quorum being present the committee will come to order for the purpose of conducting a hearing on the best practices and successful school turnarounds and we'll look at this critical issue of how turner can be accomplished in our nation's failing schools the syrian continues a series on the reauthorization of the elementary secondary education act we've held a hearing this year looking at a range of issues from charter schools to effective teachers and beyond and through these  learned that to compete in a global marketplace our students must have a world class education system with clear high rigorous standards that are internationally benchmarked have also brought to light how vulnerable and how valuable data in learning and teaching we need to drive at all levels of education we've also learned that successful schools supported teachers ensure that all students have access to an effective teacher but in order to do this we can't simply fix the law by making a few small tw aks there's much more at stake our global competitiveness is reliant on the actions we're taking today we get don't get to do a redo tomorrow what we've done wrong today it's time to take our education system into the future one of our biggest problems in the education system is a  dropout crisis and our lowest performing schools turning around our lowest performing schools as critical to our economy to our communities and to our students in a recent report shows that cutting the dropout rate in half would yield forty five billion dollars annually to a new federal tax revenues or cost savings there are or there are over five thousand chronically low performing schools in this country doing a disservice to hundreds of thousands of students two thousand high schools produce seventy percent of our nation's dropouts these are schools where the dropout rates are staggeringly high and where students are not even close to proficient and where teachers and leaders do not often know what else they can do no child left behind dictated interventions to help the schools but what we've learned since the law was enacted as if the too prescriptive and very often they're unrelated to the real needs of the schools different systems work in different schools what what most of these schools need is a fresh start a fresh start doesn't mean shutting down necessarily means chatting on a school shutting down a school should be the last option after all others of an improvement have failed and when it's clear that some schools are impervious to change a fresh start doesn't mean firing all teachers and only hiring back an arbitrary number you can find some of the best teachers in the worst performing schools but they are stuck in a system that isn't supporting them and if you fire all teachers and you end up getting rid of the ones that are meant you also get rid of the ones that are making a difference a fresh start means a buy in from school leaders teachers parents in the community it means a team effort to put together the tools that make schools great thankfully we're not working in the dark there is extensive research and real world examples that can show us the elements that lead to school success first turning around schools is about teaching and learning it's about giving teachers the resources they need like data systems to track student progress and and a culture of continuous improvement second it's about using time to the advantage of the school which can mean an extended learning day which includes successful afterschool programs it's about making schools have more time they need to catch up and use targeted academic support as well as enrichment activities like arts music to keep students engaged and time for teachers to collaboratively plan their teaching their teaching  services to meet individual needs of the students when you put all the right systems in place you can turn around even the worst performing schools look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about what works what does what does help to turn around our lowest performing schools and learn from their experience or expertise thank you so much for being with us and now i'd like to recognize a senior republicans mr thompson well thank you mr chairman and welcome to our witnesses mr klein regrets that he and several other members of the committee are on able to do today because are in the midst of debating a national defense we authors are authorization act today's hearing addresses an issue critically important to the academic success of our nation's students in two thousand and one congress passed a no child left behind act which requires states and school district students are proficient in reading and math and of the two thousand and thirteen two thousand and fourteen school year for schools are on able to make what their status defined as adequate yearly progress towards achieving that goal last ellis a process to improve the struggling schools and protect the best interests of the students turning around low performing schools is essential to ensuring low income students receive i quality education what to do so effective takes time that is why parental choice and supplemental education services such as free tutoring were written into the law these commonsense measures proper students and immediate educational lifeline whether schools improve i believe we must do everything that we can to help ensure students advance academically even when their schools take the top but necessary steps towards improvement despite the best efforts of congress in this committee it's clear to many states are still struggling to improve the standing of the lowest performing schools i look forward to discussing in more detail the challenging challenges schools continue to face including in some cases a lack of well on the part of administrators to take a dramatic action that may be necessary to improve the schools also wan dr thomas poller superintend the ridgeway area school district located in my congressional district for being here today to share his expertise and strategies that will school districts put in place to turn around their schools as policy makers at the federal level we there are a number of concerns shared by members of both political parties but the masturbations approach which represents a more intrusive federal role in education policy is better left to parents and state and local leaders of equal concern these changes to the existing school improvement grant program has been imposed on the state and school leaders outside of the reauthorization process without proper congressional oversight i'm also concerned the ministrations blueprint eliminates options for parents of students trapped in chronically underperforming schools school turnaround is important but we must restore the power of federal efforts to reform education we'll hear from our witnesses today about their own personal experiences trying to ensure students in underperforming schools get the top notch education they deserve their experience will no doubt and formal work inform our work our work as we look to reauthorize reauthorize the elementary and secondary education act mr chairman thank you for all in this hearing and i welcome the like now to introduce our panel of witnesses i'll begin with mr john salmons who is a president learning initiatives and nonprofit asserting public schools and consulting on student learning strategies mr simmons has over thirty five years of experience with in the field of education united states and abroad is also a politike publisher having written and edited six books and more than seventy five articles on education management economic development david silver's a principal of think college now elementary a position he's held since two thousand and three his school has focused on closing the achievement gap and moving closer to achieving his vision of equity through free access to afterschool programs stronger family and community involvement in aggressive recruitment of professional development of teachers and staff in two thousand and eight college now was honored as california distinguished school awarded the title want to achieve an award with dr daniel king as the superintendent of the for san juan alamo independent school district in texas a t the school district dr king help establish innovative new programs like college and career technology academy in the early college high school as a result the school district reduced its dropout rate by seventy five percent in two years to an intensive intervention initiative and saw the number of graduates increased by sixty percent he has over thirty three years working within the educational field including over twenty years as a mass trader jessica johnson is the chief program officer for the district school improvement services at learning boller superintendent of the ridgeway area school district located in l county pennsylvania dr butler holds a ph d in educational leadership from penn state university where his dissertation focused on how globalization influences collaboration between rural schools and communities dr butler's dissertation receive an award from the american education research association roles special interest group in two thousand and ten dr ballers carly facilitator for the leadership in teaching corps which is a collaboration between the also a member of the forum for western pennsylvania superintendents loser ridgeway pennsylvania with his wife and three children plays a doctor but when this family were able to make the trip to washington and welcome them to the committee and i look forward to his testimony today thank you of colleges and schools in which the strengths and the weaknesses of the school were analyzed and the school improvement plan established she is a two thousand and six national distinguished principal as awarded by the national association of of elementary school principals and the u s department of education welcome to our committee welcome to all of you when you begin your testimony we're going to start with the stemmons a green light is going to go on and eventually after four or five minutes a yellow light will go on at which to think about summarizing and finishing up your testimony to a close but we want you to finish in a coherent fashion to make sure that you made the points that you want to make in the red light is on and then we'll go to questioning by the members of the committee when you when you've all finished testifying welcome to the committee mr chairman mr thompson and members of the committee my name is john simmons i'm the president of strategic learning initiative cargo based non profit organization that has enjoyed a remarkable success in turning around low income public elementary schools in chicago we have created a new model for turning around schools in three years eight schools in which our model was applied turned around their reading test scores and school culture the taxpayers saved twenty four million dollars compared to other turnaround models the leadership teams of the schools accomplish this without removing a principal or a teacher at the beginning without changing the curriculum or the textbooks and without converting to a charter or a contract school the reason for our success is simple we have private research is known will work in schools we avoid untested ideas as surely as any one of you would avoid a medicine that had not been given safe proven safe and effective our message today by the basic and the best systemic research monitor and celebrate its application breakthrough results will happen i would like to focus on two things first that reauthorization of e s e a should allow for a strategy like ours that emphasizes the importance of comprehensive school reform strategies  grounded in rigorous research and shown to work using existing staff e s e a should add a fifth intervention model to the fore in the department of education's blueprint this would accelerate the rate of change among the lowest performing schools and save money the second theme is that there must be federal investment to demonstrate how to scale up successful schools we cannot continue to create schools that remain only islands of excellence in a sea pretty again the research on high performing organization shows us how to rapidly diffuse innovation specific actions include decentralization of decision making and expanding the work done in teams by applying this is demick research done over the past twenty years in chicago we have demonstrated that failing schools can jump start your turnaround in transformation in two years let me tell you about a specific project we carried out in a public elementary schools in very low income and minority neighborhoods in chicago when we began the schools had shown virtually no improvement for the previous ten years here the results over three years eight improved four times faster than their annual progress over the ten years before starting what we call the focused instruction process in the first year three schools turned around and all eight turned around by the end of the third year two of the eight where the most improved public school in chicago in two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight in a city where there are four hundred and seventy three elementary schools we define turnaround as improving at least three times faster than the school's rate of improvement before they started to focus instruction process and having a major change in school culture teachers parents and principal working together in an atmosphere of trust to charge for the next two pages in the written testimony provide the charts for the results how were these remarkable results achieved strategic learning took the results of the research on high performance organizations in the private sector and combined it with the research done in education over the past twenty years together these research results clearly show what a school needs in order for  succeed not just public schools any schools from the research the school leadership teams then focus on providing what we call the five essential supports they include developing shared leadership offering high quality professional development for the teachers and the administrators ensuring instruction is rigorous and focused engaging parents in learning the illinois standards so that they can better help their children with their homework creating a culture collaboration among the teachers administrators parents and students so domestically ensuring that these five essential supports were in place and effective partnership with the chicago public school leadership led to the rapidly improving gains in student learning and independent analysis of the data by the american research reports that this model works should be supported by the federal government and scaled up  research unlike the success that had looted the schools for so many years the heart of my message is this for too many years the debate about school reform has focused on the type of school charter school versus traditional public school i believe and strategic learning experience proves that there is a better and less costly way the research shows that providing these five essential supports open the pathway to successful reform on a scale that matters mr chairman thank you my name is david silver principal and founder of think college now a public school in a low income area of oakland california why college now it was founded to reverse a harsh reality less than one out of twenty kids in oakland many of whom live in poverty attend a university of california school when a group of families educators and i heard this we knew we had to take action through the small autonomous schools movement we came together to form in college now a college prep public elementary school in a low income neighborhood with in the open unified school district ninety five percent of our students receive free and reduced lunch two thirds are english language learners and more than ninety percent are latino african american or multi racial our mission is clear close the achievement gap and ensure all our students can go to college and pursue their dreams you referred to slide to well the slide on the screen what have we achieved when we opened our doors eight percent of our students were achieving at or above grade level in english language arts and twenty three percent in math as measured by the california standards test five years later sixty six percent of our students are at or above grade level in reading and eighty one percent in math again of over eight hundred percent in reading and three hundred percent in math what's more these games are across every subgroup african american latino english language learner and students receiving free and reduced lunch as documented in your reading written testimony we've also gained two hundred sixty three points to surpass both district and state averages on the a p i to have an a p i of eight hundred forty eight because of these gains as the chairman mentioned thing college now is named one of only fifty schools in california to receive both the california distinguished school and the title one academic achievement award in two thousand and eight how did we do it if you refer to page three in four of your testimony our focus is equity in action a vision of student achievement and college opportunity for all students we have five  one unite the entire community on our big call goal college elementary students in high income neighborhoods know they're expected to go to college our students and families do too if you ask any student family teacher staff and think college now why are you here the answer is the same we're going to college we begin thinking college in kindergarten number two high expectations we expect more so we can get different results there's a level of trust where teachers are expected to get their students to achieve and administration is expected to support them to get there when our students were not achieving in your two we went and observed high achieving schools in similar demographics to observe and learn best practices we are creating a culture where failure is not an option and achievement is the norm number three also in year three we implemented standards assessment and data system to drive instruction and monitor progress grade level teams create a standards based pacing calendar and lessons to deliver high quality instruction through our six week cycles teachers assessed mastery using assessment and data to group students for reteaching and intervention number for family and community partnerships the heart of thing college now we know we cannot reach our goals alone we partner with organizations and families for support more than half our kindergarten families on a daily basis are in the classroom reading with their kids and over all all of our students attend parent teacher conferences at g c s e we're not just a school a community and finally perhaps the most important the backbone of our success are outstanding teachers and staff we work relentlessly to recruit select support and retain our teachers honestly there are amazing i would put our teachers up against any not only in california but across the country and my recommendation what can we do page five and six of your testimony in the fight for educational equity we all must do more to replicate and expand not only our success but the countless other schools that are doing amazing things to close achievement gaps we must create conditions to support soon achievement for all students i have five recommendations number one provide schools autonomy for hiring budget curriculum an assessment first and foremost ensure sites can hire their own teachers and staff selecting a staff invest everyone in the vision it is the most important lever to increase student achievement at a school number to maximize a budget flexibility through results based budgeting in oakland unified we can put resources where they are needed into academic intervention coaching and time for collaboration sites need to be held accountable for results but not without full control of their budgets and how to spend their resources number three connect everything to academic growth at d c and we've created a culture based on student growth and how come there is public accountability of data at the school classroom and student level i support any policy that begins to differentiate schools principals and teachers not just on seniority but on their ability to increase student learning number four ensure all sites have standards assessment curricular and assessment autonomy help us to focus on standards master mastery instead of fidelity to a commercial curriculum we piloted standards based assessments three to four times a year and they are now adopted by our entire district and finally perhaps the most important increase federal dollars to all title one schools it is to demand annual achievement growth while decreasing resources while more affluent parents can fundraise for their schools to alleviate budget cuts low income families cannot sites that have high poverty populations need more financial resources to meet their needs period in conclusion we must remember this is not about an eye it is about a we we we will close this meeting this session that i will say right now like we close every meeting at think college now with an appreciation and a reality on behalf of all the students families and educators working relentlessly in title one schools thank you for listening thank you for considering recommendations to create conditions for all students rich or poor to truly have a shot at the american dream and finally as we say it to c n n the reality is this is the civil rights issue of our time i as a principal cannot address it alone parents teachers and students cannot do it alone u s congressman cannot do it alone as well but together we can make a difference our students deserve nothing less together yes we can point to the same way to thank you yes my name is daniel superintendent of the bar someone alamo independent school district located on the texas mexico border in the rio grande valley of texas i've been fortunate to be involved in two highly successful school district turnarounds the first worst rated in the bottom five percent in texas into a high performing school district as developed a reputation for excellence at national level the most unique component of this transformation was the conversion of the district's high school into an early college high school for all students  and the entire school district into an early college school district a systemic transformation the algo high school has consistently ranked among the best high schools in texas over the last decade was ranked number eleven in the nation by u s news and world report in two thousand and seven  considered one of the best in texas this district is comprised almost entirely of hispanic students from lower income households where spanish is a primary language the transformation from bottom five percent to a decade of receiving accolades for excellence has been empowering for the entire community the second case is very informative due to the pace and scale of change the for someone else independent school district or p s u as it's known is a thirty one thousand students and every high school was failing to meet a white and reduced the real number and rate of dropouts by seventy five percent in two years while increasing the real number of graduates by more than sixty percent from less than a thousand graduates in two thousand and six zero seven to almost sixteen hundred graduates in two thousand and eight zero nine and the projected eight hundred grads this school year the dropout rate has plummeted from almost double the state average to less than half the state average for the first time ever all campuses in the district have met a white innovations including a door credit for high school and college credit dropout recovery high school high school college current technology academy has graduated five hundred  seventeen dropouts and none graduates from ages eighteen to twenty six years old only two and a half years with most college hours before high school graduation and many continuing on in community college or four year college after graduation was designed to be a laboratory to develop an incubator concept while preparing for systemic scale up not in our land of excellence but intended to transform the entire system impact all high schools two million dollars grant to scale up our bold initiative all students college ready college connected to these two experiences i've learned the following about school turn around high expectations are imperative it helps to set bold goals quality leadership at both the district and campus level is critical systemic transformation is the most effective way to impact low performing schools working with at all levels elementary middle and five years of experience working with state districts and schools i come to you today with a little bit different perspective than some of my colleagues and that's primarily because we work with both states and districts to turn around schools and systems in the past five years my team has worked with over forty districts across several states in implementing corrective action plans and restructuring under no child left behind and from that i'd like to share with you my perspective in terms of what we've learned from the research as well as what we've learned from practice i think it's fair to say across the board that the research on turnaround sparse and in my written testimony i addressed some of the specifics regarding each of the models but if you look at across the board my colleagues have already mentioned there are absolutely key themes that matter right strong leadership absolutely critical we all know you have to have it a focus on instruction in the classroom particularly literacy instruction whether you're at the elementary or the high school level it's absolutely critical  solid learning environment for kids a belief that all kids can learn and high expectation for all kids is critical for school turn around and transformation a supportive culture that engages families and that supports the non academic needs of students is critical and if you look at the research you'll find that these non academic factors in a student's life matter as much as the teacher in the leader in that school in terms of their overall performance and lastly something that my colleagues also touched on is the need for staff commitment to change and that's something that's really hard to get through policy so a couple things to think about with regard to this research one is we don't know to what to what extent each of these different factors matters in different circumstances so we know a leader is really important but we don't know when a leader matters more when an instructional matter instructional model matters more or how these factor together the other thing is really hard to implement  the policy that we create have to have the flexibility to allow for schools to gain this commitment to allow for creativity and meeting the needs where we need them while still honoring the core elements of what we know works in the research for  example several weeks ago my staff were reviewing the school improvement grant applications for one stage and many of the schools were implementing the transformation model and many of them indicated they would implement an afterschool program because as we know extended learning is one of the requirements of the transformation model however what we didn't see in the application was a focus on a coherent extended learning program to the traditional day to the overall objectives of a school turnaround and it's focusing on the outcomes requiring an afterschool program is a good thing we really need to require that they have coherence and alignment in their programs across the board and that's something we can think about now also means as with that flexibility we've got  offer support there's going to big focus i think on support in terms of implementation of turnaround in school improvement grants there's been less of a focus in support upfront in the needs assessment and planning process well the reality is this is where the schools really need t help as i said many of these schools were asked to create restructuring plans under n c l b and now to some are asking them to do the same thing only with a different name so now create a plan for school turnaround and if you get it approved then we'll go ahead and bring in support for you really the supports need to be there earlier on to make sure that the right models are being put in place that the needs are being assessed properly and that leads to my last point which is the entire system matters in this process if we really want to make school turn around a national movement and i think that's really what this is about that's where the momentum is going it's got to be about not just the school is an island the district small urban district in rural districts the district is the primary support for those schools if a principal  that district is the one that's got to come in and backfill and know what to do station regional support systems also provide support and tools for schools and districts and we've got to be able to tool these folks up in the larger system external service providers early childhood providers community organizations youth organizations we have to look at this alignment and coherence across the board in terms of the supports that we put in place and so lastly i want to leave you with one thought which is i started off by saying the research on turn around and that's true what we need to do is be very diligent about how we collect data and how we have value eight what's happening real time in the system with the networks of organizations working what national benchmarks look like to share best practices and we need a aligned data collection system so that we're looking at what's working real time we're not doing a five year study where we don't know  inviting me to testify this morning i'm soo bridge's principal of a g richardson elementary school in rural called approximately seventy miles southwest of here eighty richardson enrolled just under six hundred students from pre kindergarten through the fifth grade and employs eighty four teachers and staff our schools mission is developing the foundation for lifelong success and my teachers staff and i begin each day with this mission in mind i know through personal experience that a principle of leadership in a school must be focused on a cohesive mission statement that is centered on student learning at a g richardson we use data to define who we are mark our progress over time and secure and manage the tools necessary to continue to achieve our mission staying mission focus is especially important in a school environment where challenges pop up at any time i firmly believe that i have been successful in leading change in my school because of my hardworking and dedicated staff and because of the support and flexibility and decision making that i have been given by the school district administration to be effective all principals require the authority and autonomy to make necessary changes in their school building this means principals must be able to arrange buildings and resources to address the needs of students and to work collaboratively with colleagues both inside and outside of the school to identify the tools needed to change and gro there is no single plan or one set of resources or one style of leadership that will make every school successful each school has its own personality and culture and successful leaders uses the information to make critical decisions every day my school recently experienced a significant change in two thousand and seven eighty richardson was redistricted along with five other schools and called the opportunity my staff and i had to lead our school community through this challenging time while remaining focused on our schools mission redistricting resulted in sixty percent of our students being redistricted to a new school and replaced with students who are entering our building for the first time our school district is large and quite remote in part while there are a number of neighborhoods now feeding my school they're scattered throughout the district and are several miles apart my staff and i quickly realized that we needed to take great measures to assess the individual needs of our new students in order to target instruction accordingly we made two strategic changes to remain focused on edgy richardson's mission while bringing our new school family together first we focused on the need for more real time data to inform classroom instruction grade level teams began employing targeted assessments to identify their students specific skills and needs and then divided their students into small groups for direct instruction during this process it was my job to keep data discussions among teachers current and to help them make effect of instruction decision to help secure volunteers to work with small groups of students and to allow for flexible scheduling of teachers time to accommodate their small group instruction i began holding bi weekly differentiation meetings with each grade level to look at benchmarking data student work and standardized test data we knew it was critically important to monitor our students performance throughout the school year so problems could be identified and remediated right away the further of richardson's mission teachers shared their successful instructional strategies with each other and worked collaboratively to identify and refer our neediest students for response to intervention services which provided more intense skills specific instruction second my staff and i identified the need to re establish an atmosphere of a neighborhood school to develop a sense of community stablish what we called apparently is on program to bring the school families together parent representatives from each of g richardson's neighborhood serve as a two way communication tool for me and for each other i use them to solicit feedback to seek volunteer help to gauge the progress my school is making throughout the school year and to identify problems that may need to be addressed in turn these parent liaison communicate with me concerns and issues bubbling up in their specific neighborhood i make quarterly with apparently to discuss future projects and activities to solicit feedback and to have an open dialog families who are new to our school are paired up with apparently eyes on in their neighborhood to provide them with a connection to our school we recently performed a parent survey eighty richardson well i collected in tally the data my parent reached out to individual family in their respective neighborhoods to solicit additional feedback this approach has helped to develop a collaborative spirit between and among educators and families and schools but it has also afforded me the opportunity to focus more of my time and attention on the instructional needs of the school and to manage the change process we've been going through in recent years instituting change in any organization is difficult and schools are certainly no different leading change a g richardson required establishing in affirming our school's mission keeping all staff focused on that mission and securing and analyzing current data to inform the classroom instruction of our students as a principal i lead instruction by showing my teachers and staff what possible and supporting them with procedures and resources so they can get the work done i prop up their efforts by working collaboratively with them to analyze student data and monitor progress over time as a result of our strategic learning focus we have seen progress in our student achievement and have maintained scores in the eighty percent range for grades three through five in reading math social studies and science as the instructional leader principles must have they do have a vital and unique perspective of their school because of this princip understand that local decision staffing resource priority infrastructure needs etc must continue to reside at the school level and district level work community and school needs can be adequately weighed and addressed recent proposals from the federal government  recognised the important role principals play in turning around low performing schools but fail to factor in the need for a locally based decision making i would argue and research backs this up that principals are responsible for leading change in all schools and perhaps more importantly sustaining changes that focus on student learning principals especially those in challenging circumstances must grow in their jobs just as teachers work collaboratively with each other to hone best practices in the classroom principals learn best from each other through networking and mentoring opportunity we know the principals are second only to classroom instruction in positively impacting our students achievement and must work collaboratively with teachers and parents to be successful principals are experts at managing requests and putting into practice what is best for the students who come through the school doors every morning ask any principal at any given time what they must be an expert in and be careful of their response principals are teachers nurses counselors finance directors curriculum experts plumbers lunch aides behavior specialist marriage referees you name it the principal has done it but most important role the principal now i know my students teachers and staff are all breathing a little bit easier as we complete each assessment i'm breathing a little bit easier but i also know that the pressure will mount as we await the results of those assessments and what that will school fire people rehire that you're you're on your road to success not every not every school gets the opportunity to do that nor necessarily want to do that they'd rather distinguished but you still have to build as a parent by what's taking structure a modified structured mr sober when we look at the schools in chicago we find so many teachers and principals who have not had the opportunity to really show what they could do so there's this vast resources of people who are out there and when they get the right model based on the research the right support support from the central office and they have a great school leadership team all these things come together  and existing teachers respond in ways that exceeded their expectations our expectations the expectations of the central office there's a vast resources out there that is untapped  sober i think that in the beginning of our school we were able to to get the seeds of of success in terms of creating a culture creating a big goal creating systems for collaboration creating a team getting family involvement and as we went forward when our student achievement in your two was only at ten percent of our students actually reading at grade level or above there are two key things that i think that we did that helped propel us going forward number one is we went and observed other high achieving schools with similar demographics you know when we started the school we thought we always said we're going to close the achievement gap we're going to make sure that all students in low income areas can until we actually saw african american and latino students in low income neighborhoods achieving at high levels there was a part of even me to didn't believe but when we saw that when we took our entire staff and we saw that this could be a reality thing shifted we knew that we could do this and we had a responsibility to do it the second thing we learned from that visit is the focus on standards and data in the beginning we were not necessarily focused we were told we needed to focus on curriculum or other things that didn't work we need to focus on standards we need to align ourselves and make sure that we had data cycles where at this point starting in year three every one of our teachers knew exactly where each student was at with respect to the standard that they were supposed to learn and had mechanisms to reteach that standard and intervention support to do it when i visited we're talking about teaching to the test in the school the principal said we'll educate the kids the test will take care of themselves you talk about teaching to the standards in other schools in my area just down the road from where you are a lot of it's about teaching to the tests what's the distinction in these two educational models  it is our responsibility to make sure that all our students are learning standards the distinction is this when i was a teacher when i started in my first year in compton california through teach for america there were no real standards there was no real high stakes to test i was teaching whatever and now you know when when students are in schools often they come in with different with different backgrounds and they come in with different levels of learning and the students in poor neighborhoods often come into kindergarten way behind their more affluent peers without a clear standard there is no way for us to increase our cation and make sure that all our students learn it is our responsibility to make sure that the  standards of california are taught in english language arts in math and science and social studies and all the different subject levels and without a standard and without a way to measure that standard there will be no equity  but as you pointed out i think is the witnesses individually here there are key elements there are elements of success and we're we're in the process of sort of trying to steal those that we can so people can can reach for those those elements  n as they think about turning around their individual individual schools but also you talk about this vision this connection of this experience what comes next and dr  students because when i graduated in that time i went to graduate from high school you probably went to the sugar refinery or the oil refinery went to the chemical plant or the steel mill you kind of knew what you were going to do because other people the town were doing that today it doesn't work that way and yet you have a connection here very strong connection to the parents i was thinking about this is connected to whether or not i can go to college and succeed in college the program connects them to careers and opportunities and knowledge about important cultural and economic asset that they have and it's about their kids future is connected in that sense and i just want to if you would comment maybe i'm off base here but if you think about how you put these elements together it also has to have a vision for that parents for those parents and that community i think that's absolutely critical and one of the challenges what do you do in the places where they don't seem to have that vision so how do we push people along to that we have to show them what's possible give parents and community school that vision of what's possible and i love what mr silver said about taking folks out to those schools in terms of the individual teachers and this is a real challenge how do you how do you take these isolated pockets  there the first problem to hit me in the face was that was a dropout situation where we set a goal in the first year to cut it in half and we achieved we didn't set a goal to cut it by five percent but we set a goal to cut it in half we opened in a matter of five weeks we opened a brand new high school to bring back dropouts age eighteen to twenty six and get them their high school diploma and connect them to college that was into the successful in a meditative months we graduated the first fifty and th department of education for school turnaround models and during the the release of the regulations the department said and i quote we understand that somewhere areas may face unique challenges in turning around low achieving schools but note that the amount of funding available to implement the four models would help to overcome the many resource limitations that previously of hundreds excess for rural school reform in many areas that's one question models that is what we were excited about that we would be able to have the funds to go out and make sure we help who have the heart we can also give them the skills the turnaround models our for our area really a nonstarter i believe for example if you're going to close a school down to send the school students to another high performing school within your district there is none because that's the only elementary school that's the only middle school if you're going to get rid of fifty percent of the teachers in your principal that is a major challenge and that's why i just want to go back to the fact of how much you know i'm very proud of the collaborative effort that we've had with the teacher evaluation how that was put together and there is a responsibility on the school district i believe in a rural area to get teacher up to par up to snuff but it's also up to the school district to make sure if a teacher is not doing that that they're no longer in front of students thank you as you talk about the importance of ensuring that provide any examples that you know of as the president of a state organization where state local officials have made the difficult decision to close the school to institute dramatic school reform effort what impact would the four  used i think we need to be careful and clear on the criteria that used to select which fifty percent go in which fifty percent on teacher evaluation procedures which i feel like we have a good solid program in our district but the documentation would need to be needs to know the school culture in the communities in the community and i think it would take is a learning curve i'm not convinced that immediate change would be would be evident because it takes time to get to know the culture level of quality in terms of leadership of course the at the campus level the principals position and and the rest of the campus leadership team the assistant principals whatever they might have depending on not a lot of data to really support the various models as yet so here are these schools all across our country and they're being asked to turn around schools and what can the federal government collection right now we're starting this first wave of school improvement grants and you've got hundreds possibly thousands of schools undergoing this attempt to do turnaround what are the consistent metrics we're going to look at across the board so that we have a better sense of what works where and what matters most the other thing i think we can do is focusing the policy on the outcomes that we know make a difference without overly specific about principals before we started to work with them the secret vote that was reviewed by the union representative so their teachers had to buy it in terms of saying that they were willing to work with the same thing with their principals they had to volunteer this was not a mandate it makes an enormous difference if people willingly sign up for the for using these kinds of funds so that's central to the other piece in the in the buy in is it is important for people to then participate in the fine tuning the program we call it a process because it's flexible flexible is one of the key words i've heard this morning principals need autonomy they need the flexibility well focused instruction process we use provides them that up front they are empowered to make changes and to continuously improve the model and the data so these are things that get the teachers to stay in the building we have very low turnover in these buildings it may have been very high thirty forty percent we schools start to use these kinds of processes and guess what the teachers want to stay so is participating or working with the schools over a period of three or four years what happens after you leave the school sustain well commitment it's up to the leadership of the buildings in the in the district to provide t support to the climate for sustaining it in some schools it works very well sometimes there's a new principal comes in not interested in continuing that's a problem but that's where the local school councils in chicago make such a difference because the councils are their elected by the parents and the teachers to look at what's going on when they see there's a program they like they go to the principal who's new and says we want to keep this program it works my time is up thank you we're fortunate to have an on line assessment program to desegregate our data for us immediately the teachers can get their data broken down by question and student performance on those questions and then a group of their children according to the performance on those assessments we meet those benchmarks assessments are given every six weeks for six weeks depending on the assessment and then we also administer some growth model assessments which are really important the developmental reading assessment pal's which is unique to adjustments in instruction to make improvements right then and there those benchmark assessments that are aligned with every four to six weeks are essential and we get those back real time within five minutes after each or in the office and scanning it in and getting those results by student by standard question and we have data conferences afterwards with each teacher to figure out what are the plans that they're going to do and also asking what is the support you need from us as we go forward to make sure all students can achieve perfect place the perfect panel for you to be i have so many questions and i could go on and on so i'm going to start first with john in your program which sounds like a model  we should all just take very seriously do you have evaluation systems is that important as a part of your measuring of the outcomes while not the outcomes measuring your teachers and  how many teachers were terminated over this period of time in order to make things better that direct question to you and then to the whole panel i'd like to know if you've run into any reluctance in your evaluation question is very important that the data from our schools is that the principals are in the classrooms observing what the teachers are doing on a much more regular basis than ever before in the past they really see themselves as instructional leaders that teachers work together to help each other improve their teaching and assessment every four weeks is important we have every five to seven days the students work there are no stakes assessments that the teachers give to get back within a twenty four hours so they that data is used to assess each other they are getting the students of the teacher before them in their grade level below they are desperate to improve the quality of that teaching immediately especially when they see low performing results so there's a built in process into what we have here which has continuous evaluation of the teachers which they and the principals are under control have a lot of teachers left for poor performance not in our buildings w because the performance is steadily going up and people are working together in ways that they hadn't before and furthermore this process brings in the students when students are underperforming go into their success time every day  in terms of underperforming on the standard they go into success time the other students that are master have mastered the model come in to help the students who have not mastered jimmy come on i want you to who play my computer games with me you gotta get this author's purpose standard together what's wrong so the students start to help each other voluntarily and in the first five to six weeks when we cycle of poverty and ignorance i'm very supportive of our department's efforts to zero in on schools and aid deploy resources but as importantly pursue in essential conversations and decisions  that encourage and support change real change at the school level as representative thompson also alluded to a recent study found that about forty percent of schools in restructuring saddest did not take any of the five reception restructuring options required by law previously and according to the department over the past eight years too many states and districts have demonstrated little success or little and much unwillingness to undertake the kind of radical fundamental reforms necessary to improve schools and in many cases for those most in need of educational opportunities i'd like to hear your views on a couple things i'll start with mr silver i was very much amazed by in your story in the story of your school the culture of your district that encourage innovation and change and the fact that they actually built the center cesar chavez center not only for your school they invited people to come in and say we need new programs new schools what what kind of led to that  to the district in that place where they said we know we need to do something different and how did they teach that point well honestly it was the community there were about two thousand people that came together  around two thousand and three open community organizations and they partnered together and they said you know they looked at the academic achievement and the size of the schools in more affluent areas and  h achievement they saw small schools then they looked at the poor neighborhoods in the flatlands of oakland and they saw large schools and they saw low student achievement and they said this is unfair we need to do things differently so they mobilized and partnered with a coalition of equitable schools with the oakland unified school district to have the school board passed a resolution to create ten new small schools that were autonomous and had the exact flexibility that we're talking about today budget inertia not taking action is usually easier than taking action you were able to build a political movement to make it be easier path taking action politically rather than continuing to avoid taking action what suggestions do any of you had on how from a federal level we can help overcome resistance and barriers to reform through the c s e reauthorization process to promote interventions that work and improve student achievement outcomes are so and i think the first and most important thing is to encourage the local involvement to get people truly engaged after that oka school councils went into effect in chicago three years the scores started to go up they have not stopped it's in the testimony for the prior twenty years they've flatlined at about nineteen percent on the iowa test the only change that had taken place in those three years was that you know duction of the parents and the teachers choosing the principal and deciding the use of the title one money so to be clear what you're saying is get more local to the school district whether it's neighborhood councils charter schools autonomous schools bring it back to communities as opposed to kind of the larger districts the state of illinois legislature looked at the what was happening in chicago they removed the chicago board of education because of the last test scores in the incompetence and back people went to jail for corruption after that and they put in the councils to replace the authority and local accountability that is so needed and used in places like thank you mr chair while i was most impressed by by all of you and the achievements that you've made in your and your school districts and i was particularly impressed with you dr simmons coming from an heavily urban area myself in los angeles i certainly can relate to what you've been able to do and the fact that you've been able to turn around all of these eight schools and have sustained and improved results in six out of the eight over thirty three years is very very impressive indeed what do you think was the problem that led to these the low achieving schools in chicago that your program addressed i'm sorry  what led to that what were the problems the fundamental problems in chicago that your program addressed and and was able to to  overcome the leadership of the chicago public schools came to us with a list of two hundred schools that they were going to use or close to reconstitute immediately and we were asked because of the work we've been doing in these neighborhoods for fifteen years getting good results you said can you take account of these schools now that was the problem they did not want to close or reconstitute the schools so that was a crisis and none of them have had to be either closed or reconstituted of the ones they gave us but what what was it about the way that the schools were operating that you changed what was it we changed what was it the school changed yes  change their thinking about what they needed to do when they saw the model that we've been using in other schools in the city they said oh we're trying to do just that that's what we want but we don't know how to do it so the answer to your question is we help them put in place what they have always wanted and we trained them to do that putting in as well in addition i mean i'm oppressed that you know the professional development and training of teachers and principals when japan your turnaround strategy rather than firing them arbitrarily and  just dismissing all the staff of the school you try to give them the tools that they need to succeed and what what strategies and programs have worked to make teachers and principals part of the solution and why what programs i'm sorry what what strategies what strategies essentially it was provide high quality onsite professional development for the teachers and principals we provided coaching in as part of that so that they got coaching and training through workshops there was support for the parents and learning the illinois standards something that we've not seen anywhere in the country yet so that the when the kids came home with the homework the parents knew what author's purpose one of the illinois standards was all about and they had exercises to use to help the kids this same thing and helping us in helping the principal in the leadership team create a culture of trust that we already existed to a high level because of the engagement of the stakeholders through the local school councils that a lot of that was already there we helped them enhanced that and finally there was a focus on instruction and laser focus which is the eight steps in reteaching helping the kids go into success time to get help from each other so that they master the standards and that teachers get the feedback immediately every five to seven days that they taught correctly or not so that the rigor of the system was enhanced immediately thank you thank you for those who aren't aware of it in chicago correct me if i'm wrong john but every school has a school board and light one school board for the district and fifty schools or one hundred schools or whatever it is there it's local area local so people understand when we talked about this connectedness between school boards and schools it's one to one so it's a little bit different than most of us experience in our district is anyone aware anyone of the panel aware of any analysis or research which quantify the social cost of preventable social costs for maintaining a fifty percent dropout rate in terms of ongoing jail and teen pregnancy related to medicaid and welfare  costs for school of about two thousand and wouldn't be a surprise i have about ten million dollars floating around in preventable note let me ask it another way is it possible for a school to succeed if you're surrounded by there is very important data on the social costs of under performance and failure that date has been most carefully worked up by early child development people over the last twenty years now it shows dramatically that if you can catch a child at the age of three to five and enhanced their capabilities with very modest inputs you're saving fifty thousand dollars per person over their lifetime and if we made those investments in the community so that the community less and other problems that you would expect the school to do better anything that will reduce the crime and stabilize the communities is a good investment ok well research as well but here's what the research tells us the schools that are in our testimony in chicago based on twenty years of research in the city and around the country including around the world with high performance organizations like from the private sector all these things are the same thing and that's being put into the schools we're working with for example schools that do not apply to five essential supports in chicago  one tenth the level of performance as those schools that do apply them so when you apply the essential support you get ten times the increase on the illinois and iowa scores pretty dramatic pretty simple in the research that's there it's like baking a cake if you leave out one of the ingredients of a cake you're not going to have a cake if you leave out one of the essential ingredients the research shows you are going to have a high performing school and we've got twenty years in i have about five or six under served areas in my district and yet there's one school that comes under that area that has ninety three percent  along the way and using data that are collected to respond to some of the reforms that are required the cost effectiveness of dr simmons of your program as it relates progress with our students compared to some of the alternatives that are suggested out there could you share any additional information with us that cost effectiveness of your thinking of your concepts yes the five essential supports model is very streamlined it eliminates those elements that really are not highly cost effective so it concentrates on is what happens during the school day that's one thing and second it finds that if you use the existing teachers and and principals and train them up it's much less expensive than residential training programs that go on for a long time and it's very expensive to select those people in the beginning residential programs are fine they're getting fine results but the cost effectiveness is part of the problem and that's why we get a twenty four million dollar tax saving over a four year period when you compare our program with schools that have more elaborate programs twenty four million over four years for the eight schools that's significant i also listened intently about the comments made about title was letting those dollars flow today in the capital city of new york a very difficult situation where there's a super saturation of competition that is taxpayer funded that competes with the public system in these given days of state and federal budget dilemma there is not a finite amount of money that we can invest and i think it's our highest priority of investment in education given that as a bad where do we need to be in terms of an observation is that the systems that don't get there appropriate title one funding are those that are then failing and then we private sector industrial concepts that were brought by our utilities where there's a for profit college can we afford to pay for profit at a time when we can just bottle title one money into systems where the children are failing is that we did our job correctly in the beginning we might not need to get into this or that any comment i mean i think that the bottom line is that schools that have a high title on populations that have high poverty populations in these economic times need more and they're underfunded right now and more affluent schools are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to offset this we need to take this seriously we need to make sure that we are at this time of increasing expectation we need to increase resources not just to schools that are doing well but you all schools that have high poverty populations that's what i'm saying and i think that at the end of the day we need to have incentives to push districts so that they are going to provide the type of flexibility that we're talking about that are necessary conditions and incentives and replication and also any school that has a high poverty population it is our responsibility we need more funding for the school i think is important to be very clear about what the root causes of these problems are we're talking about research is established decades ago that poured under the low income children minorities can learn to the very highest levels that's that's out there no one debates that any longer so what is the problem well when you when i look at it it looks like it's a leadership problem leadership that is not informed and is informing unwilling to make the decisions that they need to make for all kinds of reasons including political and financial reasons so when you apply this research as those of us who are sitting up here are doing you get these amazing results well let's apply the research that's so obvious because when you do it you get these results and it's doesn't take forever we're getting schools turning around you know one year no one believed in chicago that could happen leadership problem at what level at all levels in the system that principals don't have the highest expectations within the system superintendents feel that they have to supervise closely failing schools with using management techniques that were have been practiced in the private sector for thirty years they aren't empowering people in the buildings and at the superintendents level it's that they've got too many other things they're worried about and they are focusing on applying the and got the best possible teachers and supported our teachers as we went forward number two they had different strategies like making maps where there could be visuals to support the english language learner and number three they had a reading campaign when we looked at our data and we saw that only half of our students actually were reading at home we knew we had to make a change so we instituted a reading campaign where books were all over the schools parents were reading with their kids during the school day and we challenged the kids to read thirty minutes a day every single day for the rest of the year and if they did that at the end of the year they would have an incentive one year i got on the roof another year right now my hair is kind of matted down but it's actually brought out and i'm going to shave my head the last day of school if we reach our goal this time the bottom line is whether it's college whether it's whatever investing everyone a big goal and specifically literacy students is a key component i think another piece it's important to consider the needs of families that support the school and when you have many families for whom english is their second language we need reach out to them as well as a parent who is bilingual she meets with parents help them sell out the forms necessary for registration helps them navigate all of the things that they need to know when they come to this country when they come to call for what our expectations what do they need to do as a parent school can be very frightening place even for parents for whom school was not successful or happy place when you're coming in with a language barrier that can be even more scary so i think it's important to provide programs for parents reaching out to them to teach them english and give them opportunities to access the curriculum and expectations in their own language so what i've heard this morning is the evidence is pretty clear that the answers are the question is why they aren't getting out there and being applied this is where the federal government comes in i think the federal government is the only hope in the country to help scale up these programs and provide the kinds of demonstration projects that need to be in every state so that people can easily get to see them we get hundreds of people coming to visit our schools but they don't have the money to travel more than a couple of where they could travel to visit demonstration sites across the country if the federal government were to actually focus on providing demonstration sites of these best practices mr chairman i just want to needs to be developed and given the same opportunity and appreciate that very much thank you mr chairman and thank you to the panel your dialogue has been very stimulating today and i wanted to pick up on some of the points that my colleague missed a time ago i'm from new york city school board corruption but since then we had challenges we've introduced the charter school movement but it gale to the point where it helps the bath majority of public school students in the city of new york my first question to you mrs still in your testimony you described how you turned around your school one of the elements that you mentioned  as being your school that is that the teachers were required to observe the pedagogy at high achieving schools and it is my understanding that charter schools are supposed to be an incubator for innovative approaches  however your school seems to have bridged the gap so would you discuss the relationship specifically information sharing between the teachers at the public not charter schools one of the schools i remember we implemented a new program at her school in math and so our teachers had some questions about it and there's a school called acorn would learn in oakland which is achieving massive dramatic gains in a high poverty population and so i contacted the principal she was also part of a small school's movement and said could we bring our teachers over there to learn kind of what's happening they went over and then after that observation that meant much more than whatever i could say or where there were some outside consultant could say in terms of the program seeing the students in action similarly that same school came in observed some of our teachers and some of the strategies they were using and implemented them going forward you know one of the things that got me into this work i remember when when i was outside of the teach for america where i used to work and someone said you know why don't we create a new school and then i said well you know that's cool but then i heard why don't we new schools the bottom line is if we have networks of schools where people are collaborating that is going to retain principals that are going to retain teachers and spread best practices let me ask you something you mentioned you went to a nother small school is that school also charter or was it non  charter so we are not a charter school in college now that other school is not a charter school as well so we have learned from charter schools we have learned from non charter schools we learned from oakland unified schools we learned all across the board i think the one thing that i would say though is that we need to do more sharing and if we're going to make sure that our schools that are succeeding that are not charter schools within the public school district we need to provide the charter like autonomy for them to stay in the district and the resources that will allow that  money my next question is for both you and dr simmons i find what you're doing in chicago phenomenal and i don't know if folks in new york and contacted you yet but i'll probably be calling i firmly believe that parental and community involvement is off been marginalized it certainly has under the structure that has been set up in the city of new york where it's a top down governance structure take educational achievement so i strongly believe that the importance of parental community involvement i believe in it so much that my support for the  of the school turnaround success my question is what do you do to get parental buy in at your schools and you mention requiring parents to sign a contract to attest to the involvement in the child's education how did your school handle parents who do not live up to their contract and their child out of your school the end we are a public school we cannot kick out and have never kicked a student of our school  the contract is an interesting thing you know what we say to families is when they're coming in our doors expect more from me as a principle expect more from your teacher and i'm going to expect more from you as a principal so what the contract does is put something and says hey if we want our kids really to go to college this is what it's going to take if they're not going to if they are if a specific parent is not actually abiding by their contract i'm going to go to them or a family resource center is going to go to them and say what is holding you back our responsibility is to remove those barriers to to call the boss of someone and say hey you're legally allowed to be here for two days without repercussions to make sure that you're at a parent conference find out what the specific barrier is and try to remove it i had a parent who was a founding parent of our school say you know i was you know i  wasn't really that into reading i wasn't interested in this but now is so involved in came to so many community meetings to create the school we need to create incentives remove barriers and support for famil programs sometimes have fifty to one hundred hundred twenty parents come to these workshops why because it's directed at the parents needs the parents want most of anything and we interview them by them once a year they want to help their children with their homework and that's what we give them the very best tools to do that and they come so they come to council helps bring those parents out so there is much more to this local school council thing that a lot of people really understand because the principals depend on these parents councils to go out and handle parent and community problems so it's really a collaboration that exists when these councils work yes and there are about ten or fifteen percent of the councils that don't work in chicago it's just like the number of the percentage of fortune one thousand companies that don't work the governance of them so i don't see that as a problem but look carefully at the council saying it's made such a difference in the whole country like new zealand as well as in st paul where they double their test scores in four years after putting in the councils it took us over ten years of our school our scores but still we got them there middle schools in this reauthorization is a priority for me as you know i introduced h r forty one eighty one the graduation promise act to address this issue in texas w extremely proud of dr daniel king's outstanding leadership and success in turning around our lowest performing high schools dr king we greatly appreciate your taking the time to come to washington for this i just want to say that we are going to learn from what is working for us in deep south texas so that nationally we can include it in the reauthorization accomplish th which had predicted it can't be done and that was to improve and get more students to graduate from high school i applaud your extraordinary leadership my colleagues on this committee frank you for traveling and giving us your ideas on how we can use it are one of the poorest areas in the country because they come from low income households migrant farm workers immigrants because spanish is the first language looking at those as excuses for not achieving and we can also look at language of science and medicine and so forth if we strengthen students in that area when they go into the sciences they're going to have vantages so valuing what they have from home certainly teaching them english to mr chairman and thanks to the witnesses for really excellent and uplifting testimony our job of course is to devise legislation to scale up successful schools to serve all fifty million schoolchildren in america and you've laid out a number of what sound like necessary ingredients of professional development and learning teams and engaging parents and community letter members let me focus on one thing that has come up from several of you i'd like to hear first from dr simmons and susan bridges with regard to assessments and if time allows maybe from others of you you've talked about  benchmark assessments and growth model assessments with real time feedback weekly monthly desegregated data used in real time to guide instruction three questions is that essential for school success if it's essential how is that written into legislation and third what is the teacher's role in this how do you get teacher by and for these assessments do they have a role in developing the assessments school by school  i'm happy to start that yes assessment he's essentially tell me how teachers get feedback unless they have data they don't know if that lesson is talked well you're not in our schools they get the feedback every five to seven days by looking at the assessments that they design around those specific illinois standards second how does it get into legislation that i may have to think a little bit about that because of the process but let me go to the third point  to get the teacher by and as i mentioned earlier in my testimony the schools are not accepted in our effort unless they get up to a vote of eighty percent of the teachers in each school and they buy into the assessment process as well if the eight step assessment process developed in browsers for texas in the early one nine hundred ninety s it's used in many countries have many cities all over the that's the first piece the other piece and even more important is that they need to participate in the selection of the assessments in reviewing the assessments in making sure that they work well so we get the buy in incrementally as they get participate more and more in the process of applying the assessments so we get big time by the time it first six months is done a year from virtually information i agree or selection is critical but also if you put the data in their hands and teach them how to use it that's critical you can hand them a piece of data and they don't know what it means you've got to give them the time and the training to say how does this data affect my instruction what is a tell me about my instruction it's amazing how it removes excuses because data is not subjective it's objective it is what it is it tells a story and if you can get teachers looking at the instruction and it really does tell them what direction they're heading and what direction they need to go it's a pay off i would also suggest we attempted to do our benchmark assessment in our school district ensuring that teachers have investment in it is number one that it informs instruction and the way that it will inform instruction is making sure that it is not only aligned with the high stakes tests but also the specific standards in it teaching as well as th time and tools to be able to use that data effect the number one thing is that any evaluation it needs to be focused on data whether it's principals whether it's schools whether it's teachers and when we're talking about data it can't just be testing data it also needs to be focused on growth needs to have multiple measures as well and in terms of support i think that looking at networks that have worked new leaders for new schools looking at pipeline looking at other programs that are getting strong people in our system and continuing with mentoring programs for new need to be to be successful to be a successful leader that the best way to get the evaluation done of the principals talk to the stakeholders and don't forget the parents they're absolutely crucial people think that independent schools have a great way of creating and sustaining principals well those are parents on those independent school boards on those charter school boards so if their local school council in chicago handles that because those parents do evaluate the principal and they remove them in the first six years of school reform or turn over eighty percent of the principals who did that was the council's yes some left voluntarily so this is an amazing little feedback mechanism that's built into this governance that is so locally organized because it's my child is getting a bad teacher and that principle is responsible for that we're out here i want to thank this panel this is been a remarkable morning you know the concerns of this committee and many who are involved in the reauthorization outside in the greater education community has been that these four categories that they that the administration suggested in their blueprint which were put forth for us to comment on and look at are really sort of going back to your baking the cake you can bake a cake in a microwave you can do it in another and you can do it over a campfire but if you don't have together you're not you're not going to turn around much of anything the other one it seems to me that's various here is this constant discussion about independence and autonomy for you it would be independent the super superintendents level whether it's in a small rural district or whether it's in a large suburban district or a large urban district and what sort of emerging from these four choices are are interesting but they've got to be they've got to be fleshed out here  and what we try to do here was present and what with a number of the other panels that there's a portfolio of things you need to bring to this to this problem of getting better performance out of these traditionally low performing schools and what's emerging in my mind is a sense that there is a tradeoff here between flexibility and responsibility for success and if we're willing to people and provide their response and they're responsible to provide them that flexibility to make these choices about the ingredients i think you need sort of a critical mass of them but you make a change and then we've got to sort of get out of the way and everybody here is talked about the importance of data and what it drives i'm a believer that that's just the fundamental platform in today's education system teachers need want after they get it data and it does that so committee there's a lot of sort of urban legends out there why things don't work the way things really are and yet every one of these in those various situations you're modeling success and that's really exciting we don't get a chance to do success very often