe for the same, as we started, and I mean
this sincerely because the words we put in will be very important, to
say clear standards, and that leaves the door open to come back and then
insert definitions later. Good point.

The last two questions that are relative to the State Grants Program on
page 3: Could state and local flexibility be balanced with additional
core requirements that would encourage LEAs to address specific issues?

Quite frankly, we have talked about \-- I\'m asking you \-- have talked
about quite a few of those, and it gets over into what we have discussed
to some length with varying levels of partnerships. Anything else on
that?

The last: How can the tension between the principles of effectiveness
provisions that require that funds be spent on research based activities
and a broad list of authorized activities, many of which lack a strong
research base, be resolved?

For right now, we have a blank on the right of that one.

DR. KELLAM: Yes, and that is a \-- It is a fundamental conundrum in the
prevention science field. There are many studies now and a whole field
of prevention science and randomized trials and partnerships with school
districts and so forth.

The real problem the prevention field faces is how do you replicate and
disseminate programs effectively across school districts and
communities? It is an area of study, but it underlines the vital
importance of understanding how research groups that develop programs
and test them in exquisite, rigorous trials and the like \-- how do they
relate to school districts to move them out?

In Baltimore, for example, a current trial moving from 12 schools to 113
\-- how do you do it in another school district altogether separate?

Those problems require research and school district and community
partnerships of a far more extensive sort than we have had, in addition
to which there really is not a funding institution that brings NIDA and
the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention into one place.

There are partnerships beginning to form, but we don\'t have the
institutional structure at the Federal level for funding that kind of
rollout, and to expect, for example, a school district to implement an
effective program like Gil Botvin\'s, for example, you know, social
skills training and the like, in middle school. That program, to be done
effectively, would require an ongoing partnership at this point with the
researchers, and we just don\'t know how to do that extensively.

We have programs like David Olds\' program in prenatal care, the home
visitation and so forth. Those programs also require fidelity.

So we have to recognize here that we need some structuring of research
funding that is tired to policy and program in a way that we have not
done before. In fact, the bug in that ointment is that most of us were
trained by NIH or Department of Ed. research money, and those
institutions are not in this business.

The Federal government has tried periodically with ADAMHA and the like
and SAMHSA, but generally speaking it is the researchers who have shied
away from getting too close. So there has been this continuing struggle
over the separation of the research groups from the public institutions.

I think we need to come down strong that this partnership is vitally
important, that we need to have ongoing ways of monitoring fidelity and,
not only monitoring but also mentoring, to maintain at multiple levels
of a school district a teacher\'s confidence in classroom behavior
management, to use our own experience. At the same time the principal is
buying in, and the school district is buying it at multiple levels, and
the school board understands.

That is really a major for us here that we are going to have to deal
with across the board, certainly in the programs that we are talking
about now. There is a frontier that we all share, and that\'s it. If it
works, what the hell do you do?

MR. HERRMANN: In terms of the specific questionnaire thing that we do,
and I think it is a simple answer, is to say that the principles of
effectiveness trumps the list of authorized activities. You know, they
are on the authorized list, but above and beyond that, you have to
demonstrate that they address the principles of effectiveness.

So I think that is kind of the short answer to that particular issue.

MS. KELLAM: I buy that. I think that is a fundamental first step.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Susan?

DR. KEYS: I have one question, and that is how we are defining safe. I
just want to make sure that we are all clear that that is the definition
we want.

The definition of safe for purposes of the grant program should be
interpersonal safety, and that, to me, suggests my safety and my
interactions with others. There is also personal safety that isn\'t
necessarily interpersonal, and there is safety in terms of the
environment. There is safety in terms of my own decision making about my
use or not use of substances, as well as my physical safety, as well as
being safe in my interactions with others.

So I don\'t know. We had discussed that previously, and I just want to
make sure we are not looking at safety too narrowly.

CHAIRMAN LONG: That\'s a good point. If we could stay to that point,
other comments relative to Susan\'s comments? I think you are right on
the button. You are exactly right.

MS. JACKSON: David, I was just going to say she is on page 2, and I
guess it is the third bullet down. So we are just talking about
expanding that third bullet. Is that correct, Susan?

DR. KEYS: Well, I just want to make sure, if we are going to define
safety \-- I just wanted to make sure that that is how we wanted to
define it. I\'m not sure we want to narrow the scope of the program in
that way. I would suggest that we define it as personal and
interpersonal safety.

MS. PRICE: It is interesting, because when we had the White House
Conference on School Safety after the three shootings, obviously, we
planned that conference in six or seven days, which is an expedited
process, to say the least. But over and over again, the term that came
out as we were developing the conference and in the conference were
that, in order for students to learn, they need to be safe, secure and
healthy.

So that can address the drugs, alcohol issue and the healthy as well as
\-- you know, healthy to come to school, but safe and secure seemed
similar. But when you really thought through the two ones, it was sort
of interpersonal and personal or interpersonal and \-- what was the term
here? It\'s personal safety.

So it is the environment as well as the child feeling that, you know, I
can go to school and feel safe, as well as the environment being safe. I
thought that that encompassed \-- That really grasped it.

MR. ELLIS: I would just throw out the terms that we like to use once
again. I talked briefly about this when we did the site visit, was the
terms safe, having to do with unintentional harm issues, security having
to do with intentional harm issues.

That, for us, works well. So when we talk about it in this perspective,
we would be talking about safe, secure and drug free schools.

MS. TAFT: If you did it that way, then you could legitimately be
including some school climate issues.

MS. PRICE: Absolutely.

MS. TAFT: Like bullying and harassments and stuff.

MS. PRICE: Climate would be \-- Secure would really encompass some of
those. They are broad terms, and we are not measuring on those specific
terms, but the element \-- you get down to the elements of \-- that
provide that. So you know, bullying, if a school has a bullying issue,
and then as you address those bullying issues, those are measurable
things that you do.

DR. WECHSLER: I\'m just getting a little confused. Are we talking about
only intentional acts or violence, whether inflicted by others or
self-inflicted, or are we also talking about safety which would include
things like making sure the school playground does not cause harm?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Let\'s, before we move on, just stay right to that point.
That is legitimate.

MS. PRICE: Well, just talking from practical of what we deal with, we do
not do anything with the structure of the school, like buildings,
buildings and facilities. That is a total state and local issue. So
playgrounds are total state issues.

Now EPA and some other agency may have some elements in which they
address that, but our office, Department of Education, doesn\'t mandate
anything about playgrounds. But when you said self-imposed, one of the
issues that we have come face to face with in dealing particularly \--
and you are all familiar the SERV grant, those grant dollars that we get
out after.

There have been some school communities that have rashes of suicides,
and I mean one student came out of the front door as school was coming
out, one of the most popular students in school, and killed himself in
front of the students coming out of school. Had a huge impact on the
school.

So there are some destructive behavior for the individuals that affect
the schools, and we address those issues.

MR.ELLIS: If I can just maybe push back just a tad, Deborah, maybe you
guys don\'t know you do, but you actually do end up dealing with issues
in terms of building and the safety in terms of the way I think of it,
in terms of unintentional harm issues.

For instance, in the crisis management plans that we require, the
Department of Ed. requires, you know, a component of that is \-- for
instance, give the example of weather safety, tornado drills, fire
drills, fire prevention, chemical hygiene.

All those kinds of things are unintentional harm issues that are very
important for a school in the sense that they do provide a safe
environment. Again, for us, it just makes sense for us to divide those
into those two terms. It just makes it very clear when we talk about it.
It is easy to explain. It is easy, I think, for audiences to understand.

So we have safe, secure, drug free schools, and then we have the
emergency management component piece.

DR. HINGSON: I wanted to come back to the question about the tension
between principles of effectiveness and requiring funds be spent on
research based activities.

It strikes me that, of course, it is unrealistic to expect every school
district to be conducting research that is going to identify what are
new evidence based activities that can make a difference. I think that
there are, and we have discussed this already \-- There are minimal
standards of data collection that we feel all school systems should \--
that all communities and all schools should have to collect certain
types of data that meet a certain standard in their collection. But I
think that what I would not like to see lost in this discussion is how
do we create an environment where new ideas that go above and beyond the
already evidence based program list can get identified and piloted and
tested and worked through.

It may be that what we need to do is to think about establishing some
sort of ongoing framework or committee between the different agencies
that fund this type of research \-- I know that NIDA does some, that
NIAAA does some, CDC does some, that NIMH does some \-- so that schools
and people who are actually in the schools can have some opportunity to
put forward ideas that the scientists can then help to test.

A lot of times the discussion seems to come from, you know, if we could
only teach the people in the school systems what the scientists know.
Well, it is actually the other way around, and a lot of the \-- I have
sat on studies or review groups for many years, and a lot of the
investigators really don\'t come from the education community and don\'t
have firsthand \-- how shall I put it? \-- Have not been in the
trenches.

So their ideas have a certain kind of intellectual cache to them
sometimes, but aren\'t really grounded in what needs to be done on a
day-to-day basis. I think we need to develop a better way of creating
this collaboration.

Related to this \-- and I don\'t know exactly how to describe it, but
when our institute went through an exercise looking at college drinking
problems and what could be done about it, and we set of tiers of
evidence, and we got good, solid evidence that these types of programs
can make a difference with college students.

Then there was another set that these kinds of programs work in the
general population at the college age, but we don\'t know if they work
necessarily with college students, and we got some things that are
promising. Then we had some things that we said, and these things
clearly don\'t work.

Then what happened \-- this was back in 2002 \-- is I think there has
been a tremendous increase in activity around preventing college
drinking problems, but a phenomenal amount of it has to do with
supporting programs where there is no evidence whatsoever that they make
any difference, and a lot of times the things where there is some
evidence get left by the wayside.

So I think that there are some issues here that we need to maybe focus
more attention on. I don\'t know that I\'ve got the solution for it, but
I do think developing some sort of ongoing, established working group
between the people who actually are in the field, educators in the field
so that their ideas can be offered up and be developed into rigorously
designed research projects is something that, I think, would be
worthwhile.

It doesn\'t have to be a big expense, but I think a mechanism needs to
be put into place to allow that to happen.

DR. JONES: I like that suggestion very well. I think that ties in very
nicely with what Shep is saying and others around the table have said,
to a solid recommendation of that working group to really look at some
of these issues to tie the research to what folks are actually doing.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Which actually could be an outgrowth of what we are
talking here about the varying levels, multiplicity of levels. Howell?

DR. WECHSLER: I just want to ask Susan if she got her question answered
about the definition of safe. I am more confused than ever.

DR. KEYS: We have had different answers, and I don\'t know if we want to
go with safe, secure and healthy, if that is agreeable. I am not quite
sure what. It appears that interpersonal safety is not \-- does not
include a sufficient amount of information.

CHAIRMAN LONG: If we say self-secure and healthy, is there any \-- I\'m
just trying to set it, because I am hearing that three or four times.
Let\'s just \-- then safe, secure and healthy.

DR. WECHSLER: That is a nice slogan. It doesn\'t answer anything.
Healthy \-- are we talking about physical activity with these dollars? I
mean, what does that mean?

DR. KEYS: Safe and secure schools and healthy students?

DR. WECHSLER: No, I think we have to say what does safe mean.

DR. KEYS: Yes.

DR. WECHSLER: You were on the right track. You asked about is it just
\-- No, clearly, I don\'t think we think it is just interpersonal. It
also involves self-inflicted violence. But then the issue is broader.
Safety means a lot more than just violence prevention, whether it is
interpersonal or self-inflicted. So that whole gamut of things that are
safety or hazards to the safety of our children in schools that are not
intentionally inflicted. Do these dollars address that or not?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Let\'s start then \-- Thanks for the vision again \--
that we get some bullets down so we can start to see and hear the
different parts of what you feel should go into the definition.

DR. WECHSLER: Yes. I mean, I don\'t know if we are going to be able to
answer that question, and I am wondering if the same kind of proposal
that was made before of a working group to talk about how do you
actually define it. Yes, I know we have limited time, but again that is
a very difficult issue to grapple with.

I know that there are 30 to 40 years of research in the area of safety
in the behavioral sciences. That is also true in the developmental
literature, but individuals define that differently. Depending upon how
you define it, it is going to dictate how you study and evaluate it.

DR. HINGSON: This may be muddying the waters or complicating it, but it
strikes me that, whatever definition of safety we finally accept, that
it shouldn\'t apply only to the school, that if young people are \--
Maybe there is a low likelihood of violence or problem inside the school
itself, but if they are scared going home from school or if they are
scared when they get home and experience trauma at both of those levels,
it can be just every bit as damaging to their performance in school as
problems inside the school walls themselves.

So I would hope that we would take a broader definition, and I think
that that would be in keeping with the notion of needing collaboration
across different agencies at the local, state and Federal level.

This is a bigger problem than just within the schools, and if we very
narrowly define what safety is as just being inside school property, I
think that we will have missed the boat.

DR. KEYS: I characterize it as personal and interpersonal safety and
that interventions for this grant program can be interventions that are
targeted toward environments, to create a safe environment that leads to
personal or interpersonal safety, or you could also have interventions
that target the self so that you are developing healthy persons. So that
is \-- If that helps at all.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Sitting here listening, I must tell you, if I asked Tommy
Ledbetter what his definition of safety was so he would get it down a
high school level, I bet he could tell me. I think that, as long as we
keep it broad so that we can pull as many things into it as possible to
serve as many children as we can, we will serve all of us.

I hear \-- Everyone makes a very valid point, but if we get too much
specificity in here, I just worry that we are going to get buried in it,
and I was thinking \-- I must say again, I was thinking of Tommy sitting
here as a high school principal out there with what safety is.

It is important to what we are talking about and the conversation that
you are having, because that is what we are talking about as one of the
nexus for receiving money for the state grant.

MR. LEDBETTER: One of the problems I have with safety is how do we
measure it, because the big problem right now with this whole program is
how do you measure the outcomes? That is why we are here. That is why
this committee is here, basically, is because of the evaluations that
the program has had and so forth.

Whatever the definition is of safety, if we can\'t measure that, all we
have done is muddied the waters worse, because there will always be
someone who will be saying that the schools are not safe, unless there
is some way of measuring or outcome here.

We can call a school safe, but that doesn\'t necessarily mean it is
safe. We have to be able to prove, one way or the other, that the school
is safe to justify the money that we are talking about spending.

I go back to the funding. We want more money. To get more money, we are
going to have to justify the program. So I guess I am confused as to how
we have a big, broad definition of safe and have measurable objectives
there as how we can report that the schools are safe.

DR. KELLAM: Yes. Let me try to answer that, because it comes back to
Russell\'s point, and I guess a number of us have been saying that we
need to get an ongoing partnership between researchers and program
leaders and policy.

There is absolutely no problem in how to measure it, Tommy. There are
two ways of measuring it. Both require a map and sampling. But you ask
kids how they feel about school climate, and that includes issues like
we are talking about, and you do event recording as to where things are
happening and what kind of things are happening, and both are countable.

I was just reading in US News and World Report this morning. There is a
poll that ABC and BBC have done together with a bunch of other people on
safety in Iraq. In fact, 2,200 people responded. You can do measurement
there or calculations, and you can find out what people think is the
likelihood of them being safe over the next period of time.

In a school climate, we have discussed how that can be an informing
piece of information for school building administrators as well as the
community and the different levels that need to know.

So I think that the research issues are easily doable. The question is
how to use the research and integrate it into program and policy. I
believe we have really done a damn good job, actually, of bringing these
altogether in one place.

The issues you guys are discussing are fundamentally important, but I
think they are solvable.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I don\'t want to \-- I\'m sorry.

MS. PRICE: I was going to say, I do think the definition that Susan
offered was quite good, and I do think \-- Following up on what Shep
said, I do think some of those issues of safety are, probably not as
much in the State Grants Program but clearly in discretionary grant
program, targeted at specific subject matters that, therefore then, that
subject matter and its relationship to safety.

I just think that that was quite good, if you want to maybe repeat it.

DR. KEYS: I think I just took your Safe, Secure and Healthy and said, if
we are looking at safety, if we wanted to think of it as personal and
interpersonal, but the safe and secure aspect would be looking at
creating an environment that is safe and secure, and the
personal/interpersonal what happens within the person would be the
healthy aspect where you have your programs to develop decision making
skills and interpersonal skills and communication skills, so that you
would have both the environmental piece as well as the
personal/interpersonal piece, both pieces important to safety.

CHAIRMAN LONG: If we say that that is the acceptable definition, if
there could be response to that. This is a critical \-- and Howell was
bringing it back in, which is important, because this is kind of, as I
said earlier, a nexus or a little hook point here for this whole
program. So is that an acceptable definition? Okay. I saw a lot of heads
nodding there.

As we close on the questions, then if we go back to that page 1, I think
we can wrap this up. If I could repeat what we had mentioned earlier \--
and, Bill, this is going to be on you again. But after hearing all this
information and then answering the questions, that discussion, putting
it back with \-- or in conjunction with the discussion we have had on
the bulleted points, which was a synthesis of the first hour and a half,
if we could just quickly \--

I just saw one or two up there that \-- I mean with the data driven, and
we have heard a lot of information on that, the dollars. And Howell and
I were talking earlier. It is always that it means more money, but I
think we have to say that, and he was right. I think we have to say
that, and shame on those that are making some of those decisions.

I think we have to be strong about some of that language. The access
thresholds \-- again, several people mentioned at least three or four
different access. For example, one that I remember was that they must
take the survey or the money won\'t flow anyway.

The scope, we\'ve talked about, and the community partnerships and the
interaction of agencies, both in state and Federal, that multiplicity,
that level, multiple level we\'ve talked about. But I am still not sure
that we have answered or come to any kind of thought on the delivery
system. Is it universal or not?

The other things, I was starting to hear some of this. Haven\'t heard
that. I\'m just trying to draw it together, and I\'m seeing people go
like that. There isn\'t a lot of consensus yet on \-- Well, maybe there
is, and we just haven\'t measured it.

DR. KEYS: I think I am hearing consensus that people want dollars to
flow to local communities directly. Is that a consensus point?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Just to local communities directly or everyone gets some?

DR. KEYS: Well, I don\'t know. I\'m not getting any nods that they want
it to flow to local communities.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Because I don\'t think there is consensus on that.

DR. KEYS: I think I get a lot of \-- if I said, oh, so we want it flow
to states? We want money to flow to local communities. We want money to
go to all communities. We want money to go to some communities on a
competitive basis. I mean, those are the things we have discussed. Do we
have any agreement on any of those?

CHAIRMAN LONG: That\'s why I was raising the question. I am not sure \--
Just in listening to all the different conversations, I am not sure that
we do have. If I just ask the question, should money flow to everyone,
as it is now, or should there be a competition or should there be a
base? But I\'m not sure we have a consensus on that.

MS. PRICE: I think a couple of things, and I\'m just throwing them out.
One, you know, how much money \-- One question I would have is how much
money \-- You know, what\'s the minimum number of dollars we would have
to have to have an adequate of money go to every LEA? What would that
look like? Realistically, while the Hill may fund us at something
greater than \$100 million, but are they going to fund us at the level
that we would want? So that is a question, but let me ask another
question.

If we were to say send the dollars to the states and have the state run
\-- have a minimum and a maximum, have the states run internally and
provide funds for them to be able to run the state activities to do it,
but a discretionary grant program to provide, based on need, those
communities that have need, and that the \-- you know, and provide a
significant number of dollars for them to implement a program, and then
have some kind of system so that the same school districts over and over
and over don\'t get the same dollars because they have good grant
writers, but that they get distributed down community-wide, so that you
can give a greater dollar for impact in a community to address a need.

I have a very crass image in my head of sometimes the State Grants
Program, and I realize it is kind of a crass image. But you know, we
have all the homeless people here in D.C., and you pass them. You walk
down the same streets all the time, and you actually end up kind of
getting semi-familiar with them.

Sometimes I feel like our State Grants Program is the equivalent of
giving everybody you pass on the street who is homeless a dollar, and
you know, I mean, did it change their life? No. If I would have given
them my month\'s salary, maybe.

That is my own little thing of how I \-- I don\'t think there is any
issue about the value of every child, but I will say, in general,
Federal dollars are meant for disadvantaged students. That is why we
have Title I programs. We have No Child Left Behind, holding them
accountable. We are supplementary dollars to the state and local.

So it\'s just a thought that maybe we want those dollars to be spread in
a larger pot, maybe a discretionary grant, if we don\'t have enough
dollars to give a significant amount of money to every LEA.

MS. TAFT: If what I hear you saying is what I think I hear you say, then
I think you\'ve got a good outline, that the Feds would give the money
to the SEAs who would in turn give it to the LEAs under a formula that
every LEA would get a base amount so they could do their data
collection, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Then they could add onto that
base amount.

MS. PRICE: Either/or, not both.

MS. TAFT: Within a range, and it seems to me that the other money
besides the state grants portion of the Safe and Drug Free Schools Money
that you have been talking about\--

MS. PRICE: The discretionary programs.

MS. TAFT: \-- the discretionary programs, could be used to target or to
enhance those districts that have special needs, which is basically the
way it is done now.

MS. PRICE: Basically, the way it is done now, but what I would \-- If
you had a minimum and a maximum and you spread the dollars out to every
LEA, I think you are still going to end up with the minimum being pretty
low and the maximum being brought down, and those very large school
districts who have the large numbers actually have a lot of need.

So the dollars for the program would have to be bumped up quite, quite
significantly. I don\'t know that you are going to get that from
Congress.

MS. TAFT: Well, I don\'t know either, but if you don\'t ask, you don\'t
get.

MS. PRICE: Well, but I think what would be an alternative is in the
State Grants Program, totally separate from the discretionary grant and
the national program, that those dollars go to the LEA and the LEA run
grant competition for the \--

MS. TAFT: You mean the SEA.

MS. PRICE: I mean the SEA. What did I say? Oh, yes, I\'m sorry. The SEA
has a discretionary grant program targeted on need and provides those
\-- Instead of dollars being given by formula, they give dollars by
their own state discretionary grant program targeted at need, addressing
\-- and those needs can be a variety, you know, like drugs, alcohol.

MS. TAFT: Okay. So I am a small LEA. I don\'t have much money. I don\'t
have any big groups in my community that can help me out. I don\'t write
a good grant proposal, because I don\'t have any data, and so I don\'t
get any funding that first year. But then the next year I am supposed to
reapply again, and I still have the same situations, because I don\'t
have any money to do any data. How am I ever going to get in the system?

MS. PRICE: Well \--

MS. TAFT: How am I ever going to get over that first threshold that you
have set so high I can\'t meet to get into the system?

MS. PRICE: Well, you know, one is the design of the state\'s program.
The other is, you know, you would \-- I mean, I\'m just off the cuff
saying all this, and you would have to think it through. I mean, do you
want to have a limit where an LEA can only receive grant dollars for two
years and then they have to develop a sustaining program, and they
develop these programs. They implement something. Their need \-- You
know, while they are receiving these state \-- the Federal funneled
through the state dollars, they are developing partnerships so that at
the end of their grant when these dollars are ending, they have
developed a sustainable program, and then those dollars are available to
the other LEAs.

So they are excluded from the grant competition, the ones who have
received grant dollars, and more \--

MS. TAFT: That all sounds very nice, but if you look at the Drug Free
Communities Act, which was designed to be that very same way, it has not
worked out that way. Once people get money, they will do everything in
their power to keep that money.

MS. PRICE: That is an entitlement, and I don\'t know that we wouldn't
encourage entitlement.

MS. TAFT: That is why I would go for a base plus, and if you want to
make it so that to get the base, you need to do X, Y and Z, that\'s
fine. But you got to have that base in there.

MR. LEDBETTER: How about that 20 percent? How about that 20 percent of
the Governor\'s money being the base?

MS. TAFT: It could be. You could do it any way you want. You could
combine those two, but you need some kind of a base so that everyone can
have the opportunity to participate in the expansion.

MR. ELLIS: I think that perhaps part of the issue that we are kind of
talking about is that the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, its
strength and its weakness is the gamut of issues that it seeks to
address in terms of the legislation.

Perhaps the thought \-- I like the way Debbie described her dilemmas in
terms of funding on the personal level, and I hear what Hope is saying,
too. Perhaps we could craft some language to take kind of the hard line
approach in terms of getting the most bang for your buck, if this
funding level is what is received, you know, and what would it look
like.

This is what we would be forced to do. We would be forced to cut back on
the wide gamut of programs and seek the most impact for the very few
dollars that Congress is going to give us. Then also to suggest that,
with X number of dollars funding, here\'s the kind of things that we
could do. We could a base program for all LEAs for them to do at least
data collection in order to identify \-- do a kind of a needs
assessment, and then do other discretionary.

So give them some options. So if you give us \$100 million, this is what
you are getting. Every LEA in the country is not going to get money,
that we are going to set up the state grants and require them to do \--
you know, put some requirements on it and get your most bang for your
very few bucks, versus, you know, hey, if you give us this much, look
what more we can do, something along those lines.

DR. KELLAM: I guess I am \-- I have been around for a while. It reminds
me very much of the debate that went on maybe 30 years ago. Edith Green
came up with a community action program many years ago, and it was a
direct funding program to local communities.

It drove Richard J. Daley, for whom I worked at the time as well as
being at the University of Chicago, up a tree. He couldn\'t stand it,
because in fact politically it was suicide for patronage in the city of
Chicago, among other things. It created a huge, in fact, mess by direct
funding local communities.

On the other hand, it was a great idea. But politically, it was
unworkable, given the Federal structure of the government that we live
with. In some sense, in other words, we are trying to promote a
partnership between the Feds, the state, the cities and local school
buildings and local school interests, sometimes local school districts
within cities.

The question is how do you put the money in such a place that it
enhances the likelihood that they will all, in fact, be working together
in the ways that we want them to work together?

We have to be extremely careful that this is not a solution we come up
that is hard and fast, but the basic principles we come up with are
those that could be striven for and part of the negotiation that would
go on when one considers how do you legislate across these different
levels, which at times are politically at odds with each other:
Republican Governor in a state or a city Democratic Mayor and the like
who use the school districts as a fighting mechanism.

So we are talking about the principle, and the principle is how do we
put the money where it will enhance them working together in partnership
around programs which have accountability on one hand, community
support, strong participation, school building understanding what goes
on, can\'t compete with reading when you got programs coming in, and
such things as that.

So we need to enunciate the basic principle of what we think the money
should be doing. It should be stimulating money. It should make
partnerships happen. It should develop connections to accountability,
not necessarily buying whole new information systems but building on the
ones that exist and integrating them.

So we should be interested in the guidelines for what we are aiming for.
I think that the political negotiation of how much goes to the state or
how much to the locals really is a negotiating issue that we need to, in
fact, understand that this is not our function to solve a political
issue, but rather to point up the guidelines of what they should
negotiate to achieve.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Howell?

DR. WECHSLER: It is just not enough money to give to every school
district. Now whether we continue to give every school district or not,
there is a key component that I don\'t think has been articulated. It
was articulated in the President\'s budget, but hasn\'t been so much
today.

That is this program desperately needs a radically strengthened program
at the state level. The state education agency needs to be able to
retain a greater proportion of the resources than it has been getting to
date so that it can do data collection, evaluation, and provide a much
more profound level of technical assistance.

Hope raises the question of how do these districts that haven\'t been
able to break into the system get into it. Well, that should be the
responsibility of the state education agency program, to go out there
and work the huskings and provide the technical assistance, that they
should be able to identify schools that are high \-- districts that are
at high need but are not competing well, and provide the hands-on
technical assistance to get them into the system.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Belinda?

DR. SIMS: Yes. I agree. I just wanted to say that I would not \-- I
don\'t think we should even entertain the \$100 million, you know, what
we might get, what the program might look like with that; because we all
know that is just very insufficient.

The evidence that we do have is what can be done with the funding that
was used last year. You know, the panels all presented their programs
based on the \$300 million model, and our recommendations about how the
program could be improved should be based on that.

It may come out that it is somewhere in between \$100 million and \$300
million when the authorization actually happens. But I think we can only
make recommendations on restructuring the program, I think, based on
what we\'ve seen in terms of how the program can really function at that
level.

If it is \$100 million, I think that will just be so radically different
that it would almost be conjecture to say, you know, how the programs
might function.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Susan and Shep.

DR. KEYS: I would like to concur with what Howell said, and I would like
to ask that we ask for a show of hands to see if we have consensus on
that recommendation, because I think it is an important one.

CHAIRMAN LONG: If Howell would repeat it. I\'m seeing some blurriness
here.

DR. WECHSLER: The point was that a much larger proportion of resources
should be retained at the state education agency level so that they can
play a much stronger leadership role in terms of data collection,
evaluation, performance measurement, holding grantees accountable, and
providing a very profoundly increased level of technical assistance.

DR. KELLAM: Can I \--

CHAIRMAN LONG: I\'m sorry. Tommy was asking a question relative to the
definition or the point that Howell was just making. Would you repeat
that? I don\'t think the mike was on.

MR. LEDBETTER: The question was: What percent do the states now have at
their discretion to do those things, and the answer was only five
percent. So I think it was important that we know what that is before we
start increasing it, so we can make some determination as to what it
needs to be.

DR. KELLAM: Okay. Here is my problem. I don\'t have any problem with the
idea that the state is in a position to furnish certain kinds of
oversight, planning, policy, helping local communities and the like. But
I also work at the other end of this funnel.

Typically, we get our funding from NIH, on one hand, and local community
support is critical to doing the kind of work we do. I think across the
nation the number of school districts, particularly in large
metropolitan areas, that are in court, fighting with states over
funding, is not small.

States and local communities are often at odds over the amount of
resources spent at the local level, particularly when there are
political issues involved. So we have to be extremely careful that, in
fact, our money is being spent in the direction of accountability that
we have discussed and not just that the states take the lead in the
program.

I think, if we specify that they would allocate the funding and the
programming in line with the data on need, expressed needs, and honor
the express needs and indeed are rewarded for working for partnerships
between the states and the local LEAs, that we are in the okay position.
But we have to be aware that it is very likely this will be a
politicized process.

That is okay, as long as there are guidelines and we know what the end
goals are, and if states don\'t perform, they get less money, if any.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I think that is a very point and, as you were speaking,
heads were nodding. We understand that, but I think it is a point well
taken.

Now to get back to the delivery system question that Howell had brought
up and defined and then re-articulated, and to Susan's point, hands up,
how many are comfortable with that as the recommendation regarding the
delivery system? Could I see a show of hands. I\'m sorry. I did not mean
the. I mean one of. I apologize. A recommendation. What, Howell just \--
Seth just went, what? You were just counted right there, sir. Okay.

What we were just talking about relative to Howell\'s definition and
suggestion with the delivery system, when I asked the question about
universal. So that will be \-- and I apologize. I said \"the.\" I mean
\"a\" recommendation.

DR. KELLAM: I thought I was modifying and adding to it.

CHAIRMAN LONG: No. That\'s why I was saying you were clarifying it,
because I didn\'t want to ask you to repeat that.

DR. HINGSON: Maybe it would be helpful just to have it articulated one
more time before we take a vote, just so everybody is absolutely sure
what they are voting on.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Howell? This is a test.

DR. WECHSLER: That a substantially larger proportion of resources should
be reserved for the state education agency to provide data collection,
evaluation, and a much more profound level of technical assistance
across the state, and that is going to be really critical to making sure
that this program has the impact that it can have.

MS. KELLAM: Now I made a notation to that, and I would like to make sure
that is part of the vote.

The modification is \-- It\'s an elaboration, really. Under the
condition that the state be held accountable for the development of
partnerships, allocation of resources in accord with need, and that the
negotiations include \-- the work include the local LEAs in the process
of designing and planning programs.

DR. HINGSON: If I could only add one other word in there: In accordance
with need and performance.

DR. KELLAM: Yes, absolutely.

MR. HERRMANN: This is really to support, I think, the U.S. Department of
Ed., the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program. I think one of the things
that we have not talked about is the fact that under NCLB, you\'ve got
these consolidated applications, and you\'ve got flexibility provisions
and all sorts of other things that actually end up sort of trumping what
is determined at the program level.

I think one of the things that really needs to be looked at is pulling
the Title IV portion, the State Grants Program, out of that consolidated
application, because I am afraid what ends up happening a lot of times
is the small amount of money that goes to the Title IV program gets lost
in the larger negotiations between the state and Federal government.

So I think it would be good to pull the Title IV piece out of that
consolidated application that the state makes to the Feds.

MS. PRICE: I think that is an appropriate recommendation. We will get a
little pushback, because it then requires more work on the state part in
applying for the funds.

MS. TAFT: People at our state level would really like that.

DR. JONES: I like this recommendation, and support it. But I think it is
going to be so important that the state really understands and
appreciates the nuances within this recommendation, the accountability
piece, the partnershipping, and etcetera. So I don\'t know if there are
going to be a formula spelled out for these folks. But again, just so
they understand and appreciate what this recommendation is all about.

CHAIRMAN LONG: If I can pull this together now, with Howell\'s
definition, Shep's amendment, Ralph\'s word which I think is important,
and Mike, with your addendum. I\'m just trying to put them all in
sequence.

With that, how many would be in favor? Opposed? Okay, thank you very
much.

Then I will ask this. Bill, I will ask this question of you. Again now,
that was the one that we pulled out. With all of this discussion, with
the answering of the questions, with the revisiting on the bullets that
were put up there after the first hour and a half discussion, do you now
have enough from the committee to pull together recommendations in
preparation for our conference call next month? Okay. Yes?

MS. JACKSON: I just wanted to add to what Russell was stating. Again, I
think something needs to be added along with the increase in funding
that would go to the SEA with regard to what our expectations are for
the SEA, leveling the playing field, ensuring that we are addressing the
issues of LEAs that typically have not had access to come to the table
and participate, them going out and seeking those LEAs, again taking a
look across individual states and their rural communities, the urban
areas and the suburban areas, and definitely ensuring that there are
established guidelines for each of those entities so that funding is
provided on a needs basis, but also taking a look at those particular
areas; because again, some of our areas that are least addressed, and as
we look at the overarching mission of No Child Left Behind, I am fearful
that we will have not only children but cultures and generations
continued to be left behind.

So definitely spelling the criteria out and what our expectations and
hopes are of the SEA, I think, is important.

CHAIRMAN LONG: And that would be parallel with and correlate with other
aspects of No Child Left Behind, such as the teacher quality aspect as
it relates to remote areas and underfunded. So then there would be that
thread of consistency.

MR. LEDBETTER: The motion was pretty open-ended when it comes to an
amount, talking about increasing it. Do you think we need to be a little
more specific than that? Presently, it is five percent, because we are
talking about reallocation of funds now.

So I don\'t think we need to make a recommendation that is so open-ended
that one state interprets that to be three times that five percent, and
another state interprets that to be five times that five percent. I
think we are going to have to be a little more specific than that.

DR. HINGSON: I would like to propose that we take a percentage and say
it could be up to, but the states are going to have to apply to get
that, so that we can see that there is really a program that they\'ve
got in mind, so that we are not just sort of doling it out X percent to
every state.

MR. LEDBETTER: Some of you that are working at the state level, what
will it take?

MR. HERRMANN: Well, obviously, part of it depends on how hard Hal drops
the hammer on the \-- what was it? \-- profoundly enhanced or something
like that.

I would think at least two and a half to three times what we are
receiving now. So 10, 15 percent, I think, in order to provide \-- I
think part of what you are talking about is we are talking about a lot
of districts that aren\'t going to be receiving anything.

We have not really addressed that question yet, but I think the way the
scenario seems to be playing out is we are going to have a significant
number of districts that don\'t receive anything. So I think the burden
of helping LEAs identify need, develop plans, those sorts of things, are
going to fall on the SEA.

DR. WECHSLER: I think it is almost premature. I think we need to decide,
first of all, what our vision is for the LEAs. We have, I think, two
extreme models, neither of which, I think, is going to get a consensus
here.

As I understand the current proposal in the President\'s budget, it is
basically putting all of the dollars in the SEAs. Now they may then do
grants, but that is really at their discretion. So that is 100 percent.

I think, based on the membership of this panel, we are not going to get
a consensus in favor of that. At the other extreme, I heard some members
of the panel suggest this business of everyone has \-- every district
has a base. I don\'t think we will get a consensus on that either.

So it\'s got to be somewhere in between. I don\'t know that we get a
percentage that goes to the state until we decide what we want the
mechanism to be for funding the districts.

MR. LEDBETTER: Howell, that is where I was going with my question. You
know, if we\'ve got 20 percent set aside for the Governor, and then we
take another 10-15 percent off the top, that makes less for the local
schools, and we were more or less split on do we do it all through a
state grants program to the LEAs or do we leave some money to everyone.

That brings me back to the question I brought up about the Governor\'s
money a while ago, about if we are going to take up to 15 percent of the
money to go to the states, well, then can we still afford to give the
Governor 20 percent that is discretionary, because that profoundly
impacts the amount of money that will actually get to the LEAs?

MR. ELLIS: Personally, I am kind of hesitant to talk about specific
percentages. In my mind, what we are doing as a committee is making
broad and sometimes rather specific recommendations on program changes
to the Secretary.

My thought is that the Department would then take that \-- You know, I
think the language Howell had was significant increases to the state,
and they would take that and then decipher it, interpret it, negotiate,
and make some decisions about what the right percentage might be. The
same with the Governor.

I would kind of like to stay away from the percentages. I agree. We are
not going to get a consensus here, and I think, to a large extent, it
will come down to a political issue, as it probably should be.

DR. HINGSON: When we think about what proportion goes to the state and
what proportion goes to the Governor, we ought to think a bit about,
well, what can the Governor uniquely do.

It strikes me that the tasks that they can do better than state
education agencies is to convene these multiple groups from the health
department and the police department and concerned private citizens to
work with the education department, and they can also play a role in
improving the quality of data collection across these different spheres.

So it may be that we should be making some sort of recommendation that
there be a certain amount of money, that we don\'t necessarily change
the amount of money that is going to Governors\' offices, but that those
monies be spent on these types of activities that Governors can do
better, or that there be a pool that comes not just from Department of
Education legislation but legislation that pertains to these other
agencies \-- you know, the CDC money that goes to local health
department or SAMHSA that goes to single state agencies or DOT money
that goes to highway safety bureaus.

It is not a matter of trying to take money out of the Governor\'s hands,
but I think there is an issue of what proportion of this particular
education legislation should go to the governors. I think that we have
to recognize that, if we are expanding what is going to the state
education departments, that some of that money \-- we may want to not
give the governors a free ride on the 20 percent unless they are
changing, really, the nature of what it is that they are doing.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Are we far enough \-- I\'m going to ask you now. Are we
far enough along with what we have said and what you can glean from
this, Bill, so that we can have that ready for that conference call? And
again, we can \-- Think about what has happened here and how you have
gotten down to these, and you will be able to put these recommendations
together.

I will tell you in advance, I think you have done an excellent job of
pulling this down, down, down, down until we will start to get this list
of recommendations. Then you can react to it when we see it in black and
white and when we have the opportunity to be together on the conference
call.

With that \-- Think about those comments. Then with that, we will break
for lunch right now, and that is for 45 minutes. This was a
recommendation \-- a suggestion from both Shep and \-- I don\'t know how
you got in between Howell and Hope. They were dropping things off that
table. But a suggestion from both Shep and Russell that we will come
back right afterwards and do the school choice option, but that we just
handle the data piece right over lunch. Isn\'t that what you said?

We\'ll come back and do the choice piece, I\'m sure, and then get to the
data.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the record at 12:14 p.m.)

\- - -

A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N

Time: 1:02 p.m.

CHAIRMAN LONG: As we go into the second area, if we could follow the
process that we did toward the last few hours, and that was to answer
\-- Next we will be on unsafe school choice option, and if we could
first make sure that we have answered the questions and then, secondly,
to come up with the same process that we did before with some
recommendations.

So first \-- and this starts, by the way, in the middle of page 3. So in
the middle of page 3 starting with Unsafe School Choice Option, the
first question \--

MS. PRICE: I would just do USCO. You can do it however you like.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay, the USCO provision or provisions with a similar
purpose, ensuring that no child is required to attend an unsafe school,
adequately provide the authority, direction and clarity for schools to
identify it is persistently dangerous.

No, but then the rest of the answer. Then on these \-- and we will note
a difference with this particular general category, that there will be a
number of findings and recommendations from our discussion and from the
panels that we heard from.

So in regard to that first question, anything else to be added to that?
Remember, first we are going to go through to answer and then, secondly,
we are going to delve into the recommendations, even though there are
some recommendations within the individual sheets right now. Questions
relative to question 1, yes, Hope?

MS. TAFT: In that first bullet, do we need to be more specific in
suggesting other things than just violence in determining? I mean, I
have had some comments about bullying relationships and those kind of
things. So do those get automatically included or do we need to make a
little list?

CHAIRMAN LONG: I just heard Deb out of my right ear, and I think she is
right. The appropriate \"such as,\" and then give some examples to
broaden the topic.

MS. TAFT: Put bullying in that \"such as\" list. Yes.

MR. DUNCAN: Dr. Long, can I \-- It would help \-- If you want something
specifically in the report, though, it would be helpful to say that. For
instance, I put bullying in, because you said that. But if people want
other things, just say that.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Kim?

MS. DUDE: My recollection is that we also talked in terms of students\'
perception of safety. So I was going to bring it up later on when we
talk about data, but I think on the data we do collect, we need to find
out if students feel safe in school, and maybe \-- Well, I guess that is
all I\'ll say for now. Yes, I think the perception of safety was also
important.

CHAIRMAN LONG: We can do this simultaneously. Bullying, and then
secondly, perception of safety. Okay.

DR. KELLAM: Well, the problem we are having with our strategy today is
that we have recommendations for gathering data here, and there are two
issues with that. One is it is an extremely expensive proposition to
collect data, and we have to be careful not just to multiply the number
of data collection activities.

So ultimately, to prejudge where we are going, we are going to have to
integrate these data collection activities so that they are integrated
data systems that are time and staff efficient. And they are not now,
nor are they, of course, as we have said before repeatedly \-- nor are
they related sufficiently to policies and practices as accountability
either for state measuring needs or measuring outcomes.

So we have to be aware that, when we are talking about collecting these
measures, that ultimately we have to do something about that.

The other thing is that, as you all no doubt recall as much as I do,
there are huge problems with this data collection. If in fact, the
schools report what they are supposed to report, they get branded as
terrible places, you know, kicked out of the good guy club, and you end
up with, in fact, a counterincentive for reporting.

You remember that the amount of missing data and erroneous data was huge
and skewed in the direction of the worst places being reporting less. So
we talked about changing the name and the orientation of this program as
a result.

My recollection is, or at least maybe I am making this up, not only
changing the name but changing the thrust of it toward prevention and
enhancement as opposed to damning and pillory of all principals who
don\'t report data that would otherwise get them fired.

Anyway, those were some of the considerations, I think, that we need to
remind ourselves of. They are not somehow included in these findings and
recommendations. I think \-- The next page has them all?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes, question 3.

DR. KELLAM: Okay. Well, I guess the question is we\'ve still got these
bullets on page 3, and I don\'t see sufficient \-- I don\'t know how we
handle the fact. We called for a renaming, and I don\'t \-- Is that in
here?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes, that is question 3, bullet number 2.

DR. KELLAM: Page 3?

CHAIRMAN LONG: I\'m sorry. Question 3 on page 4: What changes to USCO in
bullet 2, change to terminology.

DR. KELLAM: Well, I am not \-- I guess what I am really saying is I am
not clear what we do with \-- The bullets don\'t seem to quite pull it
together in terms of the issues we were dealing with.

This is a program which, by and large, has the good news of protecting
families against sending their kids to a bad place, and maybe doing some
counseling with victimizers. But basically, it is a \-- I mean, in my
perspective it is a very misguided program.

That is, the whole program is misconceived in the sense that it aims
toward a very negative reporting, and it doesn\'t have anything that is
in it in the way of intervention or that moves schools in a positive or
kids\' experiences in a positive direction.

So \-- and you know, we struggled with that. So the question, I guess, I
am thinking that we need to take account of what goes wrong with this
program in terms of missing data, pejorative, not being curative, being
interested in giving parents rights which I believe we should protect
and, on the other hand, you know, a program which is not going to get us
out of the woods, nor is it connected to any of the other programs we
have talked about in terms of prevention.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Howell.

DR. WECHSLER: I think we had an incredibly strong consensus in this
area, and it would be nice to see it really reflected. What we have is a
list of recommendations, and they are all good, but I would like to see
a couple of findings right at the top.

The findings are \-- from what I remember of our consensus, are
absolutely no, and for two primary reasons. One, the extreme flexibility
given to states in defining their own measures has completely sabotaged
the direction and clarity of what a persistently dangerous school means;
and secondly, we just weren\'t satisfied with the current measures being
used, and a lot of these bullets have suggestions for alternatives.

I think it is really important just to state at the top that the answer
is no, and there are two fundamental reasons.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Thank you very much for that, Howell, and I think that is
right. In this whole area, it seemed to me we were quite clear with
almost a clear consensus, complete consensus. So let\'s stay with the
word that we start with, absolutely no, and then if we could take a
look.

I am going back to what was mentioned over this first section, and let
me ask you, Debbie, before I go down through these, is there sufficient
information? Whereas, with the others \-- in the first one, State
Grants, many of them were blank. Here, however, we have a preponderance
of \--

MS. PRICE: I do think there is a lot of information here to answer these
questions.

Following up from Howell\'s findings, one thing that we heard over and
over is that there is a disincentive for schools to report this
information, and the result of that is that those schools who do report,
who do take significant action to address this then, end up being
penalized because of it.

I think one point Fred made back then was that those schools that \-- I
think the example he used of stopping any kind of weapon coming into
school, they caught them. They kept them from being in school. It was
reported, and so now they are reported as persistently dangerous, when
actually they are a safer school.

So there is a real \-- Not only is it a disincentive to report, but then
there is \-- The information can make good schools look bad and bad
schools look good. So I think that should be part of our findings.

One thing in the recommendations that I think should really be
highlighted is that \-- Obviously, the term \"persistently dangerous
school,\" while I have yet to meet anyone who can figure out a name for
what it should be called, we know it shouldn\'t be called that. But
rather than, you know, to provide \-- To give \-- To request information
from schools about those issues that they are looking at that would fall
into this category, so that for the academic achievement, we identify
schools in need of improvement.

So that there would be an equivalent of that, that schools that are
having difficulty with issues related to these safety issues that we are
talking about can be put on a watch list or looked at, and possibly a
use for those state grant dollars could be that they set aside a portion
of those dollars to provide specific technical assistance and assistance
to those schools that are looking \-- because we heard several people
say we need to address this, but we are not sure how. So that they can
use those dollars to address that need, to get off the watch list, so to
speak, so that they can address those issues of safety or violence or
whatever.

So that would be a suggestion to go along with the findings.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Let\'s go Kim and Susan.

MS. DUDE: Mine will just take a second. If we do just what you are
suggesting, that would really actually be an incentive to report that
information as opposed to a disincentive, because they figure, well, if
I really do do this and address these issues, I increase my likelihood
of getting funding. So I think it is a good idea.

DR. KEYS: I have just a couple of comments. On page 3, the second to the
last bullet: Ensure that victims know of their rights to remain at their
current school.

I think we should amend that to say \"and other movement options.\" We
talked about the promotion of choices for students, that it just isn\'t
staying, but it could be something else.

We also, I thought, had a fair amount of consensus that, if the victim
does not want to transfer, we wanted to recommend that the district
require the perpetrator to transfer. I didn\'t see that showing up
anywhere. So I don\'t know if we want to say that or not.

CHAIRMAN LONG: That was the discussion. If we could stay on target on
that one, that was part of the discussion. Let's take a look at that now
as a potential recommendation or add-on to that.

DR. JONES: Yes. I have a question. How are we defining perpetrator here?
I mean, how bad does it have to be in order for this person to be
labeled a perpetrator, because I think that definition has implications
on whether or not that student should be asked to leave?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Well \-- Go ahead.

MS. PRICE: Currently, persistently dangerous \-- there is a category of
issues that have to occur for persistently dangerous to kick in, and
maybe those categories would still stay the same. We might want to
broaden that a bit, because they are somewhat narrow.

So is it just general \-- not to take lightly bullying, but just some
general kid to kid \-- whatever the right term is \-- Low key bullying
wouldn\'t be \--

DR. JONES: Well, I guess I am putting on my clinical hat as a clinical
psychologist. You know, I don\'t know if we want to make a blanket
statement that, if the victim \-- and, boy, I don\'t like the term
victim; I think it ought to be survivor. But anyway, if the victim
doesn\'t choose to leave, then it is mandatory that the perpetrator
leave.

I think that can have some very, very negative consequences, because you
are talking about loss across multiple sources. So I guess what I\'m
saying is I don\'t think that that should be a unequivocal decision that
is made without some kind of clinical intervention, some kind of
clinical processing of the situation.

MS. PRICE: And let me throw something out here. It doesn\'t just apply
here, but here I think it applies, because as I said referring to the
name, we know what it shouldn\'t be called. We don\'t know what it
should be called.

When we write our report, some of these things may be presented as
serious issues that need to be addressed and, while we don\'t have
resolution to them, we should look toward resolving them.

One of them is what do you do with the perpetrator when there is no
other school in the area to send them to? I mean, there is a big issue,
and it is not an easy issue to answer, and I don\'t know that we need to
provide the answer. But I do think saying this needs serious thought;
these are serious problems that aren\'t addressed currently that need to
be taken into consideration as they move forward.

I think the name \-- I don\'t think we need to figure out the name, but
I do think we need to tell them they can\'t continue with the name they
currently have.

DR. KEYS: We have a name. I have a name from our notes, the Safe School
Choice Option was what we had suggested as an alternative name.

MS. PRICE: It\'s a good name.

DR. KEYS: It was something we had on the table.

CHAIRMAN LONG: That was discussed, right.

DR. KELLAM: I want to go back to the question of do we really want to
\-- How does this turn out to be a constructive program? How does this
turn out to be in some sense addressing a problem of violence? What
we\'ve got is a single solution, namely, the parent has the right to
move the kid who is a victim, and that\'s it.

Meantime, what we all know, and those of us who do research at schools
and live in schools all the time anyway, we know that in fact it is not
likely that it is a kid. A kid doesn\'t make a violent school.

It is more likely to be a general revolting behavior by large groups of
kids, by the zeitgeist of the school, and it is in the face of failure,
poverty, racism, all the rest, particularly personal failure to learn
and to succeed, and it begins early on, and you can see it emerging in
first grade after the first few weeks of school when kids are falling
behind in reading.

So we are talking about a problem which is highly correlated with poor
achievement, and we are again talking about a solution which is not, in
fact, helping the school teach better or socialize kids better or make
them feel better about their environment. None of those are coming up in
this program so far as we recommended.

So I would recommend that we, in fact, call for a program closely
related to other academic programs but which does emphasize the
socializing of kids in the school to perform as citizens in proper
fashion, and which is not solely limited to kicking perpetrators out or
saving one child at a time.

I think that the program is not well developed in that sense.

DR. SIMS: I agree. I think that, when we had the panels on this \-- and
I always go back to the panels, because for me that is our information
\-- you know, one of the things that sort of came out of that is that
there is not a lot of coordination around sort of some of the safety
functions and the program, State Grants Program type activities.

So if there were more coordination across these different areas, then
maybe that is where you would have some spillover. If you are doing
programming that is going to target a broad set of skills and outcomes
for kids, then maybe you would see that some of the safety issues in the
schools are actually going down as well.

So this might be a place to also recommend better coordination of
creating safe environments that map onto overall programming within the
school related to safe and drug free schools, something like that.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Other comments?

MS. PRICE: Just a clarification comment. One reason why this piece is in
No Child Left Behind is, when No Child Left Behind was being developed
and written, there was a lot of concern for kids stuck in
underperforming schools or unsafe schools. That is why the child is \--
you know, the one who has been picked on or whatever \-- given a choice
option.

So there is a real \-- and that is a focus of it, and I think it was
good. But we have learned, I think, a lot since then that we could make
that a better thing. But that was why. So it is one of many choice
options, but it is just \-- this piece is just tucked away in Safe and
Drug Free Schools, but it really does partner with the ones that are in
the underachieving \-- the academic, the failing schools. I mean, there
is a lot of relationship there with that as well.

MS. LeBOEUF: I agree with Shep about how to handle the young person who
was bullying someone else or teasing him into gangs or whatever kind of
harassment or teen dating or any kind of thing that they are doing
untoward towards another, and putting the child that is the perpetrator,
for lack of a better word, somewhere else doesn\'t mean they are not
going to run into that person at the mall, at a school dance or
wherever, and we are not giving both the young person who is the victim
an opportunity to be comfortable in that situation and go through a
program with getting rehabilitated as far as the perpetrator being held
accountable for their actions and helping them grow and move beyond, for
the very reasons you mentioned, that they are not doing well in school,
that they exhibit all these other risk factors, and they need to be
helped.

Moving the victim to another school, while that seems on the surface, as
Deborah said, to be a great idea, they are losing their social network
and their neighborhood school or whatever. So if we can get a program
that works to help both of them, that would be the best of all worlds.

One of them that I could recommend \-- there\'s many, but our office
funds the school based youth courts and community based youth courts
and, depending on the severity of the outcome, it could be heard in a
school based or community based youth courts where they are then
assigned to appropriate sanction by their peers, and their peers are
not, so to speak, all the A students and the popular ones.

They are a range of students that are trained in how to serve on a jury,
what are appropriate sanctions for the different types of cases that can
come before them, and then, in addition, they also try and bring into
account, you know, the fact that they might write a letter of apology to
the person that they harmed.

So there\'s a lot of options that might be come to play. So I agree.

DR. JONES: You stated it very well, and I think that is captured in the
third point from the bottom just in terms of providing guidelines and
training for assisting students who are victimized \-- who victimize
others and those that are victimized.

There needs to be some form of clinical intervention. We don\'t just
throw them out and take them to another school as a way of doing those
things.

MR. LEDBETTER: Russell, when you talk about clinical intervention, who
is going to pay for this?

DR. JONES: I think that there are \-- Well, I know in our community that
oftentimes these children are referred to a psychological service
center, and many of those individuals can be seen free of charge.

So there are community \-- You know, there are individuals in the
community. We have a free clinic also in our community where individuals
are often referred to. So there are a number of different mechanisms
within the community where that is taking place.

What typically happens: Counselors will refer those students to us. We
will then follow up, and they are dealt with quite nicely. But you know,
to go with the way that is stated here, that you don\'t provide these
kids with any kind of counseling, you don\'t provide these children with
any kind of assessment or whatever \-- that is not going to provide the
problem in any way whatsoever.

You take a child that bullies out of his school and put him into another
school, not only is he dealing with many issues of loss, he is now in an
environment where no one knows him. That is going to increase the
likelihood of him bullying again. That is just not the solution.

I think about the school that I grew up in. If you removed the bullies,
there probably wouldn\'t be anybody left in the school.

MR. LEDBETTER: Well, I don\'t disagree. I don\'t necessarily disagree
with what you are saying, but the dilemma \-- if we are not careful, the
dilemma that you create for the schools is such that, when you identify
this perpetrator, then you are going to have to take some money to help
rehabilitate this perpetrator. Okay? And where does that money come
from?

All we have talked about is the fact that we don\'t have much money.

DR. JONES: But some of these things, it really doesn\'t take money. The
structures are already in the community. I think that is a fundamental
problem. Many times the schools feel that, if they don\'t do it, it is
not going to get done.

MR. LEDBETTER: You are making an assumption. When we are talking about
rural areas, those services may not be readily available.

DR. JONES: Given, and I think that is why the point was made earlier
that more monies would be given to those school districts, I believe it
was, to create the partnerships and the kind of capacity so that those
kind of issues could be dealt with. But again, it doesn\'t go all \--
You know, it\'s easy for me to say. I am not a principal. I mean, I am
not there on the ground. But I am a part of a network whereby students
who have difficulties can be triaged, if you will, to different
community groups, different community facilities where they can be
assisted, which will then afford them greater success at school.

DR. SIMS: So I think, for me, this would be a good time to get some
clarification around resources related to this specific topic area;
because we just finished the State Grants Program which had a specific
dollar figure. Is this part of that pot of money as well, or is this
just part of a reporting system?

So maybe some dollars \-- a recommendation about resources should be
made.

Also, this was an area where, when we did the summary report, one of my
questions was could we be more specific about who is doing what related
to the different recommendations. So provide guidelines and training:
Who would be providing that? Would that be coming technical assistance
from the state level?

Then if you do have something like provide guidelines, should you also
have something in here where schools need to specifically state what
things they are putting in place or have in place for providing services
or working through these kinds of issues as these kinds of incidents
come up in the schools setting?

MR. HERRMANN: Just in terms of resources, there is a provision \-- I
assume it is a mandate \-- that if a student is a victim of a violent
crime, that Title IV funds could be used to transport the student to
another school. I believe that is an expectation.

I think it is important to remember under this \-- and I apologize if I
missed this somewhere in our conversation just now. But there are
actually two pieces to this. There is the persistently dangerous schools
element, and then there is also the victims of a violent crime element,
which are really kind of two distinct pieces to this.

The victims of violent crime piece, I think, is something that is fairly
straightforward and is not necessarily subject to a lot of hocus pocus
with states in terms of definitions and that sort of thing; whereas, the
definition of persistently dangerous is something that is much harder to
sort of get a handle on.

CHAIRMAN LONG: We \-- I\'m sorry, Shep, go ahead.

DR. KELLAM: I am just trying to think about how to pull some of this
together. I think that what many of us are saying, and maybe most of us,
is that, in fact, this program in its next stage needs to be proactive
in the sense that it analyzes school needs, as we do with academics, and
that it provides guidelines for programmatic interventions to improve
the condition of children, both victims and perpetrators.

We talked about student-run courts, for example. We can think about
universal interventions. Classroom behavior management, in terms of
that, has an enormously important impact on the behavior we are talking
about reducing.

We know that, in fact, early interventions of the kind we have been
doing and others have and systematic studies show impact all the way
into incarceration and prison by first and second grade improvements in
socializing kids to the proper behaviors of being a student, so they are
successful in their behavior.

So at the universal level, we are talking about it being very clear that
we need to be doing interventions which promote the school environment
and the success experience of kids. That is the great prevention of the
problem we are talking about.

Then we come to a selective level, the second level of intervention
where student courts become important. When a kid does something,
structured student courts have been shown to be effective, and indeed
they become interventions that could be available.

Then when Russell talks about the third level, we get back to the whole
question of a partnership again. Where is the Department of Mental
Health, the Department of Public Health? Where are the mental health
services, and how do they relate to backing up schools?

So a three-level system of universal interventions early on, selected
interventions when kids show signs of problems like student court,
conflict resolutions, a whole bunch of them that have been done with
rigorous study, and then the third level of getting the Department of
Health and Mental Health to be close partners and easy and quick
referral.

Whether it is rural or otherwise, the system needs to be connected to
the process and progress of kids, and that is a positive program. That
is not blaming a school. That is, in fact, moving in with prevention,
early intervention, and treatment as needed.

Some of the treatment could be just plain family social services. It
could be anti-gang programs in the community and the like. So putting
this in context with what is going on and protecting that part of the
law which stimulated it in the first place should be our game.

MS. JACKSON: I would like to add one piece onto what Shep was stating
with regard to stage one. I don\'t see on here providing specific
measures or guidance of training of the LEA and all of the staff within
to the precursors that would lead up to some of our incidents of
violence, what things that we need to provide education and training in,
what to look out for on the prevention and awareness end of things.

So again, instead of being reactionary as we look as our safe schools
choice option that all of a sudden bullying is an issue and it is the
new game in town, and focusing on substance abuse and how all of these
things are linked together, sometimes in violence, etcetera.

So again training with regard to our school based staff, what to look
out for in advance.

MS. LeBOEUF: I just wanted to add one thing with the list that Shep
mentioned. Also mentoring \-- if there is local mentoring programs that
you could also initiate, both for the victim and the perpetrator, might
also help. It might be available as another option the community can
provide through partnership.

DR. JONES: You know, another thing we use is Big Brothers and Big
Sisters and all of that. Those things are very helpful also. Some
faith-based groups have been very helpful in helping us with lots of
kids who have gone awry.

CHAIRMAN LONG: You know, we all have different thought processes when we
listen to this. We are doing a lot of these things now, and we are
hearing some of those things.

I think that \-- and Debbie mentioned it here, but I think \-- I think
\-- the premise for this in No Child Left Behind was really for choice.
So that that child and the parents of that child could have them go
someplace else, and we won\'t get into degrees, but whatever happened,
so that they could go someplace else.

We do a lot of that now, and then too \-- I am looking at another one of
our recommendations here. Talked about the states believe the current
program produced an unfunded mandate. So here we are talking about all
these things. We are doing a lot of good things now, and this is another
unfunded mandate on top of a school and a school system.

So we are talking about changing the name. It is not funded. It is for
parental choice, and I know some of you \-- and then some of the things
that were mentioned to mirror or parallel what is a good thing, and that
is with academic problems in a particular site or district, and that is
to analyze the needs and come up with a program and help them, make it a
positive type thing.

What I am hearing is we are offering up help for something as a part of
this that I am hearing that most of you feel has a negative connotation,
from the name on down. And we already have \-- I was also listening
about some \-- whatever we call them \-- perpetrators, but in the world
that I work in, as our intermediate agency we \-- I mean on the site
level and district level they already have suspensions and expulsions.
So that is in place.

Then when they get to a certain level, we have community schools and
juvenile halls. So we\'ve got a whole system here that we are talking
about, but as I listen, you are offering up very positive things, and I
know the judge has some very powerful intervention systems for the
youngsters in Tennessee.

I guess what I am asking is could we codify that. I think, Shep, you got
at it right out of the gate. What is our overall recommendation going to
be on this? It might be an interesting one. Why is it there?

MS. TAFT: It has got a worthy goal, and I agree with it. But why is it
placed here? You know, why isn\'t it placed over with the other choice
items, and why is money allowed out of this pot\'s limited funds to
transport kids to other places? Why isn\'t that in the transportation
part of the budget?

MS. PRICE: Whether it is a great answer or what, I mean, it is because
the subject matter is the subject matter dealt with in our office. It is
issues of violence and safety, Guns Free School Act, and all of these
different things are implemented from office, and so the choice option
is part of our office.

The transportation costs for those children that make those choice
options for these issues are paid for out of the State Grants dollars
that go to the states for state grants.

Logically, it makes sense, you know, when you write legislation that
that was the way they decided to do it. If we think there is a better
way, we should tell them.

MR. HERRMANN: Well, I think the bottom line \-- correct me if I\'m
wrong, but I think the overwhelming sense of the committee is that the
concept of defining and identifying persistently dangerous schools is
not something that has worked to date with existing resources and
existing guidance.

So it is broken, if you will, or never worked from the beginning.
Really, the fundamental question is whether or not there are any steps
that could be taken to make it work, and we seem to be coming up short
on steps that would make it work.

MR. ELLIS: It seemed to me that the intent of this part of the law was
to do just two things. We have talked about it. One is identify those
schools that are having significant, inordinate amounts of disruptive
behavior. So the kids can\'t learn in this environment.

The other one is to give parents and their student an opportunity to
move to another school. You know, those of us that have enough money
that, if we don\'t like a neighborhood and our community school, we can
pick up and move.

Not everyone has that opportunity, and I think that was part of the
intent of this, was to force schools to give kids a better environment
if their schools are not addressing the issues of violence and
disruptive behavior that impacts the school\'s education and the
student\'s opportunity to learn.

So I think that that intent is good, and why it doesn\'t work, I think
we heard very clearly, that the definitions are all wishy-washy and the
states report different stuff. There was a lot of stuff on data
reporting. Remember, there was a lot of information about the
inconsistent nature of the data requirements and the abilities of states
to play fast and loose with the \"persistently dangerous.\"

I think that is a piece of it, and it is in here, as I recall. It is a
bullet, at least several bullets in there about tightening up on the
definitions.

So my thought is that we shouldn\'t recommend kind of throwing the baby
out with the bath water, if you will, that the general intent of this
piece is legitimate and it is good, but it is broken.

The terms are bad, and it creates a disincentive. The data reporting
piece is bad, because you end up getting nothing, as Mike says, that is
worth a darn, but the intent, I think, is good.

I would suggest that one of our findings be just that, that the intent
\-- To give people and students a choice of moving out of whatever we
term it, a persistently dangerous or some other term school, so that
they can have a chance at education is a good one.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Sorry, I thought I saw another hand. Susan?

DR. KEYS: As I understand it then, this program is about a very limited
program or it is just about the ability to exercise that option to move
elsewhere, if you are a victim. Okay.

One of the recommendations I said that I thought we had made earlier was
that it shouldn\'t be \-- We had said it shouldn't be the person who has
been victimized that has to move. It should be that they have a choice,
to move or to stay, but that the person who had perpetrated might not
have that choice.

The other thing that I think we are saying, and we said, even though
keeping in mind this very narrow focus for this program, that we wanted
the language and the emphasis to shift away from this negative toward a
recommendation for what are the things that contribute to a safe school.
What is it that is positive?

I had one thing that I don\'t feel was our recommendation that is listed
here as a recommendation, and that is move the focus of school safety
toward prevention of incidents, because I have in my notes that we said
that incident data does not tell us what we want to know.

I think we will probably have more discussion about incidents, but I
think if we are only thinking about prevention of incidents, we are
missing that bigger picture that we wanted to convey about creating
safer school climates, and I have other things in my notes about what
some of those things were.

So I would like to just recommend that we not think in terms of just
collecting incident data. Here, these were school climate factors that
we talked about: Looking at bullying, harassment, intimidation,
disorderly common areas, lack of emotional connection to school,
inconsistent discipline practices. Those are more things than just
incident data.

DR. HINGSON: Maybe a way to bring together some of what people have been
saying is to turn this thing on its head and not talk about unsafe
schools but talk about model schools, and how do we disseminate what
goes on \-- First, how do we identify what goes on in model schools, the
ones where there is the least level of violence, the ones where there is
the greatest proportion of kids who are performing well, going on to
higher education and so on; and then how do we take those components,
what needs to be done to take the things that make those schools work
well and disseminate them to the rest of the schools.

Seems to me that that would be a far more productive way to proceed,
rather than trying to identify and focus on the negative. You could take
it even from the point of view of you may talk about options of where
kids go to school. Maybe as much emphasis should be given on letting
students go to the model schools than it is moving them away from the
ones where there seems to have been a problem.

MR. ELLIS: Just a couple of thoughts, too. One of the other things we
need to keep in mind and make sure everyone understands, it is not just
that victims of these violent acts get an opportunity to move. If a
school has been designated as persistently dangerous, then every parent
has a right to move. So it is not just victims. I just wanted to clarify
that.

The other piece that I thought was a recommendation and it is in here as
a bullet. I just wanted to mention it briefly. We did have quite a bit
of discussion about parents\' rights for information, particularly
disaggregated data identifying specific schools and their associated
data.

We hear that a lot. At least I do, in terms of parents want information,
and they value the information, and they have a hard getting the
information. Remember, we had a principal sit before us and tell us that
he would absolutely not release that kind of discipline data, which to
me was quite troubling.

So the transparency issue, you know, I think, is a legitimate one, that
parents and the community have a right to know what is going on in the
schools.

The other thing I was thinking was that perhaps one additional way of
turning the negative into a positive is to provide funding priorities
for the other grant programs that the office does for those schools
identified on the watch list.

So if your school is persistently dangerous or whatever it turns out to
be or you are on a watch list, that you, that school, gets a higher
priority, a mandatory higher priority to get grants.

So again, kind of turning a negative thing into a positive thing, and
ultimately to make some real difference, an incentive for the school to
make a difference in the lives of the kids there.

CHAIRMAN LONG: This is quite different from the first section that we
were on with state grants, because we were filling in the blanks. On
this one, we have a preponderance of recommendations. So maybe we could
\-- let me just throw this out \-- flip what we did the first time.

We have all of these recommendations, after literally months of hearing
from panels and discussion. So I will just ask this question. Any
additions or deletions just from the list, not going through them
individually.

Then I would turn to Bill again, as I have with the other \-- I\'m sure
that your answer will be, yes, you do have enough to come up with some
recommendations on this, since we have, I think, 24 of them listed right
here from our previous engagement.

So that could we do the same thing with those recommendations so that it
be down in black and white so we would get them along with the state
grant recommendations ahead of our next conference call? I just throw
that out, and then you react to it.

Okay. Then I take it, that means agreement. With that then, that will
bring a close to the choice section of this. Yes?

MS. TAFT: I didn\'t know where to put this, because I couldn\'t find
anything related to any of the bullets about crisis management or crisis
plans.

I have been talking to the people in Ohio that do those, help schools do
those crisis plans, and they see a real need to not only have \-- having
the language not only to develop a crisis plan, but to practice it.

If that little practice could be inserted wherever it needs to be
inserted, it would be helpful, because a lot of the schools have plans,
but they have never used them, and everything goes haywire when they
first try to use it under a crisis situation.

DR. JONES: I would like to echo that. We have done 30 year of research
teaching children how to deal with traumatic situations, and if children
aren\'t trained and if in that training it does not encourage
maintenance and generalization that is practiced, it won\'t happen. So I
echo that, yes, 100 percent.

MS. PRICE: And I totally agree, and would add even a third element
besides having it in place and practicing it, but revising it
continually and updating it, that it is a living document that goes on.
Absolutely, those three elements need to be \-- They need to be doing
all three of those with whatever they have.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Shep?

DR. KELLAM: I just wanted to ask. I\'m not sure \-- I mean, I like the
process of this conversation. I just wanted to be a little more concrete
about it.

I think that, if we take the view \-- What I was saying before was that
a lot of the interventions that we can do that make this positive can be
done early on, universal interventions, classroom behavior management.
What we know about the origins and development of violent behavior in
schools and on the streets is that this begins early on with the lack of
socialization, and some kids are more at risk than others, and that it
is possible to intervene early on and do something at the universal
level. There are tested programs, and we recommend they be applied

Secondly, that at the selective level \-- and I am using these terms
deliberately in the sense that prevention science uses them these days.
At the selective level, there are interventions in later elementary and
in middle school that have to do with effective programs that can be
applied, and that we recommend they be applied: Student courts, a number
of the ones we have been talking about.

The third issue is the partnership one, and that is we recommend
strongly that, in fact, there be an important public health, mental
health and child welfare community based partnership, the same one that
would qualify for applying for the Safe Schools, Healthy Students \-- I
mean, excuse me, the program we were talking about this morning, the
State Grant and Aid, that that partnership be thought of as important
back-up, third level back-up, indicated for kids who need special
attention or families that need special attention or family/school kinds
of collaborations and solutions.

It is the case that there are positive things that could bring this into
the broader programs that we have been talking about, and I think we
should recommend that they be thought of in that context, and at the
same time recognizing that there are reasons politically and, in fact,
in reality for this provision, namely that we protect families\' rights
to move the kids, and that we protect the schools and their focus on
remedial as well as responsive behavior on their parts. Recognizing
that, we think the next generation of this program should include these
kinds of suggestions \-- more than suggestions, guidelines for how to
proceed.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Belinda, Montean.

DR. SIMS: So maybe help me a little bit again here. When an LEA is
applying for resources currently, as part of their application I guess
now they get it all though a formula, but in the future they still have
to write an application. Do they have a section in there that talks
about unsafe school choice options and what they are doing in their
schools? Is that part of the application?

MR. HERRMANN: The way that the unsafe school choice is implemented in
Tennessee is we passed a state board policy. So when we monitor on Title
IV compliance, we monitor that they have, in fact, implemented this
policy. So we check records to make for sure that principals have been
informed, that parents have received notification, all those sorts of
things.

DR. SIMS: then in order to sort of expand it in the way that we have
been talking here in a more positive way, it seems like an application
then would want to have a criterion where the LEA needs to sort of think
about how what they are doing in state grants is going to help them
achieve this part of the NCLB, the unsafe school choice option, so to
really draw the links between the kind of programming that they are
doing and how they think it is going to have an impact on this
particular aspect of what we are talking about; because this is really
about documenting and reporting and making \-- you know, really showing
that when things happen, these other things occur, and we are starting
to expand it a little bit.

So you really have to be able to see that the LEAs or wherever it is
going to come from \-- and that they are getting technical assistance
from the SEAs to really incorporate this in a more integrative way in
their application.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Montean?

MS. JACKSON: And I just wanted to flip back to the previous page. I
believe it was where Hope added to the first bullet on page 3. She added
bullying, factors in determining whether a school is safe or not, and
considering issues such as substance abuse. Bill stated, if we wanted it
added, we needed to tell him.

Would everybody be in agreement that we possibly add gang activity as
well as racism, issues of racism, to that? It is on page 3, bullet
number one, if you flip back to the previous page. The first thing is
bullying \-- or second one is bullying, and I wanted to add gang
activity as well as racism issues.

CHAIRMAN LONG: As we bring this section to a close, any other comments
regarding the section of school choice?

MS. LeBOEUF: To that same section, would we add sexual harassment? It\'s
a form of bullying. Okay, if it\'s covered by bullying.

DR. KELLAM: As we move toward \-- I assume the answer was yes. Violence
is violence, right? Anyway, what I was going to raise is there are some
issues we are talking about that typically do not, in fact, involve
teachers and teacher training.

One of the things that comes up across the board is what are we doing
about the pre-service training of teachers? For example, with what
experience do teachers enter a first grade classroom with a mandate to
teach kids to read? How are they trained to deal with classroom behavior
management? Putting it another way, how are they dealing with the
question of socializing children to the role of student, which is a
fundamental to how you teach?

NCATE, for example, never comes up for conversation, and I sit in all
kinds of meetings, and half of us, at least the researchy crowd, you
know, go to meetings; nobody ever talks about pre-service training.

The fact of the matter is that it took me 12 years or something to be
trained to be a psychiatrist, another two or three to be a public health
psychiatrist, and we send teachers out to teach first graders in about
six months of actual field training in how you do it, which is part of
the abomination we are dealing with.

One of the things we notice is that the intervention programs that we
have developed are not really integrated into the teaching of children.
They are kind of competitive for reading time, reading instruction time
and the like. So we sort of leave the teachers\' background and what we
are giving young women and men preparation out of the model, and it
doesn\'t show up here.

I think it is important that we somehow get that into our consideration,
because about half the teachers \-- and I know this epidemiologically.
About half the teachers in first grade in Baltimore are not very good at
classroom behavior management, 50 percent of them, and therefore, their
kids by the first quarter in first grade show real signs of disarray in
classroom behavior. The other half are doing fairly well.

AIR did a study nationally with ESSE and found out that the biggest
reason for teacher burnout and teachers leaving and the traffic in
teaching has to do with the absence of classroom behavior management.
But NCATE, the National Accreditation for Teaching, doesn\'t come up in
any of these considerations that I sit in.

I suggest that, somehow or other, we make some background, backdrop
points about some of the things that underlie schooling that we don\'t
address typically.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Any other closing comments on choice. If not, I applaud
you. After six and a half hours, it calls for a break at two o\'clock.
It is not two o\'clock. So you are again right on schedule.

We will take a 15 minute break, and come right back with data.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the record at 2:04 p.m. and
went back on the record at 2:19 p.m.)

CHAIRMAN LONG: If we could hurry up, please. Shep and Russell are not
here. So we are going to talk about data. I\'m sorry. Their chairs were
both empty. I just wanted you to know that. Boy, that\'s the quickest
you guys have gotten back to the table, I\'ll tell you.

The third section, as we indicated, would be the requirements for data
under NCLB. Again, if we could first look at the questions. The reason I
am going to ask that, on this one we have one blank area here.

The first question: Is the amount of information being collected
appropriate? Again, we will follow the same venue. I would ask Debbie if
the questions are answered sufficiently, with the exception of the
second one on page 6 which we have no answers to right now.

MS. PRICE: No, I think that\'s fine.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay. So if we could, as we go through these \-- Now
there\'s just a few on this one. The first is: Is the amount of
information being collected appropriate? No recommendations on that, but
some findings. Any comments on the first question? A lot of this, of
course, we have talked through with that discussion this morning
relative to the State Grants Program, but anything on Number 1?

Number 2: Is the information being collected the right information to
help the \-- I\'m sorry, mine is cut off here \-- assess where it stands
on issues related to youth drug use and violence prevention? Information
to help the nation \-- I\'m sorry, I had the first two letters cut off.

DR. KELLAM: Are you going to go through each one?

CHAIRMAN LONG: yes. I was going through each one to see if there is
anything additional.

DR. KELLAM: I think that where we got this morning bears repeating,
namely that there are two issues we need to consider. One is that the
data need to be integrated that are now being brought in from a variety
of sources, so that all of the data being collected is both economical
in terms of collection, utility, efficiency and the like, whether it is
retrievable, as it should be, but maybe more importantly, whether it
provides an information system about child growth and development and,
in the aggregate, school building, school district growth and
development and efficiency in raising kids, but whether it is being
applied to policy and practices.

If there is anything wrong with information systems in the United
States, and it is not uniformly this way around the world, but in the
United States we have many kinds of information systems. They cost a
great deal of money, but they are seriously disconnected from each other
and almost entirely disconnected from policy and program baseline
development and outcomes.

So that, basically, we are spending a huge amount of money without the
ultimate payoff in policy and programs, and indeed we need to
distinguish between management information systems of the kind we heard
about from Howell and others who are expert and lead such information
systems from the kind of information systems that school districts
collect, which is very much individual child developmental oriented.

You collect grades over time in the same child. You don\'t take an
average of the kids\' grades typically when you are looking at kids\'
progress.

We need to do both. We need to understand the utility of both management
information as well as the utility of following the developmental
trajectories of kids in regard to their academic achievement, their
behavior, as well as related matters of a kind we have talked about
periodically, including their psychological and social condition over
time.

So when the Secretary raised this issue of whether it is possible,
because there has been a growing understanding of the need for this kind
of integrated information, she raised the question about is it
politically possible.

Technologically, it is quite easily possible. Politically, is it
possible? The answer is that we have all of these systems independently,
and with proper structure of protecting parent roles, privacy of kids
and individuals and the like, it should be possible to bring these
together, particularly when they can be functionally extremely important
in the way that Ralph was talking about earlier today, namely setting
the start point for kids over time, measuring their developmental
progress at appropriate levels and periods of time, and looking at the
outcomes that can be used then to hold institutions accountable and to
guide institutional development over the future of the institution\'s
development, whether schools are improving, school districts are
improving and the like, as well as whether teachers are doing well at
the classroom level over time.

So I think those are some of the important guidelines about data. When
she asked that question, she turned to me and kind of capriciously said,
why don\'t you write me a two-pager. My sense is that, no, that is not
appropriate for me to do, but it is appropriate for this group, in fact,
to take a stand on what should the information systems be like that will
monitor kids\' development in the individual and in the aggregate, and
that can be aggregated at various appropriate levels, in the school
building or even the classroom upward, and that can be used for these
purposes of integrating programs and services when needed.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Kim?

MS. DUDE: Go ahead.

CHAIRMAN LONG: No, go ahead.

MS. DUDE: It seems to me that, at least in the school districts I am
familiar with, they ask a lot of questions about what drug are students
using, how often, what the consequences are, and maybe when they
started. I think that information is very valuable, but I think, from
being a prevention person, a practitioner, that only gives you so much
direction.

If you were to find out that 20 percent of your students have used
marijuana in the last 30 days, that tells you, okay, perhaps I should do
some marijuana education programs. Certainly, those are of debatable
significance as far as having an impact.

I think what I would strongly suggest is that we add quite a few
additional questions that will give the practitioners guidance on how to
do their programs. I\'ve brought this up, but some examples might be the
protective behaviors that our students are using.

Maybe how many hours do you spend in extracurricular activities or
sports, for example, because if you were to discover that your lowest
using group were your student leaders, which doesn\'t happen to be the
case on college campuses, but it might be the case in high school,
junior high, then you might think, okay, well, the more I get students
involved in extracurricular activities, maybe the less likely they would
be to partake in alcohol and other drugs.

So you try to draw some correlations. Who are my most at risk group, and
what are some of the things they are participating in versus my lowest
risk group. So I can increase the protective behaviors that may exist,
or ask questions about how often have you talked to your parents about
alcohol and drugs. So that might give you some guidance on how to
educate your parents about things.

We ask \-- On our campus we ask things like what do you value? We ask
what do you do for fun? How do you relieve your stress? What makes a
party fun?

What we find is it is not at all what you would think it was. They value
friends, family, their faith, their future. Partying is way, way, way
down the list, and that\'s college. So I can imagine, if you have high
school kids, that it might even be better stats than that.

We ask them what do you do for fun? Drinking is way down the list, but
the issue is students perceive that everybody thinks drinking is what
they do for fun. So if you find out that information, school specific,
building specific information, and feed it back to the students, then in
fact they are going to want to mimic the behavior they think their peers
are doing, but it is a more accurate behavior. It is the whole
socio-norming idea.

You can even ask injunctive norms like what do you think of somebody who
gets drunk? You may find that they think it is stupid or they think it
is \-- We ask \-- and I have said this before.

We ask questions about not only drinking but smoking, and find out the
vast majority of our students think smoking is gross. So we make posters
saying 78 percent of M.U. students think smoking is gross or 88 percent
of M.U. students would rather kiss a nonsmoker.

If you gather that kind of information, that is something that the
prevention specialists can then turn around and feed back to the
students and use as part of their prevention programming.

So I really want to make a recommendation that we go beyond just asking
incident data or asking usage patterns and consequences, that we try to
find out some of the good behaviors our students are doing.

We can also learn \-- like we ask our students how do you like to get
your health information? Most of them want to get it over the Internet.
Most of them don\'t want to sit down and hear a speaker. So that is
important for us to know.

So now we do mass e-mails every other week of good information for
students to know, because we know that is how they want to get their
information.

So I want us to use our data to not only tell us where the problems are,
but also to tell us where some of the solutions are. I think the data
can do that, if we ask the right questions.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Montean?

MS. JACKSON: I would like to add another piece to that, and I think our
last presenters at the last meeting \-- One gentleman spoke about the
Pride and whether people use the Pride survey or not, I think the other
piece of data that needs to be included with the student piece is
parental surveying and parental input, so that we understand what the
needs of the community are.

As part of our authorization and our legislative activities that we can
do, it also involves prevention within our community. So parent surveys,
I think, are important, and also the school climate surveys. That
includes staff, teachers and administrators, etcetera.

So as well as determining what the needs of the students are and how to
promote those efforts, I think we also need to take a look at what staff
information and other education and activities need to be considered as
well.

DR. HINGSON: The first I wanted to say is I think that we should use
whatever data we collect to set goals. I think that it is a very
powerful tool to say we want to take a look at alcohol and drug use and
violence and reduce it by a certain percentage by a certain point in
time. We shouldn\'t set an unrealistic goal, but we should try and come
up with our best estimates of what would work.

I would recommend one thing that we all ought to \-- or the Department
of Education ought to look at is goals in Healthy People 2010. Many of
them deal with alcohol and drug and violence and injury objectives for
high school and middle school age students, and we should take a look
and see whether or not we agree with those goals. Are they reasonable?

This is what the Department of Health and Human Services has set as its
standard. I think the Department of Education ought to take a good look
at that.

I think, in addition, the notion that we talked about briefly this
morning of standardization across communities is very important. That is
how we can learn and make comparisons between different communities and
states.

The more local the data is collected, the more powerful it is in terms
of persuading people in a given community or in a given neighborhood to
work on an issue and to monitor how well they are addressing those
issues.

There have been recommendations recently made about a week ago \-- I
know Hope was there at the unveiling of the Surgeon General\'s call to
action about reducing underage drinking, and there were a number of data
collection recommendations that they have that I think it is worth
incorporating every one of these into our list of things that we think
need to be collected. But I would mention a couple of them in particular
that I am particularly keen on.

One of them is testing all injury deaths for alcohol use for people
under the age of 21, and collecting data on secondhand effects of
drinking and drug use.

Some of the National Crime Victimization Survey does collect information
about whether or not people have been assaulted in the last year and the
age of the assailant and whether or not they thought the assailant had
been drinking or taking drugs. We should make sure that the school
information is included in that, not necessarily what individual school
but were they a student themselves and do they think that the people who
perpetrated these things were students.

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey certainly, I think, needs to include
questions about whether or not people were assaulted or experienced
sexual assaults perpetrated by people who had been either drinking or
find out whether or not they had been taking drugs.

In addition, I think that there are some environmental data that may be
available that should be taken into consideration, because these can
influence the alcohol use and drug use and safety within the schools.

So we know, for example, there is a rather sizable literature on alcohol
outlet density and its impact on violence and crime. The more outlets
there are within a given geographic area, the greater the likelihood
that there will be drinking and driving incidents and violence incidents
and so on. It is also something that communities can control through
zoning and through the practices \-- that they can control through
zoning and ordinances.

I think that another thing in the tobacco area \-- I mentioned tobacco
as an area where we have had substantial progress in reducing use. One
of the powerful tools that was used there were the compliance check
surveys where they found out how many buy attempts by somebody under the
age of 21 resulted in sales.

Well, there\'s actually a literature in the alcohol area that shows
that, if you have compliance check surveys and you give feedback to the
merchants of how they behaved when the people who were under age 21
attempted to purchase alcohol and what the penalties are if they don\'t
comply with the existing laws and regulations and provide information
that there are going to be repeat compliance check surveys, that you can
get the proportion of buy attempts that result in sales to go down, and
reduce a myriad of alcohol related problems that go along with that.

We know there is a relationship between price of alcohol and some of
these consequences. So we should, in my view, be monitoring what it
costs to purchase alcohol in its various forms, and probably the same
thing \-- it may be more complicated to do, but with regard to drugs.

I should mention that there are a number of policy information systems
that would be very valuable to look at. We have one at National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism called the Alcohol Policy
Information System where we track 36 different alcohol policies and look
at the year that they were passed, and it is done at a state by state
level so that we can compare states that enact certain policies with
those that don\'t.

With regard to the goals of this particular program, there are many
loopholes in the age 21 law. Although it is illegal to sell alcohol to
people under the age of 21 in every state, in most states it is not
illegal for young people to consume alcohol.

There are certain circumstances where they can consume, and in most
states people who are under the age of 21 can work in bars and
restaurants and sell alcohol, which may be an undue temptation to give
it to their \-- or allow their peers to have alcohol.

So we, it seems to me, should be looking at those policies in the
Alcohol Policy Information System. We also have information about
insurance policies. We know that most young people who meet alcohol use
disorder criteria are not being screened and are not being offered
counseling by providers.

One of the reasons, we think, is because they are not \-- providers are
not being reimbursed for providing services and counseling to young
people. We should have questions about \-- that we asked young people:
Have you seen a doctor in the last year, and did the doctor ask you, or
a health care provider \-- did the health care provider ask you about
your drinking and drug use or whether or not you had experienced
violence, and did they offer you any counseling about what level of
consumption poses a risk, and did they offer you any suggestion about
where you might go to get help if you wanted to get help?

My concern is that, at least in studies I have done in Massachusetts,
that if we look at high school students, 75 to 85 percent have seen a
physician in a given year, but are very rarely asked about their
alcohol. Well, that conveys a message if you go to a health care
provider and you are not asked about what is a major contributor to
injuries, which are the leading cause of death among that age group.

So I think that we could include that information as well in our
surveys. I would want us to look at the data that are collected in the
Alcohol Policy Information System, and we should probably also take a
look. There are parallel systems. CDC keeps a tobacco policy information
system, and NIDA, I know, has been doing some work on drugs and driving.

All of these things may interrelate. It may very well be that policies
around alcohol have an impact on tobacco use, and policies around
tobacco use may have an impact on alcohol. Now that is information that
is out there, and it is already being collected. I think, unfortunately,
it is just not being used.

Then finally, I think there is a question about whether or not young
people are aware of existing alcohol policies. I remember I was heavily
involved in research regarding the laws that are called zero tolerance
laws that make it illegal if you are under 21 to drive after any
drinking.

Yet we found that, even after all states had adopted those laws, a very
substantial proportion of young people were unaware that they existed.
So when we looked at the college alcohol survey that Henry Wexlar was
conducting of people \-- this is two or three years after the fiftieth
state adopted this law.

When we asked college students under 21 how much could they drink and
drive legally, in order a third of the states they thought they could
have three or four drinks and still drive legally if they were under 21,
even though it was illegal in every state. Not surprisingly, those who
thought that they could drive after a few drinks were the ones most
likely to report that they did so.

So we should find out are students aware of their school\'s policies or
their community\'s policies or their state\'s policies around alcohol
and drug use, and what do they think of it? Do they support or do they
oppose?

One of the most interesting things, if one looks at the college
population \-- Henry Wexlar, Bill DeYoung have both done surveys of this
\-- a majority of college students actually favor more enforcement of
alcohol regulation. That\'s like the best kept secret in America. Even a
majority of them even want more enforcement of the age 21 law.

Well, unless we let other students become aware that there is this kind
of popular support for these things, the voices of those who favor
supporting these things will never be heard, and we will never change
the \-- or we will have much more difficulty changing the norms.

So those are a few suggestions that I have around this area.

DR. WECHSLER: I want to make two general points about data. First, we
have heard great ideas for very useful data, and there is a very good
process to throw all the ideas out there, but I keep on hearing Tommy\'s
voice saying how schools are being surveyed to death, and we need to
keep that in mind.

I am wondering if we need to look at two levels of data, one being that
which really needs to be nationally uniform, and then a bunch of
optional modules, items, things that could be added on.

Maybe a state might do it once every five years instead of on an ongoing
basis or they could just pick and choose, and with their strength and
programs at the state education agency they can provide the technical
assistance to help them choose. But we can\'t do all these things. It\'s
too much. Schools are already overburdened.

So we have to pick that which is absolutely essential to be done
uniformly, and then lots of other great ideas that should be put before
people, and they can pick and choose.

The second point is that so far, to the best of my recollection, all we
have talked about so far are really outcome measures, and that is
really, really important, but it is only a small part of the picture,
especially if we are talking about value adding state and local
programs.

We really need to also focus on the importance of process and practices.
Process \-- I don\'t know, and correct me if I am wrong, but I don\'t
know if I have seen that there is any existing standardized data
collection system in place so that we can talk intelligently about what
a state is doing in terms of safe and drug free schools, or a district.

That is really, really critical, because it is going to be hard to say
whether Tennessee is doing better than Arkansas if we don\'t have a way
of describing what Tennessee and Arkansas are doing. So the process
measures, what they are doing with the dollars received from Safe and
Drug Free Schools, is very important.

In my mind, still the most important thing of all is can our programs
move the dial in terms of practices? Can we come together as a field and
identify what is a list, a menu of effective policies and practices that
we want to see schools implement, and then can we identify ways to
measure that. Those are the things that we really ought to be holding
our programs accountable for setting smart objectives for and moving the
dial on getting more schools to implement more of the effective
practices.

MR. HERRMANN: Howell, I think you are really on target. I agree with
everything you said.

I do think there is a section that relates to programs being implemented
and that sort of thing that could be developed to address a lot of those
issues.

I think it is really important that predominantly we have been talking
about data that helps policy makers and the nation. I think we\'ve
talked a little bit, Kim, about data that is going to help people decide
what programs to do, which I think is really the important piece.

I think we\'ve got to do that. At the same time \-- and I think it was
you, Tommy, who said this the last time we met. We have really got to
\-- If we are going to be collecting this data and having people collect
it, we\'ve got to help schools use the data in a way that makes it
meaningful. Otherwise, it is just a burden.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes, Belinda?

DR. SIMS: I think a lot of schools, based on the panel presentations \--
they were selecting programs from the various lists of evidence based
programs, such as the NREPP or the blueprints, and maybe then using some
of the principles that are discussed in the NIDA red book and things
like that. But I know recently NREPP just revamped itself, and there is
a new NREPP that is up on the web and available.

So similar to other things, I think there needs to be some ongoing
updating around how you recommend that people utilize those lists as
changes are being made to the list; because I think the SAMHSA list has
really changed. Right?

So someone might inadvertently select a program maybe that is really
only promising and not really truly evidenced based, meaning it has been
independently replicated or however you would want to quality that.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Why don\'t we go to Kim and Shep.

MS. DUDE: I think we also have to help practitioners figure out what
outcome \-- like how to measure the success of whatever they are doing,
and I think so often we look at \-- and it always hits the national news
\-- you know, binge drinking rate goes up, binge drinking rate continues
to skyrocket or whatever, and for one thing I hate the binge drinking
question in the first place. Secondly, it is like we are putting \-- and
I kind of mentioned this last time. We are putting all of our eggs in
the binge drinking basket and, if we don\'t change that, then we are
somehow not successful.

That is so totally unrealistic to be able to show success in that. As I
said last time, I think we need to look at the fact that what we want to
do is move these students down the stages of change so that they
eventually make the right choices, but that doesn\'t just happen
overnight or with one program or with one intervention or with one
change of laws.

They have spent all their lives up to the point that they are 16 or 17
or 18 or 20, however old they are, with so many messages, the
environment telling them one thing, their role models telling them one
thing, the media telling them something, and then we as educators are
supposed to change that behavior. I mean, we are setting ourselves up
for failure if we put all of our \-- if we determine whether something
is successful based on strictly the data that talks about usage.

So that is why I think we have to be so careful how we do that, and
especially if we tie funding to that, that if you tie funding to the
fact that you haven\'t decreased your binge drinking rate by two or
three or five percent, man, you\'re screwed. I\'m sorry. There is no it
is going to happen, because I have been at this for 20-some-odd years,
and the binge drinking rate on my campus has barely moved, but a lot of
other positive things have happened. It has gone down, but not as much
as I would like it to, but a lot of other very positive changes have
happened.

So I just want to put one final plug in for us being careful how we use
data to determine our success or lack of success.

DR. KELLAM: Well, I feel like we are sort of getting into the
conversation rather than what I thought about earlier. We were coming up
with kind of a strong understanding of shared vision in the first two
parts of our three-question day.

The idea that NREPP has different criteria now than it did before and
that the various agencies are collecting information that overlaps
dramatically from one mission to the next and Federal institutions \--
the multiple numbers of data collection efforts is astonishing. It is
only surpassed by the variation in what people called prevention
programs or how to handle variation from one clinician to another and so
on.

We live in a culture of small grocery stores, and each one of us sort of
runs our shop in the way that we think it should, and sometimes these
are collectives, as in school districts and school buildings, but by and
large, fractionation is a huge part of our problem.

I was talking to Steve Gardner who runs NREPP the other day. He is in
charge, I guess, of coming up with new criteria. So I asked him how come
the intervention we have been testing for 20-some-odd years, one of the
interventions, wasn\'t on their list. It suddenly disappeared. He said,
oh, the old list is not part of the new list yet; we got a new list, and
the old list is now being reviewed, but it hasn\'t been integrated with
the new list.

Just to give you some idea of the scope of the problem, there is nobody
here in our group, in this committee, for example, that I think, when
they think of information system, thinks about the school building and
the school district information system, which is about unique kids \--
you know, a child over time and over years \-- and how that information
system could somehow be integrated with different levels of aggregation
about school building and classroom effectiveness, school building,
school district effectiveness and so on and how these relate to each
other.

If there ever was a problem that needed some kind of real attention to
what we mean by data and how to make it work for child development and
for education, which is the core of child development in many ways, how
that can be brought into happening is an amazing challenge for us.

I think that we are very much remiss if we don\'t start with the idea
that we are gathering an enormous amount of information and, by and
large, it is not standardized in any form or fashion. It is certainly
not across agencies and at different levels, Federal and local, and that
we really need to study how you would make this information, even the
stuff that is being gathered, let alone things you need to know about
programs that might work or not and so on \-- I think that we have to
understand the cultural problem we\'ve got.

It has been tried before. In the 1930s the delinquency program, Chicago
area plan in Chicago, all of the social service agencies decided that
anybody who would connect up with a child would circulate a data card to
every other child agency so that the child \-- there was a common
registry of kid problems, and it did involve the schools and so on.

Of course, it fell on its face, because out of it the only thing that
really happened was that the social service agencies came together once
a month for coffee rather than really systematically seeing how all this
data was going to work.

We\'ve got a daunting task. If we want kids to grow and we want to
monitor their growth, and we want to in fact standardize and use the
best practices to have that happen, we need to bring in the other
institutions that collect data. We need to sit down and systematically
design and integrate a data system that pulls all of the data together.

There are both management information system kinds of data, but there is
also the kind the school buildings develop that have to do with
following kids over time, the unique identifier that allows you to track
kids over time and see what trajectories, which way they are going.

So I think the data issue is one of those issues where we have to
recommend something much bigger than the standard practice. Getting
together and saying we should collect a little more of this and a little
more of that \-- it is the case that we need to fill in gaps, but I
think the first job is not only to fill in the gaps, but to understand
the basic principle that three-quarters of the money we spend gathering
data is overly expensive in terms of time, staff, all kinds of issues,
including money.

We are collecting far too many information databases and not integrating
them so that they could be done much more efficiently and effectively
than they are being done, and applied to measuring need as well as
measuring outcomes in a more systematic way.

We need a group of policy makers, researchers, and others who have this
integrating focus who come together and say what kinds of information do
you want over time with the same kids, and what kind do you want to
understand management information systems, which are not the same kids
over time, just summary data.

If you take Lloyd Johnson\'s data on drugs nationally and that group,
and you ask what does it tell us about Peoria, Illinois, the answer is
zero, because it is aggregated for the nation. It\'s sort of like the
binge drinking rates, you know. It doesn\'t tell you a hell of a lot
about a school and whether it is generating a contagion of binge
drinking or other kinds of problems.

So these data have to be brought together under a common vision that
monitors kids over time and tells us what the local or different levels
are doing, and we have an enormous investment in No Kid Gets Left
Behind. We are collecting huge amounts of data and education on kids.

Some of the states are promoting following kids over time. Others are
just satisfied with the management information side. That is going to go
away. We did this in mental health many years ago. If it doesn\'t get
connected to services and program evaluation, it is going to drift away.
Politically, it is untenable to collect all that data and not have it
apply to real serious practice and policy.

So I think we need to underline that as a theme in this part of our
response to the Secretary.

MS. TAFT: Some of the things that I heard Shep say that I think we
talked about last time but I don\'t see reflected in the dots is that
the Department should work to develop a bottom up information \--
uniform information system so that the LEAs get information that is
useful to them, that can be \-- and is also useful to the state and also
useful to the Federal level.

It might be part of the one that talked about coming up with common
definitions, but I didn\'t think that really touched on our discussion
of last time.

Another thing that we discussed that I think might influence Shep\'s \--
or expand on Shep's comments were that there are a lot of Federal
departments represented at this table, and they fund a lot of programs
in the communities and the schools. It would really be nice if there was
a commonality between them so that the same data was required for all
grants so that the schools and the communities could have one collection
process that would satisfy all of the needs of people up here in
Washington.

DR. HINGSON: I like to echo that comment. I think that is a really great
idea, and I think that, sure, we as a committee have been charged with
taking a look at this, but I think it is an ongoing process, and I think
there would be great value in having an ongoing committee, including
Federal agencies, including people from state agencies, the LEAs, and
including local school administrators so that we are sure that we are
getting the right pieces of information.

Again, I agree with Shep that we need to make sure that whatever data is
collected, it is not just collected so that we get national estimates,
but the community, the local \-- the more local the data, the more
powerful it is in terms of mobilizing communities to do something about
their own issues.

Then finally, I just would like to say I don\'t want us to \-- I hope we
can come away from this exercise not pessimistic but optimistic.
Actually, we have made a great deal of progress in reducing binge
drinking in the United States.

When the drinking ages were raised, the proportion of high school
seniors that went from binging dropped by about a quarter, and we are
starting to see a little bit of progress in the last two or three years
on those national surveys.

If we look at the United States relative to Europe, for example, there
is a study called the SPAD survey that takes the same data that we \--
the same questions that we use about consumption and frequency of binge
drinking and applies them in samples in 35 different European countries.

In every country but Turkey there is a greater proportion of
15-year-olds who drink than here in the United States, and in all but
about four or five of them, there is a greater proportion who are
engaging in binge drinking and drinking to intoxication.

So in a certain sense we, in our efforts to want to do better here, keep
pushing ourselves and pushing ourselves, which I think is appropriate,
but I don\'t think we should lose sight of what has been accomplished.

When we raised the drinking age, it made a big difference, and we have
lots of community level studies that show that if those laws are
actively enforced and if you have comprehensive community programs that
include efforts by the school department, the health department, the
police department and so on, that we can further bring those numbers
down.

So I would hope that we would not get discouraged by \-- The data are
not our enemy. The data can be our friend and can be used to help us
mobilize and see where we need to make progress. It can help us assess
whether we are making progress, and maybe can help us make mid-course
corrections if there are areas where we aren\'t. So I want us to come
away from this exercise not daunted but rather optimistic that we can
make a difference.

DR. JONES: Yes. If it hasn\'t been recommended, I would like to
recommend that there actually be a study group to look at this whole
notion of data and to take into account the many points that have been
raised. I mean, I am looking at page 6 and the number of the
recommendations that we have already made: Critical review of whether
data collection is affecting practice; the need to ensure that existing
gaps between research and actual practice of local educational
associations are closed; states should use the same measures for data
gathering; need to research how to roll out and test the projects in
school districts and schools.

These are issues that, I think, can only be dealt with in a format where
the key players are at the table, and I don\'t think it should be done
in a piecemeal fashion.

I raised a question last time in terms of some of the thinking that went
into issues that related to data and the extent to which the data drives
what the No Child Left Behind initiative were related. It may have been
related then, but we are seeing that thinking has not resulted in a
passing grade.

So again, I am recommending that there be a task force or a group of
strategic thinkers to really grapple with this issue, to not only
grapple with the issue, but to come to a consensus in terms of
developing a framework or modifying the existing framework so that data
are indeed connected with intervention and outcomes as well as process.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Kim?

MS. DUDE: Just short. I just want to make sure if there a study group
that is created that it not just have researchers on there, but there be
a practitioner on there as well.

DR. JONES: I object to that. I object.

MS. DUDE: I mean, I love researchers. Don\'t get me wrong. But there
needs to be somebody from a high school prevention program that knows
what kind of questions that are really needed there.

DR. JONES: And related to that \-- Could I jump in just real quick? \--
and that there be individuals that are sensitive to different cultures,
that there be a cultural competence aspect to that committee. Very
important. I could give you a lot more on that, but I won\'t.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Thank you, Russell. I just want to say \-- I want to make
sure I am understanding this, that this study group or task force be a
part of the recommendation to the Secretary. I thought for an instance
there you were suggesting \-- I already had two names. Okay.

DR. JONES: Oh, but you know, I don\'t see that recommendation on the \--

CHAIRMAN LONG: I just wanted to clarify that, because that is how I
interpret it, to be a recommendation for \-- Okay. I just wanted to
clarify that. I\'m sorry, Belinda.

DR. SIMS: I was just going to say, over lunch we were talking about what
kind of interagency efforts there might be, but this seems like one
where it could be interagency, and it should include the YRBS folks as
well as the Lloyd Johnstons and maybe the Pride and the relevant
players, as well as the researchers and the practitioners.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Other comments?

DR. KELLAM: One other quick thing. Just like teacher colleges or schools
of education, you know, the most data collected in the country is no
doubt school building data on individual kids over years, over time.

I just want to make sure we understand that it is that basic measure of
kids\' progress which (a) needs work itself in terms of standardizing
across different tracks and the like, but also that is the fundamental
data against which we can connect up with the data that we are talking
about in terms of school atmosphere, data relevant to mental health,
data relevant to prevalence and incidence of drug abuse and the like,
alcohol practices, and so on, so that we are not, in fact, omitting in
the vision of bringing data together and connecting it to policy and
program \-- we are not omitting the core data that we often ignore,
namely the data that is collected on Charlie over his career in
schooling.

I\'m talking about now we have to couch all this with proper safeguards
for the privacy and individual character of data. Confidentiality
becomes a huge issue in this debate, and will be, no doubt, as soon as
it comes up to another group other than this one.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I will again turn to Bill with \-- There\'s approximately
a dozen recommendations from our previous panels and discussions,
coupled with all of the information and suggestions up here. Is it again
\-- Is that enough to then put that together for our \-- or do you have
questions or clarifications?

MR. DUNCAN: You\'re welcome to keep going. I added 22 recommendations
based on this discussion.

CHAIRMAN LONG: This discussion. So it would be 34 so far. Okay.

DR. KELLAM: Are they organized hierarchically? I hope it\'s not just a
laundry list, though.

DR. WECHSLER: It will be a laundry list, and I think it is important to
set some priority. I think there is one that is truly global and rises
above the rest. I would hope that you can emphasize it a great deal, and
that is the one that says states should use the same measures for data
gathering.

I think we can strongly agree on that, that the current system of
everyone doing as they please just does not do the job and, if that can
be sort of the pillar and everything flow form that, that would be good.

MR. HERRMANN: I think that would be good. I think states would agree
with that if the measures can also be the same across funding streams so
that what we collect for CDC we collect for CSAP, etcetera, etcetera.

DR. JONES: Yes, a process question. In terms of prioritizing these
various recommendations, I think it is important to chunk them in
meaningful conceptual ways.

When will we have the opportunity to do that? Will that be over the
conference call and then will that be followed by another meeting in
June?

CHAIRMAN LONG: We have a conference call, and I don\'t have the calendar
in front of me, in April; and we have a conference call in May, and we
have a meeting\--

MS. DAVIS: It is behind Tab 2.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay. And a meeting here in June for the report.

DR. JONES: So will we come together again as a group before the final?
We won\'t?

CHAIRMAN LONG: No.

DR. JONES: So we are going to do the chunking and the conceptualizing
via conference call. Okay.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Well, that was really \-- It was my understanding the
purpose for today, so we could cull this down so that this could be sent
out, and I think you have done a very fine job of pulling that together,
bearing in mind when we \-- I\'ve said this several times. When we see
this in black and white, it might look a little different, and then that
will be \-- That\'s why those calls are going to be so important.

MS. PRICE: Regarding the June \-- June is listed here as a day and half
thing. The June is really to present the report to the Secretary. It
most likely will not take a day and a half to present a report to the
Secretary.

DR. JONES: Will she be here?

MS. PRICE: I don\'t know.

DR. JONES: What does that mean?

MS. PRICE: It means I have to find out from her schedule. We don\'t \--

DR. JONES: Oh, no, no, no. No, I wasn\'t being facetious. You say it is
to present. So what does that mean?

MS. PRICE: It can mean anything from David \-- if David doesn\'t want to
do me and he asks me to do, to hand it to her, or a meeting. But that\'s
when the report to the Secretary is due, is probably a better way of
saying it.

DR. JONES: So then we won\'t be meeting with her?

MS. PRICE: Maybe we will; maybe we won\'t. But it probably won\'t take a
day and a half, whatever we do.

DR. HINGSON: It looks, believe it or not, as though we are actually a
bit ahead of schedule in terms of the data, and maybe one thing we could
think about doing, if we are concerned about not having enough time when
we have our telephone call \-- I personally find these meetings much
more constructive than the phone calls, frankly \-- is to try and take a
pass at creating those groupings of the different types of data or
priority comments about that.

It might be we want to take a little bit of a break before we do that,
but I think there still is enough time to \-- while it is all still
fresh in our heads, to refine things a little bit more than we have.

CHAIRMAN LONG: What is the wish of the committee here? I want to be
careful here that we \-- You know, we have had two other groups here,
and I want to try to keep them about the same and would be happy to do
that. I just want to hear what you have to say. I just heard from Howell
about the Pillar, and I think I saw all the heads shaking.

Do you want to do the same thing we did with the first group and bullet
a few of these and come back? I\'m seeing heads shake. Let\'s take 10
minutes. We will bullet, come back and discuss so that we can pull those
together, which is a way of prioritizing.

Ten-minute break.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the record at 3:13 p.m. and
went back on the record at 3:26 p.m.)

CHAIRMAN LONG: In talking with Bill as we were putting these up, he also
indicated that, just like you did with the other two, that he\'s got a
lot of information back here that he can put some of these
recommendations together for the telephone calls.

We started, Howell, with your Pillar, if that is stated correctly:
Uniform state measures. Okay. Uniform measures.

Then I am just going to go through these and then ask, like we did with
the others, for anything that isn\'t there.

Bullet Number 2: Consistency in Federal agency questions. That will be
an interesting process. Add questions to assist practitioners and
implement programs. This is where we were talking about there are many
different discussions with Kim, with Ralph, about different things to
ask for different solutions and outcomes. So that was an attempt to put
those together.

Task force, study group, which would be a recommendation, and what is
the last one? I\'m sorry. Use existing \-- Okay.

DR. KELLAM: Yes. I think that Howell\'s picking up the consistency in
Federal agency questions in general across the information systems is a
fundamental one. But I also think \-- and I don\'t know where we stand
on it. My suspicion is that there is a fair amount of agreement,
although the shared vision may be kind of vague \-- that we really do
need to recommend that we reduce the fractionation of information
systems, that as every agency, Federal agency, local agency having its
own information to an integrated information system enables us to track
child development with schooling as its core over time, as well as
information systems which give us management data. That is what the rate
at any given time across communities or across the nation is.

Both those information systems need to be very much better integrated.
That is one point, emphasis on integrating and reducing the number of
information systems out there.

For example, reducing the number of agencies doing evaluations of
what\'s effective programming. There must be a half a dozen, including
the latest one, the Helping America\'s Youth, which has 13 agencies
collaborating in trying to make a list of what is effective.

There needs to be, in fact, a common perspective that allows people to
look one place, and that was supposed to be the goal of a Helping
America\'s Youth information system, that effectiveness. But we\'ve got
similar problems about how many people are collecting data on
delinquency, on drug abuse, on academic achievement and the like, how
many agencies, and can we bring them all into one place so that we could
in fact relate them to policy and program.

So the purpose of integrating is to reduce the costs in terms of
manpower and other kinds of capital and money, and then the second
purpose is more to the point. It is to do with what Ralph was talking
about earlier, which is to, in fact, establish a framework of
measurement which lays out the targets and progress toward meeting the
targets and measures periodically the endpoints that are being aimed at.

That is where this task force coming together of practitioners, policy
people and researchers comes in. That is to design it, first to discover
the information systems locally, state-wise and Federal, secondly bring
together in an economic fashion, and to understand the principles of \--
The information system doesn\'t have to all be one big thing, but it
could be multiply layered so that at one level you get a lot of
information altogether, but for specialty purposes you may get special
information. But again that could be shared across institutions.

That is dramatically different than the current practice, and the
current practice has been pervasive for the history of the country, I
think.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Let me illustrate that with a 30-second. This morning
when I was coming over, there was a gentleman in the lobby at the
Holiday, and I went over. He had a cup of coffee, and I had a cup of
coffee, and I introduced myself and we started talking.

He said, are you here for the same meeting? And I said, I don\'t know;
what is your meeting? And he said, well, we are going to be talking
about safety in all kinds of public entities and pandemic flu and how
you communicate. I\'m thinking, we must have a new committee member.
Wrong. He is meeting, and then they all met in the lobby, and he
introduced me to all of them from Homeland Security and HHS, and they
are going to be here for a week talking about this subject.

I said, do you have anyone from Education at the table? That\'s a very
good idea.

Now the reason \-- That happened this morning about seven o\'clock, and
it really illustrates what we are talking about here, that we\'ve got
those silos. That\'s why when I heard, Howell, you said something to the
tune of good luck. I think that is the reason, and that is why I \-- But
that just happened a few hours ago.

DR. WECHSLER: Keeping with Ralph\'s theme of being optimistic, you know,
we have made considerable progress. We at CDC, we are about to launch a
new system to identify effective programs, and we said wait a minute,
SAMHSA has NREPP. We just piled on, and we actually are a member of that
system now, and you go to our website. That\'s where you are going to
get referred to for registries of effective programs.

When we heard talk about how so many of the Safe and Drug Free School
programs are evaluating themselves, so many of them use YRBS. It\'s
another great example of going across Federal agency to use that which
works best. So we are making some progress.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I agree with you, and that is the second chapter of that.
We are making a lot of progress, and especially the people sitting
around this table; because I know some of you are talking and involving
programs.

Fred and I are certainly having conversations, and we are going to be
setting up some things together. So it is working.

MS. TAFT: And that probably should be highlighted in the opening part of
this document so that the Secretary realizes that there are some very
good things that are working and that we need to build on those, so that
she doesn\'t get a very negative idea about this.

CHAIRMAN LONG: That\'s a very good point.

MS. TAFT: And if there was some way in the beginning of the report we
could talk about the Surgeon General\'s call to action and how a lot of
what we are trying to do ties right into that, that the main point it
makes is that it is everybody's problem and everybody\'s responsibility.
So we are trying to be responsible in our recommendations.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I just wanted to make sure that that was captured.
That\'s why I looked over at you there, Bill.

Any other \-- Now I\'ll ask again. Are we getting there so that this can
be put down in black and white for that first conference call? Okay.

Okay. Then we will bring a close to the section on data, and we have two
other \-- If you look on the last page, on page 7, we have two
additional issues. I am just going to say it, and then some reaction
from the committee.

These were not \-- As we know, these were not questions from the
Secretary. These were just as is indicated, additional issues, and there
were two.

One way to approach this is to not have a number of specific
recommendations, just a few, with an opening statement or some
statements about them, because it was not, as we all know, a part of the
questions that the Secretary was asking.

The first one deals with non-public schools, and that was from a \-- I
think, was derived from a panel.

MR. DUNCAN: These were raised by the Secretary when she was here in
person. Some of the things she said fit in the existing questions or
some of the questions. So that is why they were included.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Okay. Thank you for that clarification, Bill.

On non-public there are a couple of recommendations there, I think,
three of them. I will ask you if it is okay to just go with those
recommendations on that additional issue or is there something else that
you wish to add or clarify?

MR. HERRMANN: I think it is fine.

CHAIRMAN LONG: With all the representatives from public institutions, I
think that would be \--

DR. KEYS: Under the non-public schools I have something in my notes
about developing monitoring protocols to address equitable consultation,
and that guidance on this needed to come from the Federal government.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Would you say that again, Sue? Did you say equitable
monitoring?

DR. KEYS: Well, greater clarification and clear guidelines are needed
regarding the consultation requirement. That is one of the bulleted
items. My notes went a step further to suggest that monitoring protocols
be developed. So it\'s not just clarification, but that there would
actually be a product developed.

I don\'t know whether we want to say that or not, but I have that in my
notes.

The other thing I just wanted to mention was that we had a third
additional issue area that didn\'t show up here, and that had to do with
factoring in differences of school type, urban, suburban and rural, and
the challenges proposed by those differences. That was another special
issue that the Secretary asked us to consider, in addition to the
non-public school and trauma.

Actually, I don\'t see that trauma was on here at all.

MS. JACKSON: Is it on page 20?

DR. KEYS: Well, this is what we have in our notes that the Secretary
requested: Promoting the discussion of school safety issues and
dissemination of best practices; better coordination with private and
parochial schools; data sharing between law enforcement, school
officials and mental health professionals; and factoring the differences
in school types.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Belinda?

DR. SIMS: For the non-public schools, one of the presentations, I think,
focused on some of the issues around how the non-public schools are
included in the process, and one of the gaps seemed to be that they
weren\'t part of the surveys, the needs assessments.

Am I recalling that correctly, that one of the issues that came up is at
some point they were left out of one of the loops in terms of being able
to match programs to what their specific needs were.

So when they are asked to be a part of Safe and Drug Free Schools,
sometimes what is offered doesn\'t really fit with what they need,
because they were not included in the needs assessment.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Was it that they were not included or that there was
somehow a breakdown in communication after the fact? Maybe I
misunderstood.

DR. SIMS: Maybe some of both, but I thought I remember them \-- one of
the gentlemen saying that they were not actually included in the needs
assessment phase. So the risk factors and things that are identified are
not necessarily the issues that they are dealing with.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I took part of that \-- and this was interesting, because
I think some of that \-- I am just posing this \-- might be regional. As
I listened to that panel, quite honestly, I have not experienced that in
our area, and I see Montean \-- So I thought there were some regional
issues coming up there that were foreign to me.

If that is true, even if it is one region, then I would say they might
want to communicate to straighten that out.

DR. SIMS: Right. And if there were a policy \-- an informative policy
implementation brief that was developed, it would include some specific
examples such as making sure to include non-public schools in needs
assessments.

CHAIRMAN LONG: You\'re looking at that second to last bullet there? Yes,
okay, good.

DR. KEYS: This was in testimony from the Archdiocesan representative. I
kind of flagged that. This is just a quote from his testimony. He said,
\"Does the LEA a \'same service\' approach to Title IV surveying public
school children without offering to complete an assessment of the
non-public schools\' needs.\" So he is suggesting the question.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I would say go ahead. Again, it might be a regional
situation, but even if it is one region, it is worth putting in the
recommendations. So okay. Anything else on non-public?

Then on the second \--

DR. KEYS: Just one other thing. There was also mention that the
non-public school often does not receive information about what the
allocation is, that they receive information that they can participate
in this program but not what the overall allocation actually is.

So I don\'t know if we want to say anything about that.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Could that \-- This is a question with that point. Could
it also be a part of the bullet that was just mentioned here by Belinda
on the implementation brief that would help the LEAs to know what is
required in terms of working with non-public schools, and vice versa?
Okay.

MS. TAFT: It is a breakdown in communication.

CHAIRMAN LONG: That\'s how I took it, as a breakdown in communication.
Anything else on non-public?

Then on the trauma, which was the other additional issue, we have about
\-- There were eight or nine recommendations there. Anything else to be
added to that or any comments regarding that additional item?

DR. JONES: Yes, just two points. One was on point number 5, it says
there is little science widely available about what kinds of
interventions help children with trauma.

That is not correct. There are a number of interventions that have been
found to be effective with children and trauma. In fact, I sent out a
number of review articles and that kind of thing, and there is just a
wealth of data from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network that is
being funded by SAMHSA, I think, upwards of \$90 million where a lot of
good folks are doing a lot of good things, and there is good evidence to
support a number of empirically based as well as empirically informed
treatment interventions strategies.

Just one other thing, that one of the things that we have not talked a
lot about in this committee, even though we\'ve talked about a number of
great things, we have not talked a lot about Katrina and the impact of
Katrina. I just wanted to make one recommendation regarding the children
impacted by Katrina.

I have been there 10 or 11 times, one of those times, as I said before,
met with Deborah and the Secretary during one visit. But again, I think
it is important that there be some kind of a tracking system to find out
how those kids are doing, at least academically, those in New Orleans as
well as states other than Louisiana.

In many, many discussions that I have had with the parents, teachers,
not so much teachers but crisis counselors, I am getting very mixed
messages. Some kids are doing a lot better, because they have moved from
what has been a very underfunded school system to good school systems.
But again, the actual tracking of how those kids are doing, I think,
would be a very important initiative.

I had an opportunity to talk to Bill just a little bit about this, but
again I just wanted to go on record that that should be a
recommendation.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I\'m not going to ask the question for Tommy, but it made
me think about it. So this would be it. How much would that cost, and
where would that come from?

The reason I am saying that is because \-- A follow-up question. I
don\'t know how many youngsters were displaced by Katrina. I don\'t know
if it was 15,000 or 30,000 or 40,000. I\'m sorry.

DR. JONES: Is that question to me?

CHAIRMAN LONG: Yes. I didn\'t know, because as related to what we are
talking about here, because \-- Well, do you know?

DR. JONES: I\'m not necessarily saying that the Department of Education
is going to fund that particular initiative.

CHAIRMAN LONG: No. The reason I \-- Because if that is a recommendation
to the Secretary, and that is how I heard it, then that is \-- Sometime,
somehow, that would have to equate to dollars and cents.

DR. JONES: Well, then, Bill, can you help me with this one? I didn\'t
mean how much money. I meant more in terms of how to move this \-- put
that recommendation within this context.

MR. MODZELESKI: I don\'t know whether it is a recommendation for the
reauthorization or not.

DR. JONES: Oh, no, no, not at all.

MR. MODZELESKI: I think it is a separate and apart issue.

MS. PRICE: And I think that there is a lot of things going on regarding
Katrina and response to things regarding Katrina, and it would be more a
part of that package. But I think, if you wanted to have kind of a
statement that we think this is a significant thing that should be done,
it is certainly appropriate to put that in the report to the Secretary,
because then that just moves it to an \-- from an awareness standpoint.

MS. JACKSON: Also, already as one of our activities we already have
emergency intervention services following traumatic crisis events such
as shootings, major accidents, etcetera, etcetera, that impede the
learning environment.

So that is already a component of it, and we did get the booklets that
were handed out at the last meeting regarding traumatic stressful events
and how to effectively deal with those.

Something that I passed out and that I am concerned about adding and
would like to recommend is that we have early identification and
intervention services provided early on to adolescents that come into
our school systems already with traumatic events that they faced in
their homes, in their communities, etcetera.

I am talking about historical and/or environmental trauma. As we look at
kids again, they come from families that may be experiencing \-- They
may have some symptoms of FASD. We have domestic violence that occurs in
homes. That affects children learning, successful learning.

So again, the early identification of those students and again referral,
and again I am kind of talking about training and education and
information of what those issues might look like as we are looking at
children, and again try to look at the whole child and use a systems
approach to working with our children.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Help me out. For clarification purposes, are you talking
about an additional item or are you talking about \--

MS. JACKSON: Additional item, not just looking at emergency
interventions services following a traumatic event, but looking at
trauma as it relates as an onset early on with children.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Thank you.

DR. KELLAM: The difficulty with both these add-ons, and particularly
trauma, is that they seem to come out of a separateness. It is as if,
you know, we are kind of addressing a new topic, and it is really
different.

The problem is that we need to understand how this would work if, in
fact, we had ongoing information systems that were monitoring kids over
time at local and state levels and nationally, regionally and so on,
those information systems would tell us how the kids are doing in New
Orleans over time in the aggregate on measures which had some standard
codes, so we could understand how they compared to kids elsewhere,
different communities.

We could monitor them over time, and we would have then a system for
integrating services at the universal, selective, indicated levels with
partnerships with the proper agencies.

It\'s the lack of the information systems and the connection to services
as appropriate inside and beyond the school which comes together, and
one of the problems \-- Ralph was sitting on scientific review
committees. I\'m sure Russell has many times. One of the difficulties
with trauma research is that it is very hard to recreate after the fact
what the monitoring needs to be in order to figure out whether the kids
are indeed suffering from trauma or, more importantly, which kids are
suffering how much and in what way.

Information systems that in fact monitors kids uniformly over time, that
has some national characteristic, really is an opportunity to see how
many things are being affected, everything from flue to diabetes to
obesity to academic achievement. In some sense, you have a system which
allows you to tap into sampling kids for special identification of
problems, the evaluation of interventions.

Trauma becomes a kind of a way of seeing how that kind of integrated
system might help you know what is going on with kids in New Orleans.
Imagine the exodus of those kids to many, many places, but suppose all
of those places had its own local information systems, and they do. They
are just in pieces. Every school they are going to has grades and
achievement and behavior.

You can, in fact, elaborate minimally on that kind of profile and
understand how an information system could be tied to policy and
programs. That is what we\'ve somehow got to create a vision about.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Any other comments on trauma? Recommendations?

Then going to \-- Susan brought up the fact that there was a third
add-on. I want to make sure I am getting this correct, and that was the
factors, if I recall, rural and urban. What is the will of the committee
regarding that?

DR. JONES: Looking through my notes, I didn\'t see it, but I do remember
discussing it.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I am not sure. I\'m going to have to ask this question,
because I\'m not sure where that fits in as far as recommendations that
Susan asked about additional add-on relative to rural/urban.

DR. KEYS: When Secretary Spellings came and met with us, she asked us to
deliberate on four additional questions, and that last one, I\'m not
sure that we really addressed.

MS. PRICE: We talked about it a little bit in issues related to the
State Grants Program. I think one of the questions incorporates the
rural and the urban looking at \-- I was just looking for the question.
There we go. Yes, is it working effectively in those variety of
circumstances?

You know, we heard from some on the urban and rural. We heard some of
the needs of the urban that were specifically related to violence, but I
don\'t know that we have specific recommendations regarding what we
heard that were unique to those environments.

I think that what we talk about is applied to those school districts in
a unique way. Bill?

MR. DUNCAN: At that meeting, I had one or two notes of recommendations,
but I put those in \-- For instance, one was one you mentioned earlier,
and that is paying attention to districts where there is only one
school, because the district is small. So that is actually included on
page \-- I\'m not finding it, but I promise it\'s there \-- 5 in the
first box, the very bottom.

So if there are additional things, of course, we can add those, but
anything that we took notes on that day are included somewhere else in
here. I think there were only two. So if there are additional
recommendations, of course, we will add a box for that.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Hearing that, then I will ask again, because I want to
make sure that everything is heard. Is that sufficient or what is the
wish? Should we proceed? Debbie, Susan?

MS. PRICE: Well, a couple of issues rose to the surface as we had our
urban and rural conversation, and persistently dangerous was one. In
those communities where there is only one school, how do you deal with
the choice issue?

Then there was the dollar issue, primarily dollar, but the issue of
State Grants as it relates to urban and rural. But so much of what we
are dealing with, we are dealing with specific communities and applying
\-- I can think what I\'m thinking, but I don\'t know that I can
verbalize what I\'m thinking.

It is part of the addressing of the individual schools that we \--
school districts and issues related to those that we do. I don\'t know
that we have a specific category of questions.

We could make a kind of summary statement that we heard from rural and
urban and talked to their needs and those issues, and just kind of
identify where we have placed those recommendations related to that in
the report. But if you all remember something that is specific that we
didn\'t capture, we would be happy to add that.

CHAIRMAN LONG: I just wanted to make sure that we weren\'t passing over
something. That is why I was asking.

DR. KEYS: As was I. When I read the transcript from that session, I
didn\'t feel that we really addressed the issue in what was talked
about, and I wasn\'t sure what the issue was. So I\'m just asking, have
we adequately done what we were supposed to, and it all depends on what
the final report looks like also.

Are we going to take each of those four questions that the Secretary
asked and look at them separately or will they be integrated into the
other three pieces?

If we have to look at all four of those questions separately, I just
think the last question is going to get a weak treatment.

MS. LeBOEUF: When you talk about urban and rural, are you also including
Native American? Is that included as a category to be looked at, those
schools?

MS. PRICE: We didn\'t pull Native American out uniquely, no.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Getting back to what Bill said, I am just throwing this
out. As you went through this, it is my understanding that you put that
idea into two of the other areas. If that is sufficient, we can leave
it. If not, we need to go after it. What is your pleasure?

MS. PRICE: I am happy to broach this with some folks in the Secretary\'s
office to make sure that we have addressed it and we haven\'t dropped
the ball on this one, which I don\'t think we did. But I would be happy
to do that.

The reason I haven\'t popped up with a responsive answer is I was trying
to think the best way to approach it, but I would be happy to pursue
that. If we have to do something to supplement what we have already
done, we will figure that out. I think we will be all right.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Any other items for the good of the order? As we bring
this to a close, and if there\'s any other comments, but first of all we
mentioned many times with these three areas now go to Bill to get them
out to us for information as we see them in black and white for the
first conference call in April.

MS. JONES: Are we going to actually get out of here early? That\'s
great. I\'ve just got two things to say.

One, first of all, I want to really thank Bill for putting this
together. I thought you did a great job calling together a lot of
information. So very thankful for that.

Just one other thing. I just wanted to \-- 45 seconds. Give you an
update. I was in Baton Rouge a week ago, and anyway I met with a group
of crisis counselors \-- and my phone is ringing. Anyway, I met with a
group of crisis counselors. They are part of Louisiana Spirit. This is a
FEMA funded initiative, and these folks have been on the ground since
Day One, and they are working very hard just doing a Herculean task in
terms of helping individuals.

I asked them, given that I am interested in children and adolescents, to
give me a list of different problems that they saw or things that could
be done to help children and adolescents, because many of them are doing
very poorly.

What they did, they gave me approximately \-- I don\'t know \-- 150,
200, 250 lists of different things of various needs, and I just want to
quickly just give you what some of those categories are, just a couple
of things.

One was teachers and educators. Many of the good teachers,
unfortunately, are leaving or have already left the area. So you\'ve got
teachers who aren\'t the best in some instances.

Advocacy for mentoring, help with parents. Programs was another area,
and under programs more summer programs, summer educational support in
math and science, extensive specialized counseling.

In schools, caring truancy programs, individual family group therapy
sessions, etcetera. But again, just a lot of information, and I just
want to share this with the group to let you know. Don\'t forget about
Katrina, and continue to support the children of the Gulf Coast.

CHAIRMAN LONG: Well, just so you know that Riverside County, California,
cares, Russell, we had 1200 people land at March Air Force Base in eight
days, and over 400 youngsters were enrolled in our schools from there,
and about two percent of the children and parents have gone back. They
have stayed which I am sure that you are \-- and we have hired many
teachers and administrators.

DR. JONES: Yes, I think many great things are being done. I really do.

CHAIRMAN LONG: In closing, I really want to say this. Think about what
you have done in eight or nine hours, tremendously rich conversation
and, most importantly, synthesized the information into a very useful
form so that we can come up with these recommendations.

I have been around a lot of groups. You are very passionate about what
you do. You have a depth of expertise and experience, and you expressed
it, and it all came together.

I was trying to think about it through the day. We all work with many
groups. This is a very good one. So thank you very much for the day.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the record at 4:03 p.m.)

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