week and to discuss that with with members of the of the committee this was done at the urging of the of the bipartisan group in the house and the senate that the that the secretary has been been meeting with and ago you outline president obama's vision for providing a world class education to every child in this country you told us that the status quo is failing our students you told us a strong education system is key to our long term economic stability and members of this committee on both sides of the aisle agree right now even our best to isn't performing at lower levels in math and students in twenty two other countries nearly eighty percent of the u s students are entering the ninth grade unable to read at grade level using this has to change it's time to overhaul and improve e s e a so that the law finally lives up to its promise to provide an equal and excellent education for every child in america these improvements will require dramatic reforms to regain our role as a world leader in education but if we are successful i believe we can build a solid economic foundation for future generations what our students need to succeed is in a mystery they need challenge in a rigorous learning environment tied to college and career ready standards they need creative in teachers who hold them to high standards and who can adjust their teaching strategies when needed innovative reformers across the country at the local level are making significant process progress in many of these areas now at the federal level we have to match their courage to disrupt the system and push the envelope i believe that the blueprint that secretary duncan presents us offers a strong roadmap for this kind of system wide change eight years ago i helped write our current version of the no child left behind act in many ways the law was transformational it helped it help shine a bright light on what was really going on in our schools it told all of us lawmakers educators parents school boards and the community that it was no longer acceptable that any student to be invisible showed us how all students  conversation about education this country has gotten us to where we are today my apologies and i guess i'm going to continue but we know we didn't get everything right the blueprint we'll hear about today rightfully gives some control back to the states and districts to allow them to determine their own best strategies to turn around their lowest performing schools and switches a conversation from one about proficiency to one about ensuring our students graduate ready for college and a career we know we now have an incredible opportunity to help reshape the future of this country the obama administration has already launched a game changing the forms for our school many states are taking unprecedented steps in the right direction in my home state of  california the state legislature remove the firewall that prevented student achievement data from being linked to teacher performance a move that was a long time coming and in order to qualify for a second round of race to the top funding california recently released a list of its hundred eighty seven persistently and performing schools that california's recent actions and the actions of so many other states have signaled that they are ready to help fix schools that are chronically failing our students as we look as we take a close look at the administration's blueprint today i'd like to lay out some of the fundamental goals of what we must address in this rewrite we need to reset the bar for our students and for the nation first we need to ensure that every child can be taught by a great teacher especially those who need them the most teachers are our single most important factor  determining student achievement but all of the burden cannot fall on their shoulders and yet we have fourteen percent of our new teachers who stopped teaching in their first year more than the third teaching after three years almost fifty percent leave after five years that would suggest there's something wrong with the workplace we can expect teachers to stay in a system that doesn't treat them with the same level of professionalism as as other careers we can support great teaching in classrooms across this country by providing them with the right tools like extended planning time more opportunities for career development and the resources necessary to carry out their tasks and by making sure that they have dated their fingertips on how the children are learning and how we can understand how we can make success an outcome for every child second the quality of a child's education should not be determined by their zip code every school and every state needs to hold their students to a rigorous internationally benchmark standards that prepare them for college or career third there are districts and schools across the country seen incredible success after years of stagnant results these schools were given room to end of eight they kept their focus on achieving the highest levels and holding themselves accountable for all students we must encourage states and districts end of a and to think differently w maintaining high standards for all lastly we have to ensure that we're reaching every student with the right resources in every classroom secretary duncan you have repeatedly you have said repeatedly that our students get one chance at an education one chance i think the president's blueprint lays an important markers for where we begin this rewrite i will i will help build the kind of it will help build the kind of world class system school system our economy needs and our children deserve secretary going again thank you for being with us today thank you for your leadership and for your vision and i look forward to your testimony and with that i'd like to recognize the senior republican on the committee congressman john kline thank you mr chairman especially want to thank the secretary for being with us here today and coming back so soon after last appearance actually very few cabinet secretaries with your appetite for this much punishment we're here this afternoon to discuss the administration's blueprint for e s e a elementary and secondary education act these forty five pages have been anxiously awaited by many in the education community the media and of course here in congress for the last several weeks we've been meeting at the members and staff levels on a bipartisan basis with our counterparts in the senate and this blueprint is viewed by many as a first attempt by any one of those parties to put pen to paper and offer details on any substantive propositions and i appreciate the way secretary duncan has framed this document and i hope will keep his words in mind today as a secretary says this is a blueprint not a bill congress writes the laws and i'm pleased to say that in the case of the elementary and secondary education act for now we're starting with a blank sheet of paper of course we know the blueprint will serve as a jumping off point in many ways giving us policy directions to consider and finding proposals that we like and some we do not like so much the secretary and i have spoken candidly on several occasions so i know he was not surprised to learn that i have some questions and concerns about the direction of certain policies will discuss today one such concern is exclusion of public school choice and supplemental education services most of us know is totalling from the required interventions for struggling schools these tools would become optional but no longer required for some struggling schools in reality this means few if any students would have access to the immediate lifeline that tutoring and transfers provide these concerns are precisely why we are here i know there are members on both sides of the aisle who hope to better understand the policies outlined in the blueprint and their potential consequences both intended and unintended i try to view the no child left behind act through the eyes of my constituents the teachers principals superintendents school board members will implement its requirements and the parents who experience of consequences directly from that perspective come to the conclusion that the federal government is too involved in the day to day operation of our schools the federal requirements are too prescriptive and the measures of success are not nuanced enough as congress prepares to write the next version the elementary and secondary education education act i hope we do more than simply cast aside the n c l b name and expand its requirements i believe we need to have a meaningful conversation about the appropriate federal role in our schools my fellow republicans and i have developed a set of principles to help guide that reauthorization reform process briefly we believe that ensures student success in the twenty first century we must focus on what's best for students parents teachers and communities for attendance and guide us are restoring local control empowering parents letting teachers teach and protecting the taxpayers these principles will guide us as we come to the table to help develop an approach education policy that puts students before special interest and recognizes that innovation truly does come from the ground up i know we're all anxious to hear from the secretary so i'll close by simply thanking the secretary once again for his approach whether we agree on every policy or not the open and bipartisan process as truly been a breath of fresh air thank you mr chairman i yield back thank you very much let me take a moment although secretary duncan needs no introduction to the members of this committee this appointment secretary duncan served as chief executive officer of the chicago public schools and became the longest serving big city education superintendent in the country as a chief executive officer secretary duncan raised education standards and performance improved teacher and principal quality and increased learning options during his seven a half year tenure he united education reformers teachers principals and business stakeholders behind an aggressive education reform agenda as secretary of education has spearheaded major education reforms including the race to the top and investing in the innovation fund i know i'm not alone in saying that he has done a tremendous amount in his first year to improve education opportunities for children across this country we welcome you and thank you for joining us and you proceed in the manner in which you're most comfortable we're going to let you a couple of extra minutes here because this is a big subject with a big blueprint and we want to make sure that you're comfortable and explain it to the members of the of the committee thank you thank you so much mr chairman thank you for your leadership representative kline and all the members of the committee  here with you today i want to thank each of you for the hard for your hard work and commitment on education and i believe that education is the one to pass out of poverty is the great equalizer in our society and as the president said in his weekly address saturday there are few issues to speak more directly to the long term prosperity of our nation than education education is the one issue that must rise above ideology and above politics we can all agree that we have to educate our way a better economy we currently have an unprecedented opportunity to reform our nation's schools so they're preparing all of our students for success in college and in careers today jaramillo as you point out the status quo clearly is not good enough consider just a few statistics twenty seven percent of america's young people drop out of high school that means one point two million teenagers are leaving our schools for the streets that is economically unsustainable and morally unacceptable and a recent international test of math literacy are fifteen year old scored twenty fourth out of twenty nine developed nations in science are fifteen year olds ranked seventeen out of twenty nine nations and just forty percent of young people are in a two year or four year college degree the u s now ranks tenth in the world in the rank of college completion for twenty five to thirty four year olds a generation ago we were first in the world but we've fallen behind the global achievement gap is growing if we are serious about preparing our our nation's young people to compete in a global economy we must do better through the american recovery and reinvestment act we have built on that we have built a foundation for reform all states are putting the progress they're making for areas of reform raising standards developing in recruiting excellent teachers and leaders using data to inform instruction and turning around our lowest performing schools in the race the top fund we've identified sixteen finalists for the first phase was invited all the finalists to present about their plans and we'll be announcing the winners during the first week in april the winners will blaze a trail on reforms that will improve student achievement for decades to come to promote reforms in every state i'm committed to working with you in two thousand and ten to reauthorize the elementary secondary education act it's been more than a year since congress last reauthorized the s b a through the no child left behind act that's the longest gap between we authorizations in the forty five year history we all recognize that n c l b had its flaws in the time to fix those problems is now my staff and i have reached out to listen and learn from people across the country and to hear what they think about n c l b my senior staff and i visit every state on alert on our listening and learning tour we met with parents teachers and students themselves with engaged in literally hundreds of conversations with stakeholders representing all sections of the education community in all of our conversations with heard a consistent message that our schools aren't expected enough of our students we need to raise our standards so that all students are graduating prepared to succeed in college and in the workplace i also heard that people aren't looking to washington for answers they don't want to provide a prescription for success our role should be the opera meaningful definition of success one that raises the bar and shows teachers and students what they should be striving for policy changes will support our effort to meet the president's goal that by twenty twenty america once again will lead the world in college completion in particular the e s e a will set a goal that by two thousand and twenty all students will graduate ready to sixty eight in college and in the workplace we will build an accountability system that measures the progress that states districts and schools are making towards meeting that goal we have a comprehensive agenda to help us meet that goal it starts with asking states to adopt standards that  prepare students for success in college and careers governors and state chiefs state school officers a forty eight states are doing the tough job of setting the standards in reading and in math the leadership of the local level has been remarkable and the effort supported by both major unions and by the business community and our proposal we call on states to adopt college and career ready standards either working with other states or by getting their higher education institutions institutions to certify the stay at the standards are rigorous enough to ensure students graduate ready to succeed in college level classes or to enter the workplace but standards alone aren't enough will need a new generation of assessments that measure whether students are on track for success in college and careers will support the efforts of the vela those assessments will measure higher orders skills provide accurate measures of student progress and give teachers the information they need to improve student achievement these standards and assessments are  parts of our effort to redefine accountability on the n c l b the federal government greatly expanded its role in wholly schools accountable it did several things right and i'll give n c l b credit for its important contributions dedication reform required all states to be included in the countability system including minority students students with disabilities and english language learners it required states districts in schools to report test scores just aggregated by students subgroups exposing achievement gaps like never before we know the achievement gap is unacceptably large and teachers and school leaders throughout the country all working in mobilizing to address that problem n c l b was right to create a system based on results for students not just on inputs but n c l b n c l b is accountability system needs to be fixed now there are way too many perverse incentives it allows even encourages states to lower standards it doesn't measure growth and it doesn't reward excellence it prescribes the same interventions for schools with very different needs and encourages a narrowing of the curriculum and focuses on test preparation and labels too many schools with the same failing label regardless of the other challenges and encourage schools to focus the efforts on only that tiny percentage students close to the proficiency bar and neglect the vast majority above or below that line we need adults focused on all children not on any small handful in a classroom or a school we can't sustain momentum for reform if we don't have a credible accountability system that addresses these issues our proposal will make significant improvements on accountability the biggest and most important one is that all you student academic growth as the most important measure of whether schools districts and states are making progress i'm much more interested in growth in gain than absolute test scores as students are on a path towards meeting those standards under our plan we will reward schools districts in states that are making the most progress at the same time will be tough minded in our lowest performing schools and schools of large achievement gaps that aren't closing all of the schools will be given flexibility to meet performance targets working under their state and local accountability systems if we get accountability right will provide the right incentives to increase student achievement and i'm confident america's students teachers and principals will deliver i would like to focus on the critically important work of teachers and leaders the teaching and learning to have in the schools every day are what drives american education we spend a lot of time talking about reform about the proper federal role about the cost of education and the need for more funding and more about competitive versus formula and all of those are important debates to have but we can never lose sight of the impact our decisions have in classrooms where teachers are doing the hard work every single day of helping our children learn every decision must be viewed through the framework of improving instruction for nation's children our partnership with teachers and parents partnerships with teachers and powers them to do their job well we believe that there is a lot not proposal that teachers will light we know that there is a lot in the current law that teachers don't like most teachers believe that we have a broken system of accountability many teachers believe their evaluation support systems are flawed means a system of accountability that is fair i have never met a teacher yet who is afraid of accountability all they ask for a system that measures each child's progress not this year students against last year students but we need better evaluation systems that are honest and useful and elevates rather than diminishes the teaching profession all told we were requesting a record three point nine billion dollars to strengthen profession and increase of three hundred fifty million dollars we begin with the understanding that teaching is some of the toughest in absolute the most important work in society and we are deeply committed to making it a better professor for teachers to start with we are encouraging the vellum of high quality teacher preparation programs today many teachers tell us that they are underprepared what they face in the classroom they have to learn too much on the job we encouraging development of meaningful career ladders and stronger efforts to retain the great teachers we have we lose far too many of those great young teachers due to a lack of support from newly hired teachers to tenure teachers to master teachers mentors department heads and principals we need to rebuild education as a profession with real opportunities for growth that sustain a teacher's craft over a career not just a couple of years we want to encourage schools and districts to rethink how teachers can best do their job how they collaborate how they use their time outside the classroom and how they shape professional development programs when adults have time to collaborate and solve school problems together they're going to be much more productive and they'll get better results for our children teachers must be at the center of those efforts are also investing in principals to create better instructional leaders so that teachers will have the leadership they need to do better work historically i think our department has under invested in principal leadership and we're looking to dramatically change that good principals as we know recruit them attain great talent bad principals run off talent that's a teacher evaluation systems our goal is a system that is fair honest and useful and built around a definition of teacher effectiveness developed with teachers that includes multiple measures never just a single test score teachers need great principals for support and we'll also ask for fear of valuation systems for principals who want to use these systems to support teachers in their instructional practice and reward great teachers for all they do including advancing student learning we also want to reward them for working high need schools if we're serious about closing the achievement gap we must close the opportunity gap our children all too often face as i mention we'll change the accountability system to make it fairer for the first time we'll be holding not just schools and teachers accountable for students fast but districts and states as well this must be a shared responsibility teachers can't teach and principals can't lead where they are not well supported at the local and state level we want to stop mislabelling thousands of schools of failure instead we want to challenge them to close achievement gaps with targeted strategies designed by teachers and principals together similarly everyone should get credit for helping students who are behind catch up even if they do not yet meet standards a sixth grade teacher who students start the year three grade levels behind and their students advance by two grade levels should be applauded not labeled as a failure that teacher is not a failure that teacher is not a good teacher that teachers a great teacher she is accelerating student learning and we must learn from her example not stigmatize her the same is true for districts and states as well we want to give many more schools and districts the flexibility to improve by focusing much more on the clinically lowest performing schools and those are the largest achievement gaps that aren't closing while giving teachers and principals of the other schools more flexibility and incentive to succeed we are also calling for assessments that measure deep learning not test taking skills assessments that can engage encourage learning and provide teachers with meaningful quick feedback and you want students parents teachers and communities working towards a meaningful bar and support them in getting there the goal of the k twelve system has to be to prepare students for the next step on their journey college in a career the system needs to be focused on that goal dumbed down standards mean we are lying to children giving them false hope and undermine the high standards teachers have for their students that must and we're calling for over one billion dollars to fund a complete education because the whole child is a successful adult we want schools invest in the arts history science languages in all of the learning experiences that contribute to a well rounded education this is critically important finally we're seeking one point eight billion dollars to support students by encouraging community engagement and support and exposure to other positive adults she just cannot do it alone they need parents community leaders social service agencies and other support of adults in the school helping to reinforce a culture of learning and respect a parent is always a child's first teacher will always be their most important teacher i also want to say that e f c a we authorisation provides us with the opportunity to promote early learning programs from birth through third grade we need to ensure that children attend high quality early learning programs that sustain achievement at the federal level we can encourage the alignment standards and assessments across early learning programs in schools we can coordinate professional development efforts we in we can engage families in their children's learning it's time to learn from the success of high quality programs as the president has pointed out that pipeline will never work properly unless the road to college begins at birth thank you for the opportunity to discuss a comprehensive reform of the ca this is the one the most dramatic changes in the law history will fundamentally change the federal role in education we want to move from being a compliance monitor to being an engine of innovation the urgency of these reforms has never been greater our children and our future are at risk so let's together do the difficult but necessary things our schools demand and our children deserve we know that schools can transform the lives of children we have literally thousands of examples of schools serving high poverty populations that are accelerating student achievement we need to reward them and hold them up as apples for others to follow i thank you for all that you have done and all you will do to make  in america's highest priority the greatest legacy we need to work together to continue that legacy and deliver a world class education for every child thank you so much thank you thank you very much for your testimony under previous agreements the chair and the ranking member will be recognized for ten minutes apiece mr secretary the blueprint that you have released and your discussing with us today has received a lot of mixed attention from media and stakeholders and i'd like to take a moment to refocus that conversation as congressman klein said on the needs of the students and especially in my case of poor students poor children and those suffering from schools that with wide  achievement gaps i've been at this for some thirty years and we can't afford to lose yet another generation of students and we can't wait to eradicate poverty before we take the action we need on behalf of  nation's children ten years ago with the with no child left behind we began the process of shining a light on the achievement of all children no matter what schools they were in no matter what their social economic status was and it was it was about the idea that they were all entitled to a world class educational opportunity and i would like to make sure that we don't lose that focus and i agree with your with your criticisms of i think you raise important issues about no child left behind but i just want if we might elaborate a little bit on the proposal how the proposals really create a system that addresses the needs of students particularly those who are most most disadvantaged and find themselves locked into schools that is my state just publish more or less year after year failing to provide the opportunity for those kids to take advantage of thank you chairman i put schools into three broad categories there's a set of schools in every state in every district take the top ten percent of schools are actually world class where students are learning growing achievement grabs are shrinking and we should be  schools up as examples we should be giving them more flexibility learning from them and frankly give now the way there's a set of schools that may not be world class yep with improving every single year need to continue to support their their development and their growth but what i argue is is a country we need to take the bottom five percent of schools not the ninety five percent but the bottom five percent and even just take one of those five percent each year for the next five years and let's do something dramatically different the status quo is not working we have not seen the kind of progress we need we have far too many examples of success in high poverty high minority communities for anyone to say that poverty is destiny it is not we have schools routinely being the odds in which simply not working for children whether fifty sixty seven percent dropout rates for students are falling further and further behind despite our best intentions despite our hard work we are perpetuating poverty we are perpetuating social failure and so what we're saying is we do come in let's move with a real sense of urgency and let's give those children a better chance of that in education and let's do it now but i assume i'm correct in understanding that for those students and large mixed districts like i represent those students who may be in a relatively good school but aren't they are not doing terribly well themselves we are not going to lose them in this  in this new arrangement that they they do not need to be in one of the worst performing schools before they get attention or they continue to be tracked in terms of whether they're growing toward the goal of being college or career ready that's exactly right and we're actually trying to do something that i don't think happened enough in the previous law that if you take a relatively high performing school but where there are huge achievement gaps and again the big thing to me is progress and goal and growth without achievement graph gaps aren't shrinking when they're stubbornly large and not moving we want to make sure those students who are being under served have an opportunity to do better i think one of the more interesting political events in the last year has been the impact of race to the top on the educational political system if you will because of the race to the top i think some of us reside in states where we never thought that conversation would take place we never thought there would be agreement between the executive in the legislature we never thought there'd be agreement between the teacher organizations and the boards of education and or within the legislature itself and yet i see as i mentioned in my opening statement those actions have been taken and not exactly as i would do it i think there's more to be done and my own state but it's a dramatic change of attitude i hope it's a change of attitude it's a dramatic change in terms of the guidance is that the system will operate now under the use of data and other other elements of the race to the top the question is can we now transfer and the model that you're laying out in your blueprint can we transfer that kind of atmospher you will to and to bring about that kind of cooperation those kinds of conversations among the various parts of the of the education system because i think when we look at models of success we know that it's more than just another two year plan that's laid on that school or that system it's really the preparer tory work that has gone in to get by and to get people to participate to take responsibility across those across those systems i think a lot of that has begun at one level of the educational system with the states i think now we need to see whether or not we can we can use the blueprint and and the law that we will be offering here to to encourage that and conversation there's no level of collaboration have been folks moving outside the comfort zones and movement in and the relationships that should've been happening for a long time this is force those things to happen and so that's been hugely hugely encouraging as folks say that yes they states and districts and non profits and universities and schools that are doing two things that are raising the bar for all students in closing the achievement gap and where we see that movement we want to put on president resources where folks are more recalcitrant will just choose to invest other places but the amount the willingness in the openness to reform has been unbelievably encouraging i look forward to working with you on that because i think that's key in the success here let me raise another issue and that is th focusing of the attention what you called the five percent of schools that are there are persistently chronically failing i think they're failing not just the students are failing the teachers are failing the whole community if you will  but again i want to make sure that we don't substitute a model for critically thinking about how you develop success in that particular school or those schools within the system and in those in those in those communities and in the in the blueprint you lay out four different models of transformation model the turnaround model the restart model and the school closure model  my concern would be i think in california we've tried almost all all of those and i'd like to have some data presented on where we've seen the successes with those various models because we have had some but not all of them have happened and i would also like to make sure sort of following on my previous question that when we consider these models they've got to be more than just lines on the on the paper if you will i think you know i visited some of your very successful schools in chicago and i think what you saw there was a development of an attitude and expectations in partnerships from parents the community the teachers the school boards and the individual boards about the success that they wanted and they took a lot of time bringing people around to that point some people left some principals left some teachers left and back and forth but then they developed a community that they thought could sustain that and in some of those schools that has been staying sustain now for almost ten years my concern is having witnessed a number of dramatic actions where we get one or two years and then we're back again trying something else more dramatic that we provide the means the tools resources for these districts that are making these choices for schools that have to make these choices to really plan out and develop that change and expectations and attitudes and  ies that will make that a success so we don't sort of have to continue roll over of these efforts and we can bring some stability and some six ongoing sustainable success so in this in this discussion following what you've put forth in the blueprint i'm going to i'm very interested in looking at what what are the outcomes of these models where's it we're going to look for successes where is it school districts would go to see how this has been done some of these have been legend and efforts to try to turn around even large systems but here you're you're sort of casino on individual schools within systems that by and really has to be extraordinary and i think it we have to encourage  that that by and one of the just sign off with you know one of the remarkable things when i when i visited roscoe academy was the community participation on an hourly and daily and weekend basis about the importance of that school and the success of those of those kids so i just would say that doesn't feel free to respond but i just worry that we're not just putting out lines and the description of what you would do and not really and we don't we don't substitute that for critically thinking about how what those models would be successful and what was evidence of their success in the past it's a great point and this only  everybody steps out no one gets a path students teachers parents principals the community everybody has to work together and we see that sustains the sas you have that community by and so everybody has to work together these are hard conversations they're tough i think we have to have four billion dollars we're putting three point five billion dollars in school improvement grants out for just that bottom five percent so we're trying to put a huge amount of money out there more time for teachers collaborate longer school days more time in the summer we know some of the building blocks and so we're trying to put huge amount of resources out there for states and districts parents teachers students working together say we have to do something better and we want to meet them more than halfway thank you congressman kline thank you mr chairman again thank you mr secretary for being here it has d a couple of concerns i have about the transparency and you have and i have had this discussion before but i want to see what can draw it out here a little bit we've got a peer review process that is going on and we don't know still who the peer reviewers are and they're involved in allocating pretty big piles of money so it's pretty hard for us the american people to have confidence in the system if we don't know who the peer reviewers are saw a little troubled about why why we can't know who those are and then secondly i'm a little bit concerned about the timing here we had states put in their request for this money some states put it in with sort of high expectations like minnesota and didn't make the final cut we don't know why i understand that at some time coming up there's going to be some comments and information coming forward my question is why don't we have it now i know you know miss i've got a letter here from governor schwarzenegger and i think governor saying you got to tell us what we didn't do right because we're busy these states trying to compete again for the next traunch of this money so you know there's literally over four billion dollars here at stake and you and the administration are asking for another one point three five billion dollars just for race to the top and it seems to me we really have some unanswered questions and so my question to you is why can't we know who those people are and why can't the states know what they did well and what they didn't do well so they can address those  great great questions and what's been paramount in our minds from day one was the integrity of this process and due to the size of these grants unprecedented we're worried about outside influence on potential peer reviewers and there's huge temptation for bad things to happen and we want to do everything at all cost to prevent that from happening so soon as the competition is done all that will be put out all the interviews we're doing now for the fifteen finalists are being videotaped and all of that seem to be actually transparent what we said at the start of the competition was the day it was finished we would put out every state's comments will come back so everyone will get that we said again before the competition started they would get that at the end of competition if we put it out now states still in the competition could game their answers in the pier in the interviews due to those responses and so when the competition is done everybody will get all the remarks all the reviews and they'll be an equal amount of time between that and when the second until next september no no no the day this is done you'll know who they are the day this hard to find a done when when this competition is completed we'll put out the tapes of the interviews will put out who the who the pira viewers are this competition done in april the first the first rehearsal part of it and at that point you're going to tell us who the peer reviewers are yes or ok are they going to be the same peer reviewers for the next four you go start again some may be some may come back some may not they signed up to be clear they signed up for the first round that was all signed up ok all right what i'd does help me to understand that i don't think our of or that it would be very help because the states are getting ready to compete again to know what what they didn't do well and the longer that drags out the harder it is for them to the going to be very clear we've been very consistent start that we will put all that out as soon as this first round is done in the time between that and when the second application is done will be the same amount of time not less time same amount of time as we had in the first means it looks to me though and i will stand this is a blueprint not a bill not a legislative language we'll we'll go to work on that here shortly but when you talk about focus on the bottom five percent as a way to limit the involvement of the federal government most schools that i think understand that but as i read the blueprint looks to me like this federal will just call it heavy handedness intervention could apply to entire districts and even states on page ten it reads quote both challenge districts and states will face additional restrictions on the use of e s e a funds and may be required to work with an outside organization to improve student academic achievement challenge districts and states the state is in the bottom five percent i guess i'm trying to understand how that would work  sure schools don't operate as islands every school is impacted by their district and by the state some extraordinary positive ways some in new two ways some are hurt by the states and districts what we want to do congressmen and all this stuff is reward excellence and challenge with things not working so we think not only there are thousands of high performing schools in this country we think they're high hundreds of high performing districts that are routinely showing remarkable student achievement often with children who come from very very tough situations we want to shine a spotlight on those districts we want to give them more flexibility more more resources learn from that same issue for state this is got to be a shared responsibility on the flip side of it if you have fifteen thousand school districts take the bottom five percent of school districts where thank simply aren't working for for for the vast majority students in that school district i think we need to look at what's going on there and see what we can do but i am just trying to understand that to be looks to me like you are directing this  entire state it seems to me that that state might be looking for the most flexibility to make corrections not not the least i want to move on to something else and i just want to mention it for a second i talked about this many times i mention again when you came in i actually not going to ask the question because i think ninety percent of my colleagues here are dying to talk to you about the same issue and i want to give them the opt to do that but when we've got the these core standards that are being developed the states there are an awful lot of questions about how that's going to work and what the federal and for cement tool is going to be i know for example that my state of minnesota said well wait a minute i've got a problem with these standards now because they're not as high as in math as what we have and what we'd like to have an a so if we step outside that and go to our own it may affect how how you how the department awards fund so i i ask you not to address that right now but i just want to press the concern and assure you that as we've talked before that certainly in my conference at least there are a lot of concerns about that is who's going to adjudicate and what is the role going to be of your department of that and all your ba concerned that disadvantaged districts like flint michigan where i live will be stretched too thin if if more students move to charter school programs and take their entire p state allocation with them what type of supports would you propose to help those districts if we transition to a system that supports significant trotters school expansion the charter schools really are able to market their schools in a way that the public school systems cannot and very often my experience has been that the more sophisticated parents are the ones who opt for the charter schools how would you help those schools where the students are left behind in the traditional public school system yes sir i've said repeatedly that i'm not a fan of charter schools i'm a fan of good charter schools and we have some charter schools and countries that are extraordinarily high performing often very very poor communities we have some charter schools that are just mediocre and we have some charter schools are frankly need to close and i spoke to the national association of charter schools i said exactly th things what we want to do is we just need more good schools in this country so we need more good traditional schools we need more good magnet schools any more good montessori schools and good charter schools are piece of that solution i think  every school has a chance to market itself and to tell its story parents are very smart very sophisticated they're not to be swayed by some fancy marketing material every parent is looking for a great option for their child and so where families have good options that's fantastic where parents don't have good options we want to create some new options for them of every form and fashion so i did just like plants whether it's strengthening existing schools whether it's creating new schools within the district or as part of is one play it straight and we certainly want both good charter schools are to have them in good traditional public schools but the fact the matter is that parents who are more sophisticated maybe have a better level of education than others are the ones that in fact do tend to choose the charter schools what do we do even though the charter school is a good school what do we do when the other school down the street is receiving less dollars because those dollars are going to the charter school the state right kyra states fund goes to the charter school so it i part of our proposed budget as you know the president is asking for historic increases in funding in the overwhelming joy of these resources are going to go to traditional schools to those children to those teachers and so you know i go through line by line for teachers and leaders three point eight six billion dollars ten percent increase for well rounded education one billion dollars ten percent increase student supports one point eight billion dollars sixty percent increase right down the line so that the overwhelming majority of our resources and hopefully new resources if our budget is approved will go to traditional schools there's been lots of conversation with mr kildee around whether chars are getting higher performing kids or mor engaged families obviously you want to make sure that it's a level playing field i'll point you to a study that was done pretty she studied in the new york public school system the charter schools that looked at their long waiting lists there for charter schools so looked at students who got into charters and they looked at kids who applied but didn't so there was no selection bias same type of same you know i was applying what they actually found in that study was that the children who actually did get in did better than children who went into the traditional schools so they try to sort of account for that making sure it's applicants apples so again i just go back we need more good schools we support every school to be successful and good charter schools not bad ones not mediocre ones but good charter schools particularly  historically underserved communities have been a significant piece of the answer you talk about teacher evaluation and how do we assure that any teacher evaluation system is first of all  in collaboration with the teachers and are really accurately measure teacher performance for example i taught latin for the most part ninety percent latin and my latin students a you know the teacher doesn't have much choice over what type of student we see in our latin class and they were top students how do we make sure that they're all these things are measured it's a great it's a great point and i would tell you you know when the chairman talks about we need bold action we need to get your medically better one of the things most fundamentally broken large in our country are teacher evaluation systems and i went to the n e a s convention in san diego and spoke with  five fifty five hundred delegates and talked about teacher evaluation being broken and everybody applauded and i went to the a f c convention twenty five hundred members and everybody applauded i talked about teacher violation systems this is one area's a country where we need to get dramatically better there's no perfect system out there the need to develop what i know doesn't work is what we're doing now good teachers don't get recognized today teach in the middle don't get the support they need to the bottom who have to support and mentor and induction who shouldn't be teaching they don't get moved out either so if the system so they don't work for any adults i promise you the not working for the children either so what we have to do and it has to be collaborative to your point can only be done with unions and teachers and management working together but we need to get to a whole different level of sophistication and thoughtfulness to really reward excellence and help and support those teachers that are trying to get better systems now don't work for any of the adults everybody is above average i wish we lived in well lake wobegon we don't everybody's superior and we need to be much much more thoughtful in it so i can't promise you that we have a perfect system tomorrow in fact i tell you we won't but we need to be working hard in this area it needs to be done at the local level not in washington and we need to be encouraging folks to do that and we're going to put a lot of money  any estimate on what the cost was to states and local school districts to implement no child left behind over the last eight years i don't know about i don't know  that i would think that that would be valuable information too because i'll tell you what i'm concerned about i read your blueprint for reform and the you know it's relatively interesting and then you go through here and on page seven it says a new approach  you get to page thirteen and it says a new approach a couple more times through the document it talks about a new approach and it's like wow here we go again you know we we had no child left behind in two thousand and one is the the new approach to education in america and now for eight years we have whipsawed local school districts and states to implement no child left behind and we may have whether you like no child left behind or not you know we're after eight years we maybe have filtered down and we've actually got all the procedures in place and the mechanisms in place for no child left behind now we get a new administration and it's a new approach and i can tell you what my local schools are already telling me it's kind of like we just got done with one system and most of them didn't like it one bad system that has put in tremendous a tremendous no amount of cost and bureaucracy into the process and now we've got one quote you geniuses in washington coming up with the next new approach  and we've got a responsibility to educate kids every day and now we're going to have to figure out the new approach and the other saying i wonder what this new approach is going to cost us and i actually find it almost and comprehensible that that we have we've been moving forward for eight years on no child left behind and you can't tell me what it's cost can you tell me what this new approach is going to cost in terms of of mandates to states and local schools and will this administration fully fund the mandate that it's going to put on states and schools so let me be very very clear this blueprint the ideas didn't come from geniuses in washington these ideas came from teachers and parents and principals increase local flexibility and you want students to have a well rounded curriculum and this is the right thing to do for children it's the right thing to do for adults there are too many perverse incentives that cost go ahead as i say i mean how many  when you went through no child left behind we went through and i highlighted every time it said the state or local school district shall monster will do you expect that  this new authorization will be full of school district shall the state will the state must or will there be a tremendous amount of flexibility because these ideas you're right i'm glad that they came from grassroots so did no child left behind but what no child left behind did as it went through the ideas that came up from the grassroots level and they said we're going to accept some and we're going to leave some of the others by the wayside and then we will tell local school districts that they shall or what that that they must i can tell you that that and you know this that the needs of detroit are very very different than the needs of lansing which are very different than the needs of of baldwin michigan and will there be a tremendous amount of flexibility or will this be full of the the mandates and if there are mandates will this administration fully fund them one of my four core principles i talked about was more local flexibility who are absolutely committed to rewarded there was none of that a no child left behind fifty ways to fail no ways to succeed and we want to fix that every child deserves a well rounded curriculum everywhere i went i heard about a narrowing of the curriculum rural urban suburban  think yes we want to maintain local flexibility but there are a couple core principles that every child this country needs and deserves and we're trying to stay true to that i mean the maintain local flexibility i would tell you most school districts and you know this  can and don't believe that there is a lot of local flexibility left and i think that you know for us to restore it you're going to make a massive change and in the approach i hope that's what we see when we actually get the legislative language and you know we look forward to working with you to restore local flexibility instead of federal mandates i appreciate that i want to assure you i'm not from washington bureaucrats i worked on the other side of the law for seven half years and i have very well what working with amazing what washington does to people but we we  very much and i really commend you for trying to really come up with a comprehensive way that we can really improve our educational system as we all are aware that we're losing the battle worldwide that means we're losing our ads you know competitively and so i commend you for trying to make this educational ship of state work  you know we i just wonder is as we talk about the worst performing public schools those are the ones that i continually and i think we've had some conversations i'm not opposed to charter schools and all we know that they tend to get more motivated parents and and those parents should not be penalized because they're motivated however kids can pick their parents and therefore they're the victims in a lot of instances you know parents that are not motivated they languish they're behind so what  d we're concerned about that the bottom working from the bottom up i think that's a great idea but do you have any ideas of how we can incentivize teachers to be at the bottom schools i know we can recreate schools and that's what's happened a lot with the charter schools all get kids who are in failing schools that pick them out and they therefore tend to perform like i said the chronically before and those who have you know parents who are not as motivated they tend to stay at that same school i'm concerned about that school where they stay what are some of things are there any way that you can have teacher pay incentive or have some way to have smaller  they stay up late there to come to school tired where health components visiting nurse in the school that are there any of these kind of creative things that will try to make these failings those who are failing because of the environment and it's got to be difficult to get that these failing communities whole because that's going to take a whole whole new infrastructure etc etc how much can you envision being at the worst school to to to try to turn it around and again i just keep going back we were spending four billion dollars and isotopic entire country we want to spend three point five billion dollars on just five percent of schools so we want to make a massive investment and i want the ideas to come from the local community but all the things you talked about more for teachers to collaborate and work together involving the community in community reducing class size more time for students longer days longer weeks longer years all those things are going to be absolutely possible we'll be looking for good ideas from the community i'd encourage i mean again we have hundreds of these schools around the country i'll tell you want to stick out in my mind is the congressman to your left congressman scott went to school his yes they have to be comprehensive yes but is it possible absolutely and there are now hundreds and hundreds of schools like that around the country so this is possible it is doable but we have to have the courage to do those tough things and we want to put on president resources behind those for the last thirty or forty years i'm trying to catch a school that's been at the bottom for thirty or forty and see if we can make it like harriet tubman it's a real true public school one thing as touched by this morning before the senate health committee and sen spend a lot of time trying to catch failure and we just are catching success i think there's lots of success out there that we have not been capturing we have not been been catching and we want to learn from those successes inside that's not that's why i'm so optimistic despite these challenges despite the sense of urgency we have never had more high performing high poverty schools in tough communities urban rural suburban this is happening but we have to do is take these pockets of excellence and take them to scale but again the ads are going to come from washing your crafts answering to come from great educators of the local  look better than perhaps they are my questions on the assessments and then they also tie in your teacher evaluation issue to maybe does maybe it doesn't but what are the plans for assessments are also going to come from the states or is it is going to be done as it is today the states can select from various testings standards out there and that kind of thing but what are the plans for that as far as this legislation is concerned if i could congressman just to take one second  mr klein's question to be very very clear on the standards that yes as a consortium of forty eight governors forty eight states will choose working together both unions are supporting that business community crying out with this this is a third rail couple years ago you can talk about this issue everybody is coming together saying this is the right thing for children i can do for the record chairman quotes from the head of the union i give you quotes from republican governors i give you quotes from the head of the u s chamber of commerce everybody saying this is an idea whose time has come if states want to opt out of that for whatever reason  that's fine of us to and what we want just to make sure the high standards of their work is part of consortium great if not we just want the local universe in minnesota university tennessee whatever it is to certify that you're hitting a standard that a student won't take remedial classes will have to take remedial classes so you can work as part of that collaborative so five huge momentum there offer state chooses to go along just have it certified by the by their local institutions of higher education and we'll be fine with that too so again this is driven at the local level if you guys know if this is a federal initiative initiative this dies at least it's got to come at the local level that's what's happening once you get better higher standards which is we're going progress you need better stats than we were very concerned that due to the tremendous financial stress that states and districts are under now very very very tough budget times tough in decades that folks would get to the better standards would be left with the same less than optimal assessments so it's part of race a top we carved out three hundred fifty million dollars in we're going to put that out to states so again not won't be our assessments will be national substance we're going to put that out to to our sets of states that want to work together to come back with a much better sets is much more comprehensive not just and of course end of year but real time formative data so teachers and parents and principals and students can know what the strengths and weaknesses are and so we think there's a huge opportunity here to get to that to the next generation and we want to put our resources behind it but the idea is the leadership is going to come at the mark a lot of talking about the the the teacher  years and you know they're given permanent jobs it said or which makes i think evaluation more difficult also there's a lot of resistance frankly to the ability to judge that teachers are doing a superior job and therefore should be on a different pay scale these have been opposed by a lot of you know different states and teachers unions that cetera how i mean i sort of heard you talk about it but how do you how do we treat how we're going to deal with that i mean and i realize you're trying to rally everybody around to it but it's going to be difficult to do it i think i think things are changing i think the public and maybe everyone here hasn't doesn't know how much things change so just one example randi weingarten i have tremendous respect for the present a m t gave a speech here a couple months ago two months ago she talked about how much better teacher evaluations have to get she talked about rewarding excellence she talked about not protecting bad teachers and there's an in this in a willingness again i can't when i went to both national conference of unions to talk about teacher  broken everybody cheered no one is happy with this no one saying the status quo is good enough and so the process is so important to changes miller's point this has to be done a partnership can't be done top down to be done with teachers not to teachers but no one is saying teacher evalu ation works there is a small number of districts the joints and wonderfully innovative things management union working together everybody in the same page but again those are those are just isolated situations some folks are breaking through but there is a willingness again there's a willingness now that maybe it wasn't three or five or eight or ten years ago it doesn't mean we're there yet a lot of hard work ahead of us but am i optimistic we can get there absolutely things and i still worry on the way about the give up of teacher tenure after a short period of time  achievement gap several times seems to me that if you have a chronic situation where african americans in the community are getting a tenth grade education and everybody else is getting a twelfth grade education that you have essentially violated the civil mt already community in violation of brown v board of education where you've denied the students of the minority race of unequal educational opportunity do you see the achievement gap as a civil rights violation i see education the civil rights issue of our generation i see where you have chronic chronic achievement gaps that aren't changing we absolutely have to challenge the status quo we have to make sure some schools have forty nine a p classes in some schools not some children have access to do a roman college classes and some have none and we just have to make sure that all children have a chance to get a high quality education you know one of the gap's isn't a dropout and dropout rates and in a previous discussion i them we put that we thought we had dealt with that when we passed the bill way back when it started because we required we work together an acquired a provision in there that dealt with dropouts so you would not have the perverse incentive unfortunately we gave everybody the opportunity to make up their own numbers and which they did they don't know standardize count there's no standard as you can make up what you want and it's essentially has no basis at we have to obviously not just look at growth on the valuations but we have to look at outcomes and outcomes of graduation rates and i was if you're the best third grade test scores in the world but fifty percent instance of dropping out you're not changing students lives and so we have to look at those rates i'm interested  not just in four year rates but five year rates i think some again some of the perverse incentives where some students fell behind that wasn't always a push to bring them back into the fold in the day it doesn't really matter whether you graduate in four years or five years three is great for is great is great too we want to make sure the students have an opportunity to graduate and most important it's not just about sticks we want to find those schools that are really driving up graduation rates and reward them and learn from what they're doing well one of the problems we had with no child left behind two in the beginning was that we do the test but it's after you got the results that was the end of the discussion we didn't do anything the old farmer's adage that we frequently i repeat it is that you don't fatten the pig  pig we would take the test but then the school would be no better equipped to do anything about it than they were before they got the results what do we actually doing when we find as we go to empower the schools to do a better job so what we want to do more than ever for is with these discussion of resources we want to invest in what's working so were discussed show us the closing achievement gaps in raising bar for all students we'll put a lot more resources behind that and take it to scale when you have one high performance school in a community why can't that go to two to three to five share those best practices where things aren't working we want to challenge the status quo very very hard but with increased local flexibility we think there's going to be a real flourishing of innovation many more good things happening and we want to reward that success do we have a research capability to capture all this information and to get it in a form for best practices and translate it into replicable strategies we want to work very hard with i yes which is sort of a separate entity but there's so many examples of excellence that we have not learned from we want to get much better at that race the top we're going to do some great things we hope i'm sure we'll make some mistakes as well we want to learn from that in real time and so having a real research arm working hard on this in real time is very important to us one of our challenges is figuring out what a highly qualified teacher is think we'll agree you can read it off a resume and that's how we've done it traditionally you read the resume and some highly qualified some aren't some can teach and some can't  what are we doing to ascertain whether or not a teacher is actually effective not just one with the paper qualifications what we want to move from highly qualified based upon paper credentials to highly effective based upon the difference you're making students lives and to your point you can have four degrees from the fancies of universities but if your students aren't learning you're not a great teacher and you we have none of those fancy degrees but we make an extraordinary difference to those lives so moving from paper credentials to effectiveness is exactly where we want to go thank you mr chairman i want to you know as i'm sent to enter into the record another study i think of the last time we talked about the problems that we're having in charter schools in segregation another study has come out which leads to the same conclusion would like been entered into that into the record thank you thank you mr chairman i have two basic questions one i  believe is fairly simple but i'm confused why we don't do it under i d e a we have in the vigil education plans for each special needs student why isn't that plan a growth model in other words why isn't that p e ither adjusted to meet the annual growth goal or the growth goal adjusted to meet the i e p we have not seemed to mesh these two programs we have done great growth models for lots of students including stu's of special needs so i think you're on to something that we are we want to look at very very close because we're paying a lot of money to to develop this whole annual plan that doesn't seem to be meshed with the measurement of the school and i think that would be a major breakthrough in a lot of schools and it's a great point when we talk about growth and again we want to measure like students again like students and so students assume a disability are getting wildly different outcomes we want to stand why that isn't one of the best practices the middle students are progressing we want to figure out how we challenge that good because that's part of my next question because india is doing that and i'm i'm a little worried i ask for forgiveness from god because this question sounds a little like german miller's question and that's why it's dangerous that they in the in the lower five percent schools  i've watched from many years a staffer and as a member and working with us we've tried many of your for different things we've tried magnet schools we tried chain in the names of the schools firing the principals changing the teachers and your that you're putting additional funds in and you said that you're going to try to measure like students to like students but one of the challenges here is why would anyone ever choose to teach in one of these schools if they think there's a fifty percent chance are going to be fired why would a principal go there how are we assured that the same schools that haven't been chronic are going to be measured fairly and get the improvement those are great great questions and to be clear where you have a principal who's recently arrived there  not fired they have to stay i will say though there are no high performing schools out great great principals and if that prison in the twenty years nothing's moved i think honestly you do need to make some changes there i would tell you and this is a really important point that around the country heroic teachers and principals who desperately want to go to the toughest communities to make a difference in fact that's why many people go into education what they haven't had is a real opportunity where they thought they can make a difference in so where you have a critical mass of folks coming together and you the right set of opportunities great leadership more time to collaborate more time for students real sense of master teachers helping out there are phenomenal teachers i want to do that i agree with that wholeheartedly and we have several schools inside fort wayne where teachers actually moved to those schools but and your point about the fifty ways to fail in under sixty that was an excellent point because and measuring student to student performance may help or similar type schools may help but the bottom line is some of those where they've really put their effort in they get marginal change even working weekends and so on and those who are highly motivated teachers didn't move to those schools thinking that fifty percent of you could be fired within a certain number of years if they do everything they can spend the extra hours  easily have an english learners mixed in with this all sorts of economic changes of inside schools sometimes where we see these great perform performing schools we see that there's been a student mix the change there all of a sudden getting a neighborhood change it isn't just that it was suddenly some miraculous they used some language program and they turned around because require the committed principals and teachers i agree with that and to joe miller's for point it requires a whole community but i'll tell you it's hard as this is difficult i've been to school after school around this country when a relatively short amount of time i was in one school that was the second most of violent incidents it's been in its fifty two years later there's that basic no violence nothing going on there are schools where in the first year maybe test scores don't skyrocket but the schools in which student attendance increases twelve percent twelve percent might not sound a lot twelve percent on one hundred eighty day school year is about another month of school th students are choosing to come to school so there are all kinds of indicators that we can look at where adults are in there working external hard this is the toughest work in america today out i guess the most important and we need to get in community by community find those folks  have a chance to be successful reward success give the time learn this won't happen perfectly everywhere but when you see students one year to the next going to school much more something good is going on we see violence disappear something's happening in the eyes of the federal in new orleans right after katrina where two students only two students failed the knowledge out left behind even that was one hundred percent poverty i know it can be done part of the question is and i would like to see to this estate ability of some of those we have state of course the gentleman's time has expired it's the intention of the chair to different absolutely a different group presenting it to us and no child left behind turned out to be punitive instead of helpful so i hate to sound like m a new white house a new secretary so now we've got to do a new something but it won't be that different so i will know it's different if we actually invest in the kids that need the help the most so what i want to know is is there an amount in the budget that will be targeted to ensure the students are ready to learn when they enter the classroom because to bring those failing kids the sick kid the hungry kid the worried child is going to be costly are we going to make that investment or are we going to expect the teacher do to bridge that gap hold that teacher will teacher accountable for something that's impossible because you cannot build a workable product if the parts are broken so mr secretary my question is how much are are we willing to spend more money on those kids than on my grandchildren who are adjust well adjusted well fed happy kids go to school ready to learn great question let me very very clear if a child is hungry he or she  cannot but child is scared either in school or going to and from school that child can't learn if a child can't see the blackboard that child can't learn there's a series of physical emotional psychological supports that we have to put in place we have six large buckets of funding one student support one point eight billion dollars two hundred forty five million dollars increase sixteen percent increase this is to extend afterschool programs extended day extended year this is to create neighborhoods that are safe in students that are safe this is a huge investment two hundred million dollars to replicate geoffrey canada's work in the harlem children's zone to create not just schools the entire communities around schools to make sure students have a chance to be successful so we want to put on precedented resources behind the effort to give students a chance to think about algebra and to think about biology and think about going to college if you're not getting those emotional and physical needs first we're kidding ourselves and so yes can't you question we're going to put a huge amount of resources not behind every child but behind those chill in the communities with the greatest needs to give them a chance to be successful academically ok thank you leader innovation fund and i'm not quite sure how that all fits in does this mean that the blueprint requires a statewide definition of effective teachers and principals that that's based  a few states develop a new model assessments are and does that mean that other states until that happened said they'll be still under the old test we think states can provide some parameters but we think this is best done it can only be done at the local level so local school leaders unions teachers management boards working together at the local level and sort of to gain i think nothing's more important a great teachers great principals we have three point eight six billion dollars in our proposed budget that's a three hundred fifty million dollars increase in so we want to work with those states and districts who want to do something better one of the things i want to say mr chairman is that we've spent a lot of money on a valuation system professional development billions of dollars a year with very very little to show for it and so we want to work in those places are going to challenge the status quo and get to magically better this is a place where we have a long long way to go to come in the meantime will the  teacher effective determination be made using the existing standardized tests for those that aren't in this different to do we're moving towards this next generation of assessments you can use existing assessments some of those are very  strong so you don't have to just look at the test results you can look at in every state you have different categories of students students below basic basic above or advanced so you can look at the movement of students between those different categories and so these systems are not perfect we're in a period of transition there are different ways to do it but the end the day we want to get to a better system as quickly as we can in the interim there are ways to measure progress and growth ok then just another quick question when and when does your department plan to announce a new new data on the number of homeless students in the united states i'm really been concerned concerned about the homeless students and i've heard that it did it may now be over one million i don't know the date i'll get that i'll tell you one change that we're making historically title one poppy used for transportation for home students and we're creating flexibility in our planning in our proposed plan so that homeless children would have access to transportation as well one one thing that i'm concerned about it really it has to do with hud because they are working to change the homeless definition and it really does depend on what the education department says is the is the number of homeless and that would really be helpful if you have that number i would check the date and get it back to reauthorization of e s e a and in that response please include the blueprint for reforms improves middle schools so that we can stop the high drop which occurs in grade seven eight and nine on the middle school piece all of the reforms we're talking about better teachers and leaders a well rounded education again not just read in math but science and social studies and the arts all those things better student supports will impact and help middle schools to become stronger and again looking at growth and gain how much students are improving we think is going to be very very important for those schools that have chronically underperformed we had the school improvement grants which is a three point five billion dollars investment in those schools can you see that middle schools get a greater amount of they've been receiving the last decade because when i have feedback in middle schools they always compare how little they get versus the elementary and the high school so that needs some special visit the one thing in this is not quite answer your question directly but one of things always concerns me is high schools like to point the finger middle schools and middle schools elementary schools are right down the line and what we're really asking is for communities to come together behind their children everyone rally behind that's one of things and so appealing to me about the harlem children's zone is those aren't somebody else's children every child there is our child  everybody's working together behind and so what we want to get out of this is this finger pointing and blame game and get entire communities rallying behind children and obviously middle schools are hugely important piece of that that that pipeline that is quite my second question to you is the a blueprint calls for identifying and developing effective teachers and leaders how will you encourage and support states and districts in recruiting lingual teachers and principals to better meet the needs of english language learners and diverse student populations we want to put on president of resources behind better teacher recruitment including bilingual teachers and principals i've said repeatedly i think our department has significantly under invested in principal leadership and that's huge and we're asking for a five fold increase there and is we have an increasingly diverse student population i want the adults in front of those students to reflect the diversity of our country i worry about the growing imbalance between our students and the adults the real personal battle i worry about the lack of men i think most teachers around this country two percent of teachers are african american males one point five percent are hispanic males three point five percent from the hispanic african american community something's wrong with that picture and we've got to do better we will return thank you of proficiency that up for the top down imposition of a of improvement models that are supposed to use on so called underperforming schools actually have led to any success anywhere in massachusetts or well in massachusetts first within generally otherwise there are a number of high performing turnaround schools around the country that have used one of your four models the dudes that you cite yes are and have all of them ben as shown to give some success i think and let me ask you what your reasoning is for restricting the number of certain models that can be used and actually what was said for high performing districts they could come in with a different model for giving some flexibility there what w using so why should somebody else be precluded from choosing that one over the other three again we think that's a good model we think we need to be doing some other things where there's lots of schools will presumably there will be people doing other things if you've given the four choices i so not everybody is going to pick there's some good ones like there's some good public schools and some bad ones like to some bad public those in fact they're bad or worse than our public schools are good or no better than so i don't know why would driving people in that direction one of these models but that's a choice people want to take it i suppose not a problem why you didn't restrict arbitrarily say that you got to just dump half of them doesn't seem to make it the closure model may or may not work that may be an option some instances so i just don't get the rationale and i don't see any evidence as a foundation for your decision to limit that transformation model that we have unlimited the others and what we want to see is in these very low performing schools in these just the bottom five percent in any state we want to see very aggressive action taken and talent be a piece of good but why why not restrict the other three to ask you to do is to provide for this committee and as chairman i ask that we do this all the detail you have the turnaround model is work anywhere and where has it worked all the details where the restart model has worked and where it hasn't worked all the detail of the closure model where it's worked where  worked and all the detail entailed by that of model where it's worked as it worked and then some data is behind why you chose these four and how they stack up against one another because i don't think it's going to bear out and you know i don't mind of the flexibility choosing between for the precluding people  choose the one that looks really really attractive just on the fact you want for some people to try a less attractive one doesn't seem like a model for success we're not saying schools have to do this next year just over the next couple years we're asking folks to take this every year and take some i want to comment about a couple of things he raised the issue of standards here and that's generally a contentious issue on our side but i think it's an issue we have to address and it's not that i want to control standards from washington but i think what the state has done in a cooperative way is very good and i think back in my elementary school days most of the members of my class quit school after a scrape because i grew up in a farming community they thought they had learned everything they would ever need to know farming but in fact that would been very good for them to continue on to high school and study chemistry mathematics because as you know today farms are far different than they were back in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and farmers today have to be well educated in various aspects of science want to standards not just because of science or just for science but i think we owe it to our students today because we have such a mobile society today as you well know most people move every four years or so and it's easily possible for a family to move over the christmas holiday let's say and the student may have studied a certain subject particularly in math which is sequence or sciences which is sequential and they may have studied in the fall semester of the transfer to another school which offers that same subject in the spring semester and the student misses out on the course that would have been taught and as old school in the franks mister this is a major problem when you're talking about moving every four years a lot of kids left in the cold and if we wonder why so many americans don't understand fractions or percentages or a lot of other things that's one of the causes of it so i'm not so much i'm not concerned quite as much about the standards in terms of what is taught or the quality of but the sequence nature courses it's crucial for science and mathematics and i hope that everyone on this committee will appreciate  and most of those nations that are doing better than us do have a standardized curriculum that doesn't mean they've set standards nationally but they have the curriculum nationally so that you avoid the sequential problem and you also can help make sure that those students get the course they're going to need so i want to get that in the record but also hear any comments you might have about that and ways that we can address that while at the same time taking into account account the concerns of my colleagues who are very worried about national standards i just think this is happening at the right time for the right reason in the leadership the right place which is the local level and again this is be everyone's working hard together now so not done yet but i'm very very encouraged i think this is a fundamental breakthrough for our country i agree and i'm delighted that states have done this working together that way that's the ideal way and and leave us out of it even though i introduced a bill to provide tentative national standards delighted if a bill is not necessary i suspect that just introducing the bill probably instigated action on the part of the states to avoid the certainly the states efforts your efforts the president's efforts i think i'm still looking for us but in a moment is that something that you feel as well that while there is all this attention you don't sense that urgency in the country very pleased that you're doing that i work at the state level as well in teacher evaluations and how how do we really i think work with what we might call the lowest performing schools now to have some assurances that they're actually taking the time to develop those evaluations are using ones that are out there it seems as if there must be several several different plans that that schools have been using that are best practices and how do we disseminate that in such a way that it doesn't become top down there are plenty of good models out there when i was in chicago we used the tap model the teacher advancement project was jointly worked on at the master level with the a f p and with folks actually from the milken foundation we thought is very very strong to me this is devaluation p should be done at the school level it's really got to be the district level big and that we don't want ninety five thousand schools doing their own evaluations but working together there are good models out there again we want to put money behind places schools districts have to provide leadership management unions working together teachers stakeholders working together have to create that framework at the district level and the schools need to implement and i'm going to try to get to you in the secretary's going to leave here he's  got to be somewhere else at five thirty s a lot of stuff to minister mr guthrie and if you can know yourself we can just quickly jump through the numbers here and i'm apologize but ok i did i had a couple questions but we'll we'll talk again thank you so much i've enjoyed your attitude in the way that program progressing on this and hopefully we'll have a good solution by the end of the year just had a couple of the questions i was keeping to this we had some discussion earlier about charter schools and the good students or are students picking to leave charter schools in leaving guess the parents who aren't as motivated on their children are gonna sophisticated talked their kids staying in the public school the traditional public school and how do you i mean just just how do you think through that issue in and that that there's an issue of people leaving charter schools which i'm for because i think the option is leaving a kid into a school that the parent doesn't want them to do attend or give them an option to move them into a charter school but what about the what happens to the public school as it does it dwindle away and there's other options t well and we just need more choices i just fundamentally think is that wealthy families in our country have had two three four great education options for decades poor families that often had one choice and often that choice wasn't a great one and so think about i science of good teaching in the blueprint what we want to do is invest in those places those districts those states the schools of education that are doing a great job of celebrating student achievement and by definition are getting towards explicitly focused on the issue of turn around schools which new haven leadership recognized that change needs to happen there but frankly i don't see how what this blueprint calls for  your work on the recovery act funding i think of what is a bloodbath in this country in terms of school districts with the worst economy and our lifetime and but unfortunately i don't still think we're out of the woods yet and every school superintendent i talked to talked about the cliff in two thousand and eleven and i understand the thinking behind the competitive grant model in terms of trying to reform the system but you know we have an economy like a patient with a heart attack and you were asking school districts to run a marathon right now with with resources that are going to really get real scary at the end of this calendar year and i would just sort of share that with you that aside from the merits of the substance of it there is a practical tensions in the no child left behind was the way the assessment work and how it was driving decisions in schools and classrooms and it's a lot that can be done there's no magic bullet but something like adaptive testing which is a little more flexible and assesses student progress changing it no child should be ignored and not make reasonable progress rather than all at the same schedule is saying we need to have a good conversation about minutes yes i well i was a teacher for twenty years and i though i taught in the community college not at the k twelve level nonetheless i know that after so many years in the classroom that there are a range of teachers from great to those that need improvement clearly those that need improvement require greater intervention than which exists now especially the k twelve classroom which is twenty minutes about you ation in the back of a classroom  once a year now in your blueprint the key element seems to be having an effective teacher in the classroom yet when seventy four teachers were fired at central falls high school in rhode island you said that the members of the school board were showing courage and doing the right thing for the kids now are you are you saying that there was not one not even one teacher with any redeeming value absolutely not when i was there some from our teachers they are in every school struggles and you never want to see teachers fired what i was suggesting was that schools like that that have struggled where there's a fifty two percent dropout rate we're seven percent of kids are at grade level and their math proficiency reading was better and that the math ninety percent of students weren't we have to work hard together what's actually happened subsequent which i'm very pleased about is the district and the union and working together on mediation and we've been actively encouraged that so i think that situation is moving the right direction and how would you expect teachers to collaborate in the process because i don't see any any area there for teacher input into the in the blueprint huge areas and in that partnership between teachers and administrators has to happen and all these things are talking a better evaluations better set since all that has to happen with part with the cooperation participation of all parties thank you secretary thank you very much for your for your time i'm sorry that we were interrupted in the middle of your testimony by the by the votes we requested of you on a bipartisan by camera basis to make this blueprint available from us for us and it's now our o bring you back here for for an update on all this but thank you so very very much for presenting the blueprint as was requested mr klein thank you mr chairman echo the chairman's comments so somebody write this down today and thank you very much for your hard work and your