good afternoon mr secretary give you a minute to get organized ok miss secretary welcome this job would be a great job if we didn't have to vote but i'm told that within a couple of minutes we're going to get some roll calls on the house floor which will discombobulate this hearing but we'll try to do the best we can ms secretary hi i'm not quite sure where to start  let me say let me first of all state that we want to be on the same team we want to work with you we want you in this president to succeed  enjoyed the opportunity to work with you on the initial stimulus or recovery package is as people are now calling it what will rogers said once that when two people agree on everything one of them is unnecessary and i find myself in that position this afternoon as i indicated to  yesterday and let me paint you a picture of what's happening in my district a month ago i mean a year ago taylor county  was writing at seven percent unemployment today it's fourteen and a half ross county a year ago seven point three today seventeen percent polk county five point nine percent a year ago twelve and a half today a night of six point seven percent a year ago twelve percent today marathon for point one percent a year ago nine point fo today lincoln five point three percent a year ago twelve point six today langlade five point eight a year ago twelve point one today iron eight point seven a year ago fourteen percent today clark five point seven a year ago eleven point three today chippewa five percent a year ago eleven percent today burnette seven point one a year ago thirteen point two today i cite those numbers to try to make a to we have as you know we tried to in the stimulus package we tried to take into account that this was happening and that's why we provided large amounts of money to states to try to stabilize their budgets that's why we provided a good deal of additional funding in direct financing to local school districts by formula  d if you take a look at what's happening around the state i mean around the country according to the center on budget and policy priorities some supporting seven states are facing fiscal stress  according to one analysis from the university of washington state education budget shortfalls could result in the loss of nearly six hundred thousand jobs in k through twelve education alone  that schools face a perfect storm for reform that may be but i think that they also face a devastating storm in terms of just general economic conditions and i'm concerned that there are so many communities that are so cash strapped that they're using recovery act funds simply to mitigate state and local revenue shortfalls in order to prevent layoffs and for those districts all they may be able to do is to pay for existing teachers keep the lights on and pay for other essential if the first focus of states and school districts is to plug these devastating budget gaps and avoid the playoffs and i think it's legitimate to question whether it's realistic to also expect them to implement dramatic new reforms until the economic situation  stabilizes i don't want to set them up for failure in the public guys because they can't do two things at the same time because of the extreme economic collapse that we've seen in the country  and so i would hope that you would take that to heart in the way that you would minister the funds under your control secondly i've been on this committee for almost forty years and i think i've got a track record of giving a damn about what happens to these programs but i'm not so much interested in programs as i am performance and i am certainly support of all reform if that process occurs in the context that makes it possible for people to think about reform i voted for child left behind because i thought the president the previous president had a right to have his first amassed a priority he supported unfortunately i underestimated his willingness to live up to the financial commitments attended to that but i'm concerned frankly about the direction some of your budget decisions would take us your request eight hundred million dollars  an early childhood education three hundred million more for reading and new reading initiatives an extra hundred million to expand the innovation fund in the scale of best practices from six hundred fifty million bucks in the recovery act to seven fifty  in your budget you propose a large increase for teacher incentive fund would support the design and implementation of performance based teaching sister compensation  systems more than quadrupling from ninety seven to four hundred eighty seven million bucks and the seven hundred seventeen million with recovery act funds even though the department has yet to complete any rigorous evaluation of the effort which began four years ago i want to support the administration and its education priorities but not at the expense of reliable and predictable federal  thousands of school districts across the country that depend on that funding and i confess i find troubling the one and a half billion dollars or ten percent cut in basic title one grants that you provide for in your budget in order to finance these new initiatives in essence your budget would force school districts to backfill the production with recovery act funds will put additional strains on title one by requiring districts to commit other recovery funds to start preschool programs as a condition of receiving title on early child grants and i am not at all convinced that that  is not unfair and on timely given the economic situation i also want to express reservations about your higher education budget i am a huge grants i have been a champion of pell grants every year i've been in this committee but i confess i am dubious about the wisdom of this committee in the midst of trying to convince people that we are responsible financially and fiscally i'm not convinced that this is the time to create another in essence entitlement by putting another program on automatic pilot and in fact i'm concerned that the recommendation that you have with respect to pell might in fact have a perverse reverse effect by in essence actually putting a ceiling on the amount of future increases in the in the crease in the maximum award under pell so as i say we're all friends here and we want to work together but i've got to be honest and lay out my misgivings about some of the directions that i see you and the administration going in and i hope that we can work them out mr tier welcome mr secretary congratulations on your new role here you have a very interesting history i think you've accomplished quite a bit in the state of illinois in chicago and i think it's those accomplishments would not be classified particularly as supporting a democrat point of view or a republican point of view i think you took a refreshing approach and a lot of new areas and i understand you have a background in basketball each year congress plays the business community in september and we're going to try to recruit you for that game we hear a lot about the changing economy and changing world and the need to prepare our children to participate in the twenty first century and in the job market that's going to be coming about during that time in the last administration we worked a lot on accountability and how to best ensure that school districts help every child reaches her potential this is still an issue and there are many debates soprano surrounding no child left behind and the emergenc alternatives such as charter schools and the like and we'll probably discuss that later i look forward to hearing your views on accountability and how to fix no child left behind without discordian discarding core principles that i think we all agree upon as for this preparing our workforce and children for the future i would argue that the future is here today michael kansas state university has done a lot of research about today's technology revolution and its impact on society the marketplace in education he correctly points out that we need to be adapting faster and more efficiently in order to keep up i do have concerns however with his views and others and the insistence that the education systems of old are outdated and should be overhauled yes new technologies need to be incorporated into classrooms from a young age so that children can learn how to use these tools and be safe while they use them and yes schools should work to capture the attention of a child but these aren't new issues or new views there have been age old education problems from which slide rules have transformed into calculators in one room schools into the separation of grades and ability levels our schools s should be challenged to continually meet those needs and continually improve there is reason to be concerned however that we push to move out of the traditional crass classroom and permit children to not pay attention to lessons they do not feel are relevant to their future cure careers besides basic knowledge of the world around us one of the most important aspects of education is teaching us how to learn and how to analyze new information and to put it into use how to focus on issues that might not be to our liking or in which we may not have a natural aptitude how to meet deadlines how to work with others how to still learn and so on most of what i learn is school is not applicable to my job as a systems engineer or as a proposal manager and certainly not as a member of congress but the fundamentals are age old and should not be thrown out with the bathwater i'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this issue and how we balance the desire for more technology and personal education and make sure our children are prepared to meet the timeless challenges of learning in a real world education and retraining our keys to ensuring that american workers are the most competitive around the world modern economies are driven by knowledge and skills just as america's public's education system change the notion that schooling is for the upper class we now need to change the notion that education ends at eighteen or twenty two job retraining retraining and skill enhanced meant are in addition to schooling they are part of the larger continuum a lifelong pursuit of education most importantly for the short and long term we need to help americans access not only higher education but also continuing education job training and retraining is necessary to keep up in today's environment i also have a couple of concerns about overall spending and specifically the impact that the chairman made about pell grants and the mandatory program rather than discretionary but in this changing world we need innovative ideas and should have a big debate on how to best educate our children i look forward to working with you and to ensure that every child achieves his or her dreams thank you mr chairman so please thank you so much mr chairman just appreciate your almost four decades of leadership on this issue and your passion and look forward to working with you to dramatically improve the quality of education for children around the country and preserve a tremendous leadership you've shown for a long long time these issues invitation to be here today to talk about president obama's fiscal two thousand and ten budget request this budget makes important choices to continue and expand in programs that will support our children from cradle to career it provides the resources necessary to expand access to high quality early childhood programs to ensure that i k to twelve schools are preparing their students for success in college and the workplace and to provide college students with the money they need to pay for college and the assurance that the federal government will be there to help them together all of these policies will help our children reach the president's goal that by two thousand and twenty the united states once again will have the largest proportion of college graduates in the world i just want to stop there from i think that's a very ambitious goal i think it's critical twenty years ago generation ago we led the world in the number of college graduates it's not so much that we have declined we have flatlined and other countries have passed a spy i think that presents some real challenges for our country and for our long term economic vitality i'm extremely grateful for the work you've already done to help our nation's schools and i look forward to working with all of you in the future as you know in the american recovery and reinvestment at you provided one hundred billion dollars to schools and to students the law provides a phenomenal start in adjusting the needs at every point along the cradle to career spectrum thanks to your support we were able to stave off an education catastrophe and save a generation of children and we estimate this many as three hundred seventy five thousand jobs can be saved with the money we've given out already through the first round stimulus funding title on an idea as you know there i had two goals in education to create and preserve jobs and to promote school reforms even though the u s department of education hasn't yet distributed all of the money in the stimulus we have seen signs that we are meeting that goal of preserving jobs of teachers and other educators we are collecting data on the number of jobs preserve we can point to several districts around the country where the stimulus funding has made a dramatic difference already because it era los angeles unified school district averted almost three thousand eight hundred layoffs in new york it's fourteen thousand jobs hundred thirty nine teachers kept their jobs in seminole county florida and boston the teachers union leaders say the stimulus money ensures that the city won't lay off any teachers and the alabama state superintendent has said the stimulus money will help avert all layoffs in his state i'm confident that just about all of the fourteen thousand districts around the country will be using stimulus money to preserve jobs that otherwise would have been lost or to create jobs they never would have been able to add if they didn't receive money the era before the stimulus we're heading for an education disaster with it we have largely avoided that catastrophe and now must also work to continue to improve student achievement i'm convinced we have to educate our way to a better economy through era states are promising to make commitment policies that we consider to be essential to reform they don't prove the effectiveness of teachers and work to make sure the best teachers are in the schools that need them the most they will improve the quality of their academic standards so that they will lead students down a path that truly repairs them for college the workforce and global competitiveness the standards need to be aligned with strong assessments of particular concern that these assessments accurately measure the cheeseman to english language learners and students with disability these under the third assurance states will commit to fixing their lowest performing schools finally they will build data systems that track student performance from one year to the next from one school to another so that those students and their parents know when they are making progress and when they need extra attention this information must also be put in the hands of educators so they can use it to improve instruction another key ingredient to reform is to add more time for instruction i grew up in my mother's afterschool program chicago so i know firsthand the critical importance of afterschool and summer programs that is why we're asking district to consider using recovery act funding as well as title one funding to extend the school day the school week in the school year in iraq is seen real innovation in places like cincinnati that innovations actually begin this summer they're adding what they're calling the fifth quarter and keeping students from month after school gets out to continue to drive reform keep teachers employed this is a key component of our school turnaround strategy because we know that students who are struggling need more time to catch up through era we will be rewarding states districts and nonprofit leaders that are dedicated themselves to moving forward in each of these areas of reform the four point three five billion dollars race the top fund ward states are making commitments to reforms they can push forward and provide an example for others the six hundred  fifty million dollars what works in innovation fun will provide grants to districts and nonprofits to scale up successful programs and evaluate promising practices by department expects to issue invitations for applications this summer and start to award dollars in discretionary funding for the department an increase of one point three billion over the comparable two thousand and nine level i want to highlight our requests and seven important areas early childhood education improving the pay in the teachers turning around the performing schools and ensuring that college students have the financial aid student and student loans they need to complete college in k twelve education we are in requesting important investments in two  priorities identified under the stimulus improving the quality of our teachers and turning around the performance schools in other countries the top third of college graduates enter the teaching workforce too often here in the united states our best college graduates choose other professions we need to change the way we promote and compensate teachers so we can attract the best and brightest into the profession by rewarding excellence in providing supports that enable success as a turning around low performing schools we know that too many of our schools are letting our children down in too many places achievement is low and not improving for example in approximately two thousand high schools sixty percent of the entering freshman class w drop out by the time they are supposed to be seniors that collective loss of human potential and a long term negative impact on our economy our bill staggering on the era we have asked states to identify the bottom five percent of their really strikes a real blow to where we're trying to go as a country as half the schools are in urban areas twenty percent on rural and thirty percent are in suburban so this is a real national problem and a recent study from the alliance of excellence education came to the conclusion that if all the students in the class of two thousand and eight had graduated the benefits to our economy would have would have been an additional three hundred one thousand billion dollars in income over their lifetime and if we don't change over the next decade if another twelve million students drop out the cost to our economy to our nation is three trillion dollars so the economic impact as well as the loss of human potential is absolutely devastating our budget includes one point five billion dollars for the title one school improvement program that's almost a billion dollar increase over last year and that amount is added to the three billion the program received in error in the five hundred forty five million fiscal two thousand nine we have more than five billion dollars to help turn around low performing schools i'm talking about john mattick changes here i won't be investing in the status quo on changes around the margins i want states and districts to take bold actions that lead directly to improvements in student learning and better outcomes i want superintendents to be aggressive in taking the difficult step of shutting down a failing school and replacing it with one they know will work when we talk about two thousand schools producing half of our nation's dropouts and seventy five percent in the minority community that's the number we have to get our hands around in really challenging the substantive way to improve both the quality of teachers and this the support they  were requesting five hundred seventeen million dollars for the teacher incentive fun including thirty million dollars for a national teacher recruitment campaign this program is designed to improve the quality of the teaching workforce using innovative professional development and compensation systems as a core strategy i want to be clear that i want the grabs awarded on this program to be a cooperative effort between districts in teachers the president has often said that he believes changes to the teaching profession must be made by working with teachers not by doing things to teachers the chance for real collaboration here it's remarkable chicago's one of the first thirty four projects to receive a grant from this program like many others we worked closely with our teachers to create t program in fact a team of our best teachers actually gave the program shape and shows the design framework that became our foundation together we created a program which emphasized the improving professional practices of teachers identify what it takes to make teachers better and rewarded those teachers and those schools that improved one important change that we are requesting to the teachers sent to fund would allow decision to award all employees of the school for helping to improve student achievement students excel and thrive when all adults in the school work together the custody and the cafeteria workers also need to be rewarded when the students in their school succeed when every adult in the school building collaborates to create a culture of high expectations magic happens for children in addition we are seeking three hundred seventy million dollars for the striving readers program the program now works to improve the literacy skills of adolescents students who are reading below grade level we will dedicate seventy point four million dollars for that purpose almost double the amount in the fiscal year two thousand and nine budget with the remaining three hundred million we will create a competitive grant program to support districts that create comprehensive incoherent programs there's just the needs of young readers these programs ensure students learn all of the skills they need to come good readers teaching them everything from phonemic awareness to reading comprehension we intend to build upon the successes and lessons of the reading first program whil simultaneously fixing that pro that that program's problems i would like to say a word or two about the two largest programs for k twelve students the title one program and the individual and individuals with disabilities education act both programs receive dramatic funding increases under era title one receive ten billion dollars for granted districts in addition to the three billion for the school improvement program while i did receive eleven point three billion that's almost as much as idea i received in fiscal year two thousand and nine we are working closely with districts to ensure they spend this money wisely and not put into programs that they won't be able to sustain when the money has run out i would also like to note that both of these programs didn't receive the increases they otherwise might have in the fiscal year two thousand and ten requests because the amount of money provided under error and the period of availability we hope to resume our commitment to funding increases for these programs once the stimulus money has expired in the short term we need increase funding for school turnaround efforts the students attending these schools cannot afford cannot afford to wait we are at a crisis more of the same in our dropout factories will not help our children succeed and beat the odds only ensure that we as educators actually perpetuate poverty and social failure we have too many examples of what does work and what is possible all around the country to continue to allow this devastating failure to exist in fiscal year two thousand and ten we will also be making investments in early childhood programs under title one we were requesting five hundred million dollars to encourage districts to use the programs money to expand preschool programs this money will help build one piece of the comprehensive early childhood programs that president obama has proposed is necessary to school serving the title one population which will benefit the most from early childhood education the budget also includes three hundred million to start the early learning challenge fund the programs initial goal is to help states build a network of services that will maximize investment in early childhood education expanding access to high quality early childhood programs it's one of the best investments we can make all of these changes will help push school reform twelve schools we also have significant and important policy changes for higher education  an important downpayment on our plans to expand student aid in addition to more aid we want to make sure that more students are not just attending college but graduating in our proposal is a two point five billion dollars request over five years for the college completion and access grants the stimulus bill provides provided seventeen point one billion dollars so we could raise the maximum pella ward from four thousand eight hundred fifty to five thousand three hundred fifty  and ten budget we propose important and permanent changes to ensure students have access to federal grant aid in loans the first thing we proposed is to move the pell grant program from discretionary commanded to a mandatory appropriate entitlement second we proposed to leave the increase in the maximum grant to the consumer price index plus one percent every year which will allow the maximum grant to grow at a higher rate than inflation so they can keep up with the rising cost of college i'm grateful for the tremendous work that they appropriators have done to fund annual increases for the pell grants particularly the last four years but even with that dedication the maximum grant has not kept up with the rising cost of college assistance they need to make it through college this is absolutely a major financial commitment we were able to pay for this change in part by streamlining and improving the federal student loan program we will move home loans over time from the federal family education loan program to the direct loan program making loans more efficient for taxpayers and freeing up money for pell grants in doing so we can dramatically expand access to college without going back to taxpayers and asking them for another dollar in closing i would like to note this budget makes tough decisions president obama asked all cabinet agencies to examine their excuse me to examine their budget lines line by line  identify programs that are ineffective or too small to have significant impact on student loan proposal say is more than four billion dollars annually in addition we're proposing to eliminate twelve programs create an additional savings of five hundred fifty point seven million dollars even though we recommend cutting these programs we remain absolutely committed to their goals we are laminating the two hundred ninety four million dollars state grant program under the safe and drug free schools and community program because several research studies have found that the program is ineffective but we remain committed to fighting drug use and stopping violence in our schools which is why we are recommending one hundred million dollars increase in spending for the national activities the state and geography schools program even as we are proposing to eliminate the even start program but we will continue to support the programs focused on comprehensive literacy programs through the expanded striving readers program and early reading first this program eleven nations so that our fiscal year two thousand and ten budget is a responsible one is investing in our country's future economic security while also making tough decisions to eliminate programs that aren't working i appreciate the opportunity to discuss our fiscal year twenty ten budget i look forward to your committee's questions thank you so much mr chairman thank you mister thank you mr chairman we had a little earlier discussion about no child left behind i didn't support it i thought there were better methods of the tube in the same goal and i've seen some really dramatic problems with the with the legislation let me give an example in rural kansas the young man named yahshua high school chaparral high school he a she struggles with his grades he suffers from trips from which is on medication for his parents were called into the school where the superintendent informed him that he needed to be removed from school and they suggested he go to a nearby small town and enroll in a learning center the parents didn't know how to react to all this stand up taking down to the center they found out that forty other students from that high school were also enrolled in the learning center all of them who are struggling with their grades since that time there's been several other students come in to that center what it appears to be is that because of the demands of no child left behind in this and the stringent percentages of students that are special needs students many school systems cannot meet that small percentage and there's no variables system to allow them to accommodate these students and so principals simply force them out of the school and we have a small high school in real kansas and they really have very little places to go very little choices so the child has to carpool with other kids and travel significant amount of distance to go to an alternative learning center so that the school system can abide by no child left behind part of this reform has to take into consideration is that in many areas some school systems of actually specialize because their compassion they want to help these kids a e their greatest potential but because of the rigidity in the program we can't accommodate them and so they violate you know they fail on these five categories in the two major math and reading one of those it just takes one and the whole school system is fails so we've instituted a program that forces children out of schools and i don't think that's your goal is not my goal and it's certainly not fair to joshua he comes from a good family pillars in the community well respected family he's the third child the other two kids are doing very well in moving on to higher education but here he's left without the high school experience without the opportunity because of the system that we put in place here in washington that i disagree with how can we change the system so that we don't leave children behind and can't we find some flexibility here in if we want i can abilities good i don't disagree with the concept but i don't think it should be so inflexible that we can accommodate kids like joshua probably a couple our conversation i'll try to keep marks pretty quick and just to give you context obviously i lived on the other side of the law for seven and a half years i have my own strong opinions but i'm in the midst of traveling to fifteen different states and meeting with teachers i mean the parents and meeting the children and principals to really get the pulse of the nation to figure out what folks think is working what's not let me start with what i think is working i think the idea of accountability the idea of just aggregating data and shining a spotlight on the parenthesis cheeseman gap between white students and african american latino students i think that's very important as a country we can no longer sweep that conversation that tough conversation under the rug and we want to keep that front and center there also numerous challenges as chairman of the said one of the biggest challenges was a dramatic underfunding of the law and with his leadership and others there is a huge step in the right direction on president to step in right direction to to add on president resources to helping students helping students in schools be successful big picture i'll just say what i think fundamentally happened i don't think intended or unintended it was wrong i think any time you're trying to manage whether it's a business or an education system locally nationally you have to be very thoughtful about what you man is loose and what you manage tight of how you try and succeed how you trying to improve when i was in washington i was in chicago i didn't think all the good ideas came out of washington and now that i'm in washington i know all the good ideas don't come out of washington what i want to do is fundamentally flip that on its head i want to think about a high common bar common standard rigorous rigorous goals that we all have to hold ourselves accountable for the really provide creativity of that's ability the local level hold folks accountable but given the chance to innovate and be successful secondly i'm a big believer in looking a outcomes and we ultimately have to help more students graduate we can't push that special education students out the door we can't hide from those challenges and i want to think about what we do to dramatically improve our graduation rate when we talk about thirty percent of our nation's students dropping out the economic cost to our country the loss of human potential is absolutely unacceptable and as you well know a couple decades ago there actually was an acceptable job out right you could drop out and go get a job and support a family no no home and make a good living today every child that job that is basically condemned to social failure and we have to stop pushing students out we have to start finding ways to keep those students in inner ward those schools in those school districts that are working with the hardest to serve students and keeping them frankly i'm puzzled and puzzled by the administration's put it this way bush inspired elimination of the even start a family literally see services ninety one percent of families in the program are added below the poverty level ninety percent of the parents in the program do not have a high school diploma or ged this program serves children and it serves your parents and those who are in the greatest need even with the decline in funding that we've seen through the years i'll be specific and parochial about how the program continues to thrive in my state of connecticut we've had a wesley and university study of middletown connecticut even start program parent outcomes showed positive results show that even start parents are more likely than a control group to advocate for their children's educational needs and discuss educational progress with their kids even start parents are also found to have higher educational aspirations for their children  your budget documents justify the card by citing an evaluation using data now ten years old and based on a program reform nine years ago let me just ask you why you took a page out of the bush budget proposals and propose non participants we also added money to the striving readers program three hundred seventy million dollars to try to help both young children and adult literacy so again i'm we're absolutely committed to that goal but that program from a couple different national valuations didn't seem to be producing  protecting programs i mean i think if programs are not working i think we ought to you know shut them down i am about helping those that need some sort of a comprehensive approach for their entire getting students off to starting getting those early literacy skills and well it's i think that if you take a look at how you impact the lives of children i think that you would concur with this and this is not something that i have invented i think you would hear from people who have spent a lifetime in education dr heckman and others who are very clear about the role of parents and their influence on their on their children and let's quite frankly we deal in a comprehensive way whether that's literacy whether it's economic concerns and jobs etc if we do not address the needs of parents and their literacy skills then and quite frankly we are not going to really be making a difference in the lives of these children ok thank you let me then ask you about  and i know you're supportive of this but how will the administration demonstrated support for after school when it's only proposed level funding for the twenty first century c c l c initiative and that's the only federal funding stream as far as i know that's dedicated to afterschool obviously this is a really important one and this is when i talk to students this is a line that you should not apply i think we have to think dramatically different about time we need our days to be longer weeks to be longer and we need our school year to be longer and after side grades hugely important there are a number of different funding sources we have in the budget is starting to see some really creative things you have obviously the stimulus dollars that can be used to lengthen time after school during the summer you have title one dollars with this is a great great use i worry particularly about children who come from poor families who are being read to at home that's a huge use for these increased title one dollars is to do more after school and then there's significant competitive grants again the four point five four point two five billion dollars raise the top fund the six hundred fifty million dollars innovation invest in what works fine so there are multiple pools of money for states and school districts to start to think very differently about time and again just one quick example that disarm or cincinnati using stimulus dollars the school open a month longer i think that's a great step in the right direction and you can see lots of other folks do that so there are unprecedented resources available for schools to think about longer days longer weeks longer years without clear guidance in all of our funding that we think this is a very important use of money and a great strategy to help students who are historically low performing and come to school from disadvantaged  rural communities i'm i guess a little surprised and perhaps a little disappointed in the budget presentation as we see it as it relates to the rural educational needs while i may have had heartache  with many areas of no child left behind i found the bush administration at least amenable to flexibility and i hope that you will be as well as you manage many of the programs within the budget but  particularly the shift from formula to grants within the budget is something that that scares me a bit because coming from a rural area like montana we find that we don't have maybe the level of expertise to have grant writing  that area or other areas that have economy of scale so i would like to point that out to you in particular and i've got a letter that is outside i have the preliminary from the rural education caucus just talking a little bit about your budget i formally chaired the rural education caucus in the turn that over the other more capable individuals but i'd like to have this presented to the record so as it gets here so some of the words you used in your presentation were perpetuate poverty and social failure and not just attending but graduating from college having traveled to now  seeing the kinds of students mr chairman i just might point out that your numbers were impressive but our unemployment rate on the cheyenne reservation the seventy percent that's seven zero and that is something that definitely concerns us  one of the programs that is very successful in montana may not be so much in other areas is the trio program and if you want to do something to not prepare she weighed poverty and social failure and not just attending but graduating from college  really is important not to necessarily create a mandatory program in pell grants but to fund appropriately programs like trail which are more holistic approach to providing assistance to graduating seniors going on to college and just real quickly i looked up the numbers nationwide percentage of low income high school graduates enrolling in post secondary education is twenty four percent in montana it's seventy three percent so this is really a program that's given us an opportunity to take our kids in give them something more so that they can compete when they get to college and it's more of the holistic approach that i would hope that you would seriously take a look at and see that perhaps these funding levels aren't necessarily appropriate for for the assistance a real education will give you a chance to to respond let me just start i'm learning so much every day i just there but west virginian from mom to let me tell you my visit to northern cheyenne to the reservation there is something i will never forget and i've been some pretty tough areas in my life and work is a pretty tough areas and level of desperation the level of is heartbreaking and that high school i visited this is not a scientific study but the teachers said to the best of their knowledge that had one child in the past six years graduate from college one and i talked to students they were smart they were committed they wanted more and they were desperately pushing against expectations they repeatedly told me that they're being told on multiple fronts that they're not good enough and they can't make  they're finding that so let me tell you that there are lots of areas this country that we need to improve the quality of education but that's not one that i'm going to get that one is very personal to me i'm going to figure out not just their been other places how we help children who have been trapped in you know i can't even imagine seventy percent unemployment i'm still trying to get my head around that number is almost incomprehensible we have to do something they only get i'm convinced the only way we get to there is to better education so i don't have all the answers but i want you know i'm absolutely committed to trying to make a difference there and i appreciate your recognition of the tribal colleges as well we have we're very proud of the fact i think we're the only state that has a tribal college on each of the seven reservations and it's a pretty remarkable leadership there i met with a  number of those tribal college presidents i'll just say quickly that i'm a big fan of the trio program a big fan of gear up we haven't talked about dual enrollment programs with high school students start to take you know class class on college campuses and get exposure there and the more we can bridge that divide and help students really believe that college is a possibility for them that it's usually poor and we have too many children around the country including those i met there that are smart enough that are working hard enough but they're being told college is not for them that's a program particularly since it's been based on this two thousand and three study in which the evaluators themselves said and this is a direct quote care should be given in applying the findings to even start as a whole and then furthermore a two thousand and seven pennsylvania state university study found that the two thousand and three evaluation had inherent design flaws so  eliminating a program as important as this based on questionable studies i think is something to be concerned about and also although i realize the money is being shifted to other places the point that mr laura made i think is very very valid and those programs do not provide family literacy and family literacy as you know is key to having parents involved with their children and when when parents are involved the research has shown that children succeed at a much higher rate so i just want to associate myself with the comments that were made by lauren also hoping that you will take another look at this proposal another concern that i have about the budget deals with education technology funding now president obama has spoken at length about the importance of equipping our schools our community colleges and public universities with twenty first century classrooms the enhanced education through technology gra program is was designed to achieve those very goals yet the budget cuts this already underfunded program from two hundred sixty nine million dollars to one hundred million dollars now while it is true the program received six hundred fifty million dollars in the stimulus bill there is a problem using that as the rationale first of all the fact is that the stimulus was intended to supplement and to not supplant existing funding furthermore the drastic cuts puts the only significant technology program that the department of education has as a terror a terrible disadvantage because by funding the technology program at one hundred million in f y ten you are lowering the baseline for future funding and it could take years for this program to regain even its o nine funding level of two hundred and sixty nine million can you explain the rationale for such a dramatic cut in in funding for education technology communities program provides very effective research based approaches to drug abuse and violence prevention and the program reaches about thirty seven million students in every school district across the  united states now the president's budget eliminates the two hundred ninety five billion state grant program and replaces that with a much smaller hundred million competitive grant program and it is my understanding that the department justifies eliminate this program on an old two thousand and one study many changes have been made to this program in the in the last eight years and not only will there be less money available for school drug programs which i might add are our badly needed we definitely have a drug and alcohol program with our young people but by making it competitive the result will be that some school districts will be low left without these vital funds because they will not be able to  compete and get that money to support their programs and in cases where the schools were getting just a small amount what they were able to do is use that small amount of federal money to leverage other state and local funding so they're going to lose that bat ability so what again what is the rationale for limiting the scope and the reach of this program and what will be done to help those schools that will not be able to compete and get the money and will no longer be able to let leverage even a small amount of federal money in order to help them to be able to have these drug  not easy and i understand that it wasn't just two thousand and one so i just to be clear answer that is fact based there is a two thousand and seven study as well to talk about these programs not really make a significant difference that's that's much more current than the two thousand and one study and what we really found was that money that was stripped i wasn't making a big difference and we want to get that money directly to schools into school districts much more tangible much more hands on with students and that was the shift in strategic focus absolutely committed to the goal mr secretary i know this is a wonderfully productive use of your time but i will try to screw things up again in about ten minutes so having said that  your and it's just good to see you again when you were before the budget committee we had an opportunity to speak a little bit about national standards and national goals development and i know that you're working fit in but i do want to thank you for your sincere acknowledgment of what our tribal schools need as well as as you become even more immersed in in this  issue for our our young children and leaving truly no one behind the needs that many native american children face in our urban and suburban settings as well  community behind him one hundred percent want to talk to you for a second about what i consider becoming near a national security issue and that is what i that's the economy in the role of education the economy and as the economy is worsened i'm afraid we're seeing opportunities for education for many of the things that you want to do and president obama and i and the parents in my district slip through our fingers that's as i said a national security issue not only as i think making us be able to compete in this world but also for keeping our democracy vibrant and strong in a beacon for other countries to look at the center on budget and policy priorities recently issued a paper  federal fiscal assistance for state governments it's begun to have it's it's seen at what the recovery package has done it's unable states to not decrease their budgets quite as much as they might have with the beyond the gaps total one hundred thirty three billion dollars for forty five states and they're estimating the size of these gaps could grow minnesota lawn has a six hundred fifty four million mid year budget deficit so what i'm concerned about is the recovery funds are really supplanting regular education funds we this congress made a decision not to do matching funds to give states some flexibility we gave governors and their departments of education the dollars without going through their legislative branches assuming that these these funds would be used yes to maybe supplant a little but they're being supplanted for everything so how do we move forward and i i agree with chairman i'll be with all the goals all the wonderful goals in this budget and with the money that you have planned to achieve these calls if we send the money to the states and they just use it to provide basic education and still cut basic education then we're set up for failure president obama set up or tell you but most importantly our children are set up for failure so how are we going to hold these school districts accountable where shared responsibility for our children's future it's a great question and i'm a believer in both awards and consequences let me tell you what we're doing on both ends of the spectrum first of all in the first round of this in this package we put out tens of billions of dollars that has moved to has it gotten that money out extraordinarily quickly we committed to put him out within fourteen days and our states are our staff and getting out in close to six days have been working nights weekends to really respond to the urgent need but we also held back billions of dollars and where we see states playing shell games or acting in bad faith we have the opportunity not to put out this second chance in money and we're not looking for a fight we're not looking to be the tough guy the bad guy but we're a pair to do that if necessary so we have real significant stick there secondly we've talked about unprecedented discretionary resources four point three five billion dollars for the race the top six hundred fifty million dollar invest in what works innovation f and where we see states you know playing games or acting in bad faith and doing the wrong thing by children they will basically eliminate themselves and competition so they have a chance to bring in on top of an president's stimulus resources a chance to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars into their states if they're if the innovative if they're pushing pushing the status quo and challenging status quo but they're doing the wrong saying they could lose out in the second set and they would absolutely put it put themselves at huge risk huge jeopardy of just being eliminated from the public school system bearing in mind that what the federal government does is most capacity building and gap filling it's a relatively small fraction of the public education budget but some trends have been occurring that have been exacerbated in the last several years one is geographic it's clear that the best from an academic and creative standpoint students in much of the heartland of the country they're moving they're moving to the coast the east or west coast to what richard florida calls the creative class communities there for you know metro and coffee shops and so on and or the principal suburbs so you're aware of what's geographic disparity and it's it's causing a major employment and economic potential gap but the other problem is an economic one and it's really based upon the way we fund public education as you very well know where too reliant upon property taxes the problem there is that the parents who have the most at stake in our public school system are the least likely to own much property and so they really kind of powerless in terms of putting out a quick read sources into the public school system those who have the money are either retired and they've you know they're in their fifty's or whatever of accumulated some well so they have substantial property or they're wealthy enough that they send their kids to private school and we're seeing that over and over again particularly in cities and some of exit areas there's a lessening of the political support for adequate investment in education so of all the things that we do perhaps the best thing we could do is to try to restructure our national system for funding education it's regressive now there's a built in perverse incentive and and that's one of the reasons  why in terms of their out of this to the rest of the world we tend to be dropping each successive year in terms of our global competitiveness and the preparation of the workforce so i'd like to get some thoughts from you because i've heard you express yourself before and i you i think would have some some useful suggestions but i'd like to know if the administration is thought about taking this issue  on not a long long conversation but this issue is a very personal for me i come from a state of illinois in my numbers may not be exactly right but we were forty eight in the amount of money going to education so we were virtually dead last we were forty third in the disparity between wealthy districts import districts and i was at the point of that i worked in a district that was ninety percent minority and eighty five percent of my students live below the poverty line and where you have dramatically the children of the rich get your magically more spent on them than the children of the poor exacerbates the great disparities in outcomes i think public education heart should be the great equalizer and the chance for every child of god a wealthy poor black it doesn't matter every child should have a chance to get a great education and money doesn't begin to answer all our problems with the money spent on things that don't make sense but it's interesting in every wealthy district they seem to spend a lot of money on education because the value the and need to be spent well and so this is one that i think we have to really think about and i don't have answers today we have our folks thinking thinking about it and looking at it but when we are contributing we perpetuating to a system of have and have nots i think that's not the principal pond which our country's base and that's not the point of public education our country and we need to be very very thoughtful about what are we doing to give every child a chance to have a great education well i hear you and obviously no one could disagree with you but i think if we were to reassess this whole situation and come up with  improvement we can make to the to the fix in the underlying cause of the disparity we have very little time so i won't pursue it further or even ask further questions he is going to have to go vote but  well secretary duncan good to see you again and again and i just want to reiterate a couple things we talked about the edge of meeting with the congressional black caucus that service chair is you know and one of the areas that we're really concerned about is dropout rates in minority communities especially with young african american and latino boys thirty percent of the statistics are african american men have a thirty percent chance of serving in prison before the age of thirty but among young african american men who drop out of high school the job jumps to sixty percent and so it's just outrageous it's a sound and i need to look at your budget and just look at how you're really beginning to address this dropout rate especially among minority groups and i just am very pleased to see that you acknowledge that education is a civil right the civil rights issue of our time and that it's a truly objective weapon in our nation's long war on poverty because you are absolutely correct and had that perspective coming from your department i think is one of the thank you thank you just quickly we talked about i think there's nothing more important as a country than dramatically reduce that dropout rate and economic cost the country in the personal loss is tremendous we can identify two thousand high schools around the country to produce half of our nation's dropouts and seventy five percent of our minority students drop out and so what we want to do is not tinker around the edges not just incremental change we want to this is tough tough work but i think we have to do what we have to gauge these tough issues in a real and honest way we did fundamentally turn around over time not over not over time those schools and those feeder middle schools and elementary schools but we can identify the problem and this is been going on for far too long and these children not have a chance of being successful at these kinds of job the mrs that day i hope could you follow up with this or in writing perhaps to the committee how in your budget where what's this grand because i don't see the targeted in your budget billion dollars in school improvement money title one i'm president and i'm president of dollars going in to help the needy at school i'm going to have to call this hearing to and and