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ESEA REAUTHORIZATION: 

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S 

ESEA REAUTHORIZATION PRIORITIES 

HEARING 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, 

LABOR, AND PENSIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

ON

EXAMINING THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY ACT (ESEA) REAUTHORIZATION, FOCUSING ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S ESEA 

REAUTHORIZATION PRIORITIES 

MARCH 17, 2010 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/ 

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland 

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico 

PATTY MURRAY, Washington 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania 

KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina 

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon 

AL FRANKEN, Minnesota 

MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah 

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska 

TOM COBURN, M.D., Oklahoma 

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas 

DANIEL SMITH, Staff Director 

PAMELA SMITH, Deputy Staff Director 

FRANK MACCHIAROLA, Republican Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(II) 

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 2010 

Page 

Harkin, Hon. Tom, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and 

Pensions, opening statement ............................................................................... 1 

Enzi, Hon. Michael B., a U.S. Senator from the State of Wyoming, opening 

statement .............................................................................................................. 3 

Duncan, Hon. Arne, Secretary of Education, U.S. Department of Education, 

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 10 

Dodd, Hon. Christopher J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Connecticut ......... 13 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 14 

Reed, Hon. Jack, a U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode Island ....................... 18 

Burr, Hon. Richard, a U.S. Senator from the State of North Carolina ............... 19 

Murray, Hon. Patty, a U.S. Senator from the State of Washington ................... 21 

Murkowski, Hon. Lisa, a U.S. Senator from the State of Alaska ........................ 24 

Sanders, Hon. Bernard, a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont ................... 26 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 29 

Coburn, Hon. Tom, M.D., a U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma .............. 30 

Hagan, Hon. Kay R., a U.S. Senator from the State of North Carolina ............. 32 

Roberts, Hon. Pat, a U.S. Senator from the State of Kansas .............................. 35 

Franken, Hon. Al, a U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota .......................... 37 

Alexander, Hon. Lamar, a U.S. Senator from the State of Tennessee ................ 40 

Bennet, Hon. Michael F., a U.S. Senator from the State of Colorado ................. 42 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL 

Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.: 

American Association of University Women .................................................. 51 

(III) 

(1) 

ESEA REAUTHORIZATION: 

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S 

ESEA REAUTHORIZATION PRIORITIES 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 2010 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:27 a.m. in Room 

SH–216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Tom Harkin, Chairman 

of the committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Harkin, Dodd, Murray, Reed, Sanders, Hagan, 

Franken, Bennet, Enzi, Alexander, Burr, Murkowski, Coburn, and 

Roberts. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HARKIN

The CHAIRMAN. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, 

Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. 

Today, we are honored to be joined by the U.S. Secretary of Education, Mr. Arne Duncan. As the former Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools, he brought to Washington an enormous 

amount of experience and credibility, along with a strong vision for 

public school reform. 

Today’s hearing on the Obama administration’s Elementary and 

Secondary Education Act reauthorization priorities provides an opportunity to learn more about the details of the President’s Blueprint for Reform, which just came out 2 days ago. In his introduction to the blueprint, President Obama said, and I quote, 

‘‘A world-class education is a moral imperative—the key to 

securing a more equal, fair, and just society. We will not remain true to our highest ideals unless we do a far better job 

of educating each one of our sons and daughters. We will not 

be able to keep the American promise of equal opportunity if 

we fail to provide a world-class education to every child.’’ 

Those are very fine words, and I could not agree more. Right 

now, we have an opportunity to shape our educational system to 

do what is right for every child in this country. 

When we passed the original ESEA in 1965, it was based, in 

part, on the principles of civil rights and equity for all. At that 

time, although the U.S. Supreme Court had integrated the schools 

11 years earlier in 1954, extreme inequalities still existed between 

affluent suburban schools on the one hand and low-performing 

schools in many urban and rural districts on the other. UnfortuVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:49 Mar 30, 2011 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\DOCS\55620.TXT DENISE
2 

nately, more than 55 years after ESEA’s initial passage, these inequities persist. 

For its flaws, No Child Left Behind has done an excellent job of 

shining a light on the achievement gaps that still exist, and this 

is something that we want to preserve—shining that light. However, there is still a lot of work to do to close these gaps and to 

better prepare our children for college and careers. 

One thing that needs to be fixed is the way that the current law 

has caused some people to only focus on kids in the middle, the 

ones who might just barely pass or barely fail the test. That ignores the kids at the top who might get bored and fall behind if 

they are not challenged. It also writes off the kids at the very bottom. We cannot abide by any educational system that says there 

are some kids that can be written off. 

By building on prior reforms and re-envisioning the Federal role 

as it relates to accountability, teachers and leaders, and the types 

of carrots and sticks that are used to push innovation and reform, 

the reform agenda has five overarching goals: college- and careerready students, one; great teachers and leaders in every school, 

two; equity and opportunity for all students, three; raising the bar 

and rewarding excellence, four; and promoting innovation and continuous improvement, five. 

This is a set of goals that should invite broad bipartisan agreement. Those of us sitting at this dais may have different ideas on 

the best way to achieve those goals, but the vision laid out by the 

President has given us a well thought out starting point for our deliberations. 

I will take this time, as we reauthorize ESEA, to lay out some 

of my guiding principles as the chairman. Here are some of my 

goals for reauthorization, based upon what I have observed and 

have heard in recent years and having spent 22, 23 years now on 

this committee. 

First, I believe we need to ensure that all students—no matter 

their background, community, family, or ability—have equitable access—I emphasize those two words, equitable access—to a quality 

public education. 

Next, we need to reform the accountability structure of No Child 

Left Behind while continuing to focus on the success of all students. We should give schools and teachers credit for growth and 

rewards for success, but we must do something about schools that 

are chronically failing large numbers of students. 

Next, we need to ensure that we are offering a well-rounded curriculum that prepares students to be engaged citizens who understand and appreciate the world around them, but also have the 

academic skills to succeed in college and the workforce. Our students must have the best possible teachers and academic leaders, 

and those teachers, principals, and superintendents should have 

the support they need to do their jobs with excellence. 

Next, we must safeguard the rights of students with disabilities 

and ensure that they have every opportunity to succeed academically. 

Next, we must make sure that we are focusing on all the needs 

of America’s students, all the needs, including their need for good 

health, nutrition, and physical fitness. 

3 

And finally, we need to ensure that the policies we write into law 

are flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse students and 

schools, including rural schools, but consistent enough to ensure 

high standards for all students. 

I have some policy ideas about how we can achieve those goals. 

For example, we need to bite the bullet and get beyond our outdated, 19th century agrarian school calendar, giving adequate time 

for students to have a well-rounded education by extending the 

school day and the school year. We also need to recognize that education begins at birth, and children need a solid foundation for 

learning before they ever get to kindergarten. 

Without these and other changes, we cannot hope to be successful in the 21st century. 

As the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, I look forward 

to working with the President, the Secretary, and my congressional 

colleagues on both sides of the aisle to write an education law that 

maintains our focus on the success of all students, while giving 

States and districts the support they need to succeed. 

With that, I will turn it over to our Ranking Member, Senator 

Enzi, for his opening statement. Then I will introduce our witness. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR ENZI

Senator ENZI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this hearing. 

Mr. Secretary, thank you for being with us today to discuss the 

Blueprint for Reform for the reauthorization of the Elementary and 

Secondary Education Act, or ESEA. This blueprint will help the 

committee move forward to develop legislation that builds upon 

what we have learned from the latest version of ESEA, called No 

Child Left Behind, and fix what isn’t working. 

In 2001, when No Child Left Behind was enacted, legislators 

from both sides of the aisle saw little, if any, return on investment 

in K through 12 education, despite over 35 years of Federal funding. Many felt that a strong Federal hand was called for because 

States and local school districts were not getting the job done. 

There was little flexibility given to the States or school districts in 

how they implemented the requirements of No Child Left Behind. 

So fast forward to today. What we have learned is that a better 

balance is needed between prescriptive Federal mandates and 

State and local flexibility. The blueprint seems to reflect this belief 

with the Administration’s ‘‘tight on goals, loose on means’’ philosophy. 

Overall, the blueprint contains a lot for us to think about and 

use as we deliberate how to be sure our investment makes a difference in the education our children receive. I want to mention 

just a few issues today, but I believe this is just the beginning of 

an extended conversation. 

As we work through the reauthorization of ESEA, I will be paying close attention to the impact of the changes we make on rural 

schools, districts, and rural States. No Child Left Behind has been 

criticized for being a one-size-fits-all law, a claim that has rung especially true in the rural areas. 

4 

I appreciate the blueprint tries to recognize the unique nature of 

rural schools and districts. However, despite these good efforts, I 

believe additional adjustments will likely be needed. 

One thing I have heard consistently from teachers, principals, superintendents, and parents across Wyoming is the need to utilize 

a growth model in accountability systems. I believe that student 

academic growth measurements can be used for accountability and 

as part of what States consider as they develop teacher effectiveness metrics. 

The Federal Government’s role should be to encourage and support States and school districts so that more students graduate 

from high school on time and with the knowledge and skills they 

need to attend college and enter the workforce without the need for 

remediation. This is a critical goal as economic growth depends on 

an educated and skilled workforce. 

Secretary Duncan, thank you for appearing before the committee 

today to discuss your ideas for the reauthorization of ESEA. I am 

anxious to listen to the dialogue today and look forward to working 

with you to fix the law to make it work better for superintendents, 

principals, teachers, parents, and especially the students. 

Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Enzi. 

The Honorable Arne Duncan is the U.S. Secretary of Education, 

confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Inauguration Day, January 20, 

2009. I was pleased that the first time I chaired this committee 

was to confirm his nomination. 

Prior to his appointment as Secretary of Education, Mr. Duncan 

served as the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools 

from 2001 to 2008, where, during his tenure, a record high number 

of elementary school students met or exceeded the State standards 

in math and reading. 

Also during his tenure, ACT scores for Chicago Public School students rose at three times the national rate. These are among the 

many successes that led to Mr. Duncan’s becoming the longestserving big-city education superintendent in the country. 

Mr. Secretary, we are pleased to welcome you back again today 

as a partner in our effort to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to your statement and the question-answer period outlining 

the blueprint that you sent out just 2 days ago. 

Welcome back, Mr. Secretary. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ARNE DUNCAN, SECRETARY OF 

EDUCATION, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, DC 

Secretary DUNCAN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, Senator 

Enzi, and members of the committee. It is a true honor to be here 

with you today. 

I want to thank each of you for your hard work and commitment 

in education. As I was looking around the room, I have been able 

to visit schools with almost all of you in your States and see firsthand that remarkable commitment. 

I believe that education is the one true path out of poverty. It 

has to be the great equalizer in our society. As the President said 

5 

in his weekly address on Saturday, there are few issues that speak 

more directly to the long-term prosperity of our Nation than education. Education is the one issue that must rise above politics and 

ideology. We can all agree that we have to educate our way to a 

better economy. 

We currently have an unprecedented opportunity to reform our 

Nation’s schools so that they are preparing all our students for success in college and careers. Today, 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 1.2 million teenagers are leaving our schools for 

the streets. That is economically unsustainable and morally unacceptable. 

On a recent international test of math literacy, our 15-year-olds 

scored 24th out of 29 developed nations. In science, 15-year-olds 

ranked 17th out of 29 countries. 

Just 40 percent of our Nation’s young people earn a 2-year or 4- 

year college degree. The United States now ranks 10th in the world 

in the rate of college completion for 25- to 34-year-olds. A generation ago, we led the world, but we are falling behind. The global 

achievement gap is growing. If we are serious about preparing our 

Nation’s young people to compete in a global economy, we must do 

better than this. 

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we have 

built the foundation for reform. All States are reporting the 

progress they are making on four areas of reform—raising standards, developing and recruiting excellent teachers and leaders, 

using data to inform instruction, and turning around our lowestperforming schools. 

In the Race to the Top fund, we have identified 16 finalists for 

the first phase. We have invited all of the finalists to present about 

their plans and will be announcing the winners in the first week 

of April. The winners will blaze the trail on reforms that will improve student achievement for decades to come. 

To promote reforms in every State, I am committed to working 

with you in 2010 to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary 

Education Act. It has been more than 8 years since Congress last 

reauthorized ESEA through the No Child Left Behind Act. That is 

the longest gap between reauthorizations in the 45-year history of 

ESEA. 

We all recognize that NCLB has its flaws. 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 NCLB. 

My senior staff and I visited every State on our ‘‘Listening and 

Learning Tour.’’ We met with parents, teachers, and students 

themselves. We have engaged in hundreds of conversations with 

stakeholders representing all sections of the education community. 

In all of our conversations, we heard a consistent message that 

our schools aren’t expecting 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. 

We have also heard that people aren’t looking to Washington for 

all the answers. They don’t want us to provide a prescription for 

6 

success. Our role should be to offer a meaningful definition of success, one that raises the bar and shows teachers and students what 

they should be striving for. 

With those lessons in our mind, we have developed our blueprint 

for ESEA reauthorization. We have shared that with you, Mr. 

Chairman, and I ask that the blueprint be entered into the record 

of this hearing. 

[The Blueprint for Reform referred to above may be found at 

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/edsec/leg/blueprint/.] 

In this blueprint, you will see that everything is organized 

around our three major goals for reauthorization—first, raising 

standards; second, rewarding excellence and, as both of you have 

mentioned, focusing on growth and gain; and third, increasing local 

control and flexibility while maintaining a laser-like focus on equity and on closing achievement gaps. 

All of these policy changes will support our effort to meet the 

President’s goal that by 2020, America will once again lead the 

world in college completion. In particular, the ESEA will set a goal 

that by 2020, all students will graduate ready to succeed in college 

and in the workplace. We will build an accountability system that 

measures the progress that States and districts and schools are 

making toward meeting that goal. 

We have a comprehensive agenda to help us meet that goal. It 

starts with asking States to adopt standards that truly prepare 

students for success in college and careers. Governors and State 

school chief officers of 48 States are doing the tough job of setting 

these standards in reading and in math. The leadership at the local 

level has been absolutely remarkable, and their effort is supported 

by both major teachers unions and by the business community. 

In our proposal, we call on States to adopt college- and careerready standards, either working with other States or by getting 

their higher education institutions to certify the standards are rigorous enough to ensure students graduate ready to succeed in college-level classes or to enter the workplace. 

Standards by themselves aren’t enough. We will need a new generation of assessments that measure whether students are on track 

for success in college and careers. We will also support the effort 

to develop those assessments so they will measure higher-order 

skills, provide accurate measures of student progress, and give 

teachers the information they need to improve student achievement 

and differentiate instruction. These standards and assessments are 

key parts of our effort to redefine accountability. 

Under NCLB, the Federal Government greatly expanded its role 

in holding schools accountable. It did several things right, and I 

will always give NCLB credit for its important contributions to 

education reform. It required all students to be included in the accountability system, including minority students, students with disabilities, and English language learners. It required States, districts, and schools to report test scores disaggregated by student 

subgroups, exposing achievement gaps like never before. We know 

the achievement gap is unacceptably large, and teachers and school 

leaders throughout the country are working and mobilizing to address that problem. 

7 

NCLB was right to create a system based on results for students, 

not just on inputs. NCLB’s accountability system needs to be fixed, 

and it needs to be fixed now. There are far too many perverse incentives in the current law. It allows, and it actually even encourages, States to lower standards. It doesn’t measure growth. It 

doesn’t reward excellence. 

It prescribes the same interventions for schools with very, very 

different needs. It encourages a narrowing of the curriculum and 

focuses on test preparation. It labels too many schools with the 

same ‘‘failing’’ label, regardless of their challenges. 

It encourages schools to focus their efforts, Mr. Chairman, as you 

said, on only that tiny percent of students close to that proficiency 

bar and neglect the vast majority of students either above or below 

that line. We need all adults focused on every single child, not just 

that small handful in a classroom or in a school close to that bar. 

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 it will use student academic 

growth as the most important measure of whether schools and districts and States are making progress. I am much more interested 

in growth and gain than in absolute test scores, as long as students 

are on a path to meet standards. 

Under our plan, we will reward schools, districts, and States that 

are making the most progress. At the same time, we will be toughminded in our lowest-performing schools and schools of large 

achievement gaps that aren’t closing. All other schools will be given 

flexibility to meet performance targets working under their State 

and local accountability systems. If we get accountability right, we 

will provide the right incentives to increase student achievement, 

and I am confident that America’s students, teachers, and principals will deliver. 

I would like to focus on the critically important work of our 

teachers and our leaders. The teaching and learning that happens 

in schools every single 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, about competitive versus formula—and all those are absolutely important debates to have. We can never, never lose sight 

of the impact our decisions have on classrooms where teachers are 

doing the hard work every day of helping our children learn. Every 

decision must be viewed through the framework of improving instruction for our Nation’s children. 

We believe that there is a lot in our proposal that teachers will 

like. We know that there is a lot under the current law that teachers don’t like. We heard that in every State we visited. 

Most teachers believe that we have a broken system of accountability. Many teachers believe their evaluation and support systems are flawed. We need a system of accountability that is fair. 

I have never met a teacher yet who is afraid of accountability. All 

they ask for is a system that measures each child’s progress, not 

this year’s students against last year’s students. We need better 

evaluation systems that are honest and useful and elevates, rather 

than diminishes, the teaching profession. 

8 

All told, we are requesting a record $3.9 billion to strengthen the 

teaching profession, an increase of $350 million. We begin with the 

understanding that teaching is some of the toughest and most important work in society, and we are deeply committed to making 

it a better profession for teachers. 

To start with, we are encouraging the development of highquality teacher preparation programs. Today, too many teachers 

tell us that they are underprepared for what they face in the classroom. They have too much to learn on the job. 

We are encouraging the development of meaningful career ladders and stronger efforts to retain the great teachers we have. We 

lose far too many great young teachers due to a lack of support. 

From newly hired teachers to tenured teachers to master teachers, 

and 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 for a couple of 

years. 

We want to encourage schools and districts to rethink how teachers can best do their jobs—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 are going to be much more productive, and they will get better results for our children. Teachers 

must be at the center of those efforts. 

We are also investing in principals to create better instructional 

leaders, so that teachers have the leadership they need to do better 

work. Historically, we think our department has significantly 

underinvested in principal leadership, and we are looking to have 

a five-fold increase in that funding. I think there are no good 

schools in this country without good principals. We know great 

principals attract and retain good talent. We know bad principals 

run off good talent. So principal leadership is huge for us. 

As for 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 will also ask for fair evaluation systems for 

principals. 

We want to use these systems to support teachers in their instructional practice and to reward great teachers for all they do, including advancing student learning. We also want to reward them 

for working in high-need schools. If we are serious about finally 

closing the achievement gap, we must close the opportunity gap far 

too many of our children face. 

As I mentioned, we will change the accountability system to 

make it fairer. For the first time, we will be holding not just 

schools and teachers accountable for student success, but districts 

and States as well. This must be a shared responsibility. Teachers 

can’t teach and principals can’t lead when they are not well supported at the local and State level. 

We want to stop mislabeling thousands of schools as failures. Instead, we want to challenge them to close achievement gaps with 

targeted strategies designed by teachers and principals together. 

9 

Similarly, everyone should get credit for helping students who 

are behind catch up, even if they do not yet meet standards, as 

long as they are on the path to get there. A sixth grade teacher 

whose 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 just a good 

teacher. That teacher is 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 chronically lowest performing schools and those with 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 just test-taking skills—assessments that can engage and encourage learning and provide teachers with meaningful, quick feedback. 

We want students, parents, teachers, and communities working 

toward a meaningful bar, and to support them in getting there. 

The goal of the K to 12 system has to be to prepare students for 

the next step on their journey, either college or in a good career. 

The system needs to be focused on those goals. Dumbed-down 

standards mean we are actually lying to children, giving them false 

hope and undermining the high standards that teachers have for 

their students. That must end. 

We are calling for over $1 billion to fund a complete education 

because a whole child will be a successful adult. We want schools 

investing in the arts, history, sciences, languages, physical education, and all of the learning experiences that contribute to a wellrounded education. That is critically important. 

Finally, we are also seeking $1.8 billion to support students by 

encouraging community engagement and support and exposure to 

other positive adults. Teachers cannot do it alone. They need parents, community leaders, social service agencies, and other supportive adults in the schools helping to reinforce a culture of learning and respect. A parent will always be a child’s first teacher and 

will always be that child’s most important teacher. 

Thank you so much for the opportunity to discuss our comprehensive reform of ESEA. This will be one of the most dramatic 

changes in the law’s history. It will fundamentally change the role, 

the Federal role in education. We will move from being a compliance monitor to being an engine of innovation. 

The urgency for these reforms has never been greater. Our children and our future are at risk. Let us 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 examples for others to follow. 

I thank you for all that you have done and all you will do to 

make education America’s highest priority and greatest legacy. We 

10 

need to work together to continue that legacy and deliver a worldclass education for every child. 

Thank you so much. 

[The prepared statement of Secretary Duncan follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ARNE DUNCAN

Thank you Chairman Harkin, Senator Enzi, and members of the committee. It’s 

an honor to be here today. 

I want to thank each of you for your hard work on education. I believe that education is the one true path out of poverty. It is the great equalizer in our society. 

As the President said in his weekly address on Saturday, there are few issues that 

speak more directly to the long-term prosperity of our Nation than education. Education is one issue that can rise above ideology and politics. We can all agree that 

we need to educate our way to a better economy. 

We currently have an unprecedented opportunity to reform our Nation’s schools 

so they are preparing all of our students for success in college and careers. 

Today, the status quo clearly isn’t good enough. Consider the following statistics: 

• 27 percent of America’s young people drop out of high school. That means 1.2 

million teenagers are leaving our schools for the streets. 

• On a recent international test of math literacy, our 15-year-olds scored 24th 

out of 29 developed Nations. In science, our 15-year-olds ranked 17th out of 29 developed countries. 

• And just 40 percent of young people earn a 2-year or 4-year college degree. 

• The United States now ranks 10th in the world in the rate of college completion for 25- to 34-year-olds. A generation ago, we were first in the world but we’re 

falling behind. The global achievement gap is growing. 

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we have built the foundation for reform. All States are reporting the progress they’re making on four areas 

of reform: raising standards, developing and recruiting excellent teachers and leaders, using data to inform instruction, and turning around our lowest-performing 

schools. In the Race to the Top fund, we have identified 16 finalists for the first 

phase. We’ve invited all of the finalists to present about their plans and will be announcing the winners in the first week of April. The winners will blaze the trail 

on reforms that will improve student achievement for decades to come. 

To promote reforms in every State, I am committed to working with you in 2010 

to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It’s been more than 

8 years since Congress last reauthorized ESEA through the No Child Left Behind 

Act. That’s the longest gap between reauthorizations in the 45-year history of ESEA. 

We all recognize that NCLB has its flaws. 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 NCLB. My senior staff and I visited every 

State on our Listening and Learning Tour. We met with parents, teachers, and students themselves. We’ve engaged in conversations with stakeholders representing 

all sections of the education community. 

In all of our conversations, we’ve heard a consistent message that our schools 

aren’t expecting enough of students. We need to raise our standards so that all students are graduating prepared to succeed in college and the workplace. We’ve also 

heard that people aren’t looking to Washington for answers. They don’t want us to 

provide a prescription for success. Our role should be to offer a meaningful definition of success—one that shows teachers and students what they should be striving 

for. 

With those lessons in our mind, we have developed our Blueprint for ESEA reauthorization. We have shared that with you, Mr. Chairman, I ask that the Blueprint 

be entered into the record of this hearing. In this Blueprint, you’ll see that everything is organized around our three major goals for reauthorization. 

1. Raise standards. 

2. Reward excellence and growth. 

3. Increase local control and flexibility while maintaining the focus on equity and 

closing achievement gaps. 

All of these policy changes will support our effort to meet the President’s goal that 

by 2020, America once again will lead the world in college completion. In particular, 

the ESEA will set a goal that by 2020 all students will graduate ready to succeed 

in college and the workplace. We will build an accountability system that measures 

the progress that States, districts, and schools are making toward meeting that 

goal. 

11 

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 chief State school officers of 48 States are doing the tough job of setting these standards in reading and math. In 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 to certify the standards are rigorous 

enough to ensure students graduate ready to succeed in college-level classes or enter 

the workplace. 

But standards aren’t enough. We’ll need a new generation of assessments that 

measure whether students are on track for success in college and careers. We will 

support the effort to develop those tests so they will measure higher-order skills, 

provide accurate measures of student progress, and give teachers the information 

they need to improve student achievement. 

These standards and assessments are key parts of our effort to redefine accountability. 

Under NCLB, the Federal Government greatly expanded its role in holding 

schools accountable. It did several things right—and I’ll always give NCLB credit 

for its important contributions to education reform. It required all students be included in the accountability system—including minority students, students with disabilities, and English learners—and held schools, districts and States accountable 

for educating all of their students. It required States, districts and schools to report 

test scores disaggregated by student subgroups, exposing achievement gaps like 

never before. We know the achievement gap is unacceptably large—and teachers 

and school leaders throughout the country are working and mobilizing to address 

that problem. NCLB was right to create a system based on results for students, not 

just on inputs. 

But NCLB’s accountability system needs to be fixed—now. It allows—even encourages—States to lower standards. It doesn’t measure growth or reward excellence. It 

prescribes the same interventions for schools with very different needs. It encourages a narrowing of the curriculum and focuses on test preparation. It labels too 

many schools with the same ‘‘failing’’ label regardless of their challenges. 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 it will use student academic growth as the most important measure of whether schools, districts, and States are making progress. I’m 

more interested in growth than absolute test scores, as long as students are on a 

path to meet standards. 

Under our plan, we will reward schools that are making the most progress. At 

the same time, we will be tough-minded in our lowest-performing schools and 

schools with large achievement gaps that aren’t closing. All other schools will be 

given flexibility to meet performance targets working under their State and local accountability systems. If we get accountability right, we’ll provide the right incentives 

to increase student achievement and I’m confident America’s teachers and principals 

will deliver. 

I would like to focus on the important work of teachers and leaders. The teaching 

and learning that happens in 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—about competitive versus formula—and those are all 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 day of helping our children learn. 

We believe there is a lot in our proposal that teachers will like. We know that 

there is a lot under current law that teachers don’t like. Most teachers believe that 

we have a broken system of accountability. Many teachers believe their evaluation 

and support systems are flawed. We need a system of accountability that is fair. We 

need better evaluation systems that are honest and useful and elevates rather than 

diminishes the teaching profession. All told, we are requesting a record $3.9 billion to strengthen the teaching profes- sion—an increase of $350 million. We begin with the understanding that teaching 

is some of the toughest and most important work in society and we are deeply committed to making it a better profession for teachers. To start with: 

• We are encouraging the development of high quality teacher preparation programs. Today, many teachers tell me they are underprepared for what they face in 

the classroom. They have to learn on the job. 

• We are encouraging the development of meaningful career ladders and stronger 

efforts to retain the great teachers we have. From newly-hired teachers to tenured 

teachers to master teachers, mentors, department heads and principals—we need to 

12 

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 do their 

jobs—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 they are going to be more productive and they will 

get better results for our kids. Teachers need to be at the center of those efforts. 

• We are also investing in principals to create better instructional leaders, so that 

teachers have the leadership they need to do better work. 

• As for 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—not just a single test score. Teachers need 

great principals for support, and we will also ask for fair evaluation systems for 

principals. 

• We want to use these systems to support teachers in their instructional practice 

and to reward great teachers for all they do—including advancing student learning. 

We also want to reward them for working in high-need schools. 

• As I mentioned, we will change the accountability system to make it fairer. We 

will start by holding not just schools and teachers accountable for student success, 

but districts and States, as well. Teachers can’t teach and principals can’t lead when 

they are not well supported at the local and State level. 

• We want to stop mislabeling thousands of schools as failures. 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 way behind 

catch-up, even if they do not yet meet standards—as long as they are on a path to 

get there. A teacher whose students start the year three grades behind and their 

students advance by two grade levels should be applauded—not labeled as a failure. 

That includes districts, principals and teachers. This is a shared responsibility. 

• We want to give many more schools and districts the flexibility to improve by 

focusing much more on the lowest-performing schools and those with the largest 

achievement gaps that aren’t closing, while giving teachers and principals of the 

other schools more flexibility and incentives to succeed. 

• We are also calling for assessments that measure deep learning, not test-taking 

skills—assessments that can engage and encourage learning, and provide teachers 

with meaningful, quick feedback. 

• And we want students, parents, teachers, and communities working toward a 

meaningful bar, and to support them in getting these. The goal of the K–12 system 

has to be to prepare students for the next step—college and a career. The system 

needs to be focused on that goal. Dumbed-down standards means we are lying to 

children—giving them false hope and undermining the high standards teachers 

have for their students. 

• We’re calling for over $1 billion to fund a complete education, because a whole 

child is a successful adult. We want schools investing in the arts, history, science, 

languages and all of the learning experiences that contribute to a well-rounded education. 

• Finally, we’re also seeking $1.8 billion to support students by encouraging community engagement and support and exposure to other positive adults. Teachers 

cannot do it alone. They need parents, community leaders, social service agencies 

and other supportive adults in the schools helping to reinforce a culture of learning 

and respect. A parent is a child’s first teacher. 

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our comprehensive reform of the ESEA. 

This will be one of the most dramatic changes in the law’s history. It will fundamentally change the Federal role in education. We will move from being a compliance 

monitor to being an engine for innovation. 

The urgency for these reforms has never been greater. Our children and our future are at risk, so let us 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 see examples of schools serving high-poverty populations that are 

accelerating student achievement. We need to reward them and hold them up as 

examples for others to follow. 

I thank you for all you have done and all you will do to make education America’s 

highest priority and greatest legacy. 

We need to work together to continue that legacy and deliver a world-class education for every child. 

Thank you. 

13 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for a 

very thought-provoking statement and your leadership. I use the 

word ‘‘provocative’’ in its best sense. We need to provoke some 

thinking. We need to provoke new ideas and a new approach. 

And you are right. We have an opportunity this year to make a 

really profound, historic change in elementary and secondary education. I also want to repeat what you said. This is an issue that 

rises above politics and partisanship. We have a great committee 

here, and we are going to work together to get this job done. 

Now, I am going to recognize Senators for 5-minute rounds. I 

know some Senators have meetings they have to go to, and because 

of the vote, everything is backed up a little here. 

I will defer my questions and recognize Senator Dodd, again, 

someone who has been one of our champions, one of our leaders all 

the time that we have been here, going back 25, almost 30 years 

on education, on child care, families—anything dealing with the development of the child has Chris Dodd’s fingerprints on it. 

Senator Dodd. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR DODD

Senator DODD. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize to my 

colleagues. I have different meetings coming along. 

Mr. Secretary, thank you. We are very excited about your stewardship at the Department of Education. As the chairman pointed 

out in his introductory remarks, you bring a wealth of experience 

and background to this position. It has already been exciting to 

talk with you. 

We have had numerous conversations about the reauthorization 

of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and I thank Tom 

Harkin for his leadership on this issue as well. We have members 

of this committee that have dedicated parts of their lives to exactly 

the jobs that you have been involved in. 

I am going to ask consent, Mr. Chairman, that some opening 

comments be included in the record. 

And then just quickly ask, if I can, to give the time, really, for 

you to respond, Arne. I am going to be following three principles 

as I look at fixing No Child Left Behind as we move forward. 

The first is the question of involvement of far more people in the 

development of education. This is everyone’s job. As we talked 

about the other day, I’ll begin with parents. We pointed out earlier 

with Head Start programs, that we have a requirement for programs to encourage parental involvement. We know that parental 

involvement drops, as children get older, from 33 percent in first 

grade to less than 8 percent by the seventh grade. 

While it is not the only answer, I think we need to start a conversation always with the fact that, first, learning begins at home 

with parents and families. And to the extent we can provide that 

kind of support is critical, and then, obviously, the larger context 

of accountability, principals, superintendents, the communities-atlarge, and everyone involved in this job of educating our children. 

Second, is to get rid of the notion somehow that we identify failing institutions—and you have addressed this—and let us start 

talking about rewarding success because there is a lot of success 

in this country. In schools every single day, people do remarkable 

14 

jobs, and obviously, the media’s job is not to report about planes 

that fly. Obviously, the attention focuses on those that are struggling or failing in too many instances. I am not suggesting we disregard that, but I think if we spent some more time talking about 

success, we might do a better job of actually succeeding where institutions are not doing as well as they should. 

And third, is getting rid of the notion that a test score constitutes 

an education. We have all heard over and over again over the last 

several years that measuring growth models here, rather than test 

scores, is obviously the way that will, I think, give us better results, maximizing a child’s potential. That ought to be the determination of success, whether or not the potential of that child is 

being reached or not. And not whether or not someone scored more 

or a higher mark on a test score some place. It seems we need to 

get rid of that. 

I would like you just to address, if you could quickly, in the remaining 3 or 4 minutes here those three points—the involvement 

of everyone in education, the idea that, obviously, we need to reward success, and the notion of a test score as a judgment of 

whether or not education is succeeding. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Dodd follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR DODD

I’d like to thank Secretary Duncan for joining us today, and for 

his leadership as the Obama administration follows through on its 

commitment to American education. 

We need to reform ESEA this year, and the administration’s proposal serves as a useful first step, giving stakeholders something 

to consider and respond to as we move forward. 

As I’ve said before, no education policy—not No Child Left Behind and not any of the proposed reforms—will work without adequate funding. And I want to commend you and the Administration 

for your commitment to providing our schools with the resources 

they need. 

My time here is limited, but I wanted to take a moment to lay 

out three principles that will guide me through this process, and 

that I believe must guide all of our education reform efforts. 

First, we need to make education everybody’s job. Parents, students, teachers, school administrators, local officials, civic leaders, 

and the government all have a stake in the success of our schools. 

That means they all have a role to play, and they all must work 

together. 

And, while I have sincere confidence in your leadership, Mr. Secretary, I urge you to continue to bring the education community to 

the table as part of this debate. 

Second, while our system needs accountability, our goal shouldn’t 

be to punish shortcomings but to encourage success. Every American child has the potential to excel. We need to equip schools with 

the tools and flexibility necessary to help each child reach that potential. And to those whom we assign responsibility, we must also 

grant authority. We have to let educators do their jobs. 

Third, we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that a test 

score constitutes an education. Our kids need rigorous training in 

the fundamentals—but a real education prepares kids for a wide 

15 

range of opportunities and requires a well-rounded approach, both 

to the curriculum and to the way we measure success. 

I look forward to our discussion and thank you, again, for joining 

us today. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Really thoughtful questions and comments, 

and I agree with every point you made, that we have to engage 

parents. It is interesting to me that so often we talk about parental 

involvement. We talk about it with our young children, our 3- and 

4- and 5-year-olds. 

I will tell you one of the most troubling things that we have 

found in the Chicago Public Schools. We surveyed our teenagers, 

our high school students, and the biggest thing they were asking 

for is for more parental involvement. We have to think about not 

just those early years, but what are our parents doing for our 14- 

and 15- and 16-year-olds to stay involved and engaged in their 

lives? And teenagers, rather than looking for more freedom and 

flexibility, were actually literally asking for parents to be more involved. 

And again, there are great programs out there. We want to learn 

from them, reward those, and continue to spread that. 

We have a couple major buckets that we are focused on. One is 

called student supports. We have $1.8 billion in there, a $245 million increase. That is afterschool programs. That is extended day 

and year programs. That is a series of things we are going to do 

around safe and healthy students. 

It is $210 million to build upon Geoffrey Canada’s work in the 

Harlem Children’s Zone, recognizing that when schools are islands 

in the community, when the whole community isn’t supporting that 

school, that job is very, very tough for the adults, and it is demoralizing for the students. When entire communities rally behind a 

school, great things can happen. We are trying to absolutely invest 

in those places that have demonstrated a community-wide commitment, and a chance to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone 

through our Promise Neighborhoods initiative we think is very exciting. 

On your second point, we have so many extraordinary teachers, 

extraordinary schools, extraordinary school districts in States that 

are beating the odds every single day. Despite huge poverty, despite a lack of funds, remarkable work is going on. Not just one 

Herculean teacher, one phenomenal student, but year after year, 

class after class, people are beating the odds. 

We have to recognize it. More importantly, we have to learn from 

it. We don’t have to come up with any great ideas here in Washington. I always say the great ideas are always out there. Great 

local educators are leading the way for us. We haven’t captured 

that knowledge. We haven’t shared it. We haven’t built upon it. 

We haven’t replicated it, and that is the entire focus of what we 

want to do. We want to put these scarce resources we have behind 

those places that are making a difference and taking it to scale. 

What I worry about so much, Senator, is there are so many great 

programs that are making a difference in 200 students’ lives, but 

due to a lack of resources, they can’t go to scale, or they are making a difference in 500 and can’t go to scale. 

16 

We want to help those places that are demonstrating the ability 

to raise the bar for all children and close the achievement gap. We 

want to put a lot of resources behind them and have the country 

learn from what they are doing. 

And finally, this is all about growth. I just keep going back to 

that example. That teacher that takes a child 3 years behind and 

leaves her classroom a year behind, that is not a bad teacher. That 

is a phenomenal teacher. That child had 2 years’ growth for a 

year’s instruction. 

We need to shine a spotlight on that. We need to learn from it 

at the teacher level, at the grade level, at the school level, at the 

district level, at the State level, where we are accelerating the rate 

of student achievement, and it is happening all over our country. 

That is what this game is about. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Dodd. 

Senator Enzi. 

Senator ENZI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank you, Secretary Duncan, for all the work that you 

have put into reviewing the law, and it is an extensive act. The 

blueprint covers a lot of areas, and we won’t have time to get into 

them all today. 

I want to also thank you for coming to Wyoming so you could 

truly see a rural school district. I appreciated the way that you listened to the wide variety of people that we had there. 

The blueprint clearly mandates that the States implement one of 

four turnaround options in the lowest 5 percent of all schools in the 

State. As you know, this is a clear departure from the history of 

ESEA. Historically, the Federal Government only mandated action 

in schools that are either receiving or eligible to receive Federal 

title I dollars. 

Could you explain your justification for this vast increase in the 

Federal role in the schools? 

Secretary DUNCAN. I don’t really see it as a vast increase in the 

Federal role. What was said repeatedly is that we had the vast majority of schools that are getting better and proving to be worldclass schools. We want to see that growth. 

But what we are asking the country to do is take a hard look at 

that bottom 5 percent of schools. And in every State, in every district, the bottom 5 percent—not the 95 percent. And of that bottom 

5 percent, just take 1 percent of those a year, and let us do something very, very different. 

And where we have schools where 50, 60, 70 percent of students 

are dropping out, where students are falling further and further 

behind each year, unfortunately, what happened under No Child 

Left Behind was nothing. Nothing changed for those children. 

We want to see real change and do it with a sense of urgency. 

Where we have an ability to have pretty dramatic change and do 

it with a sense of urgency, not a 10-year plan, not a 15-year study, 

but for children right now, today, that need a better opportunity, 

we want States to start to do that. States, districts, teachers, parents, communities working together to transform the opportunity 

structure for those children. 

Senator ENZI. I want to switch over a little bit to reforming high 

schools in the country. The blueprint doesn’t seem to talk about 

17 

that much. However, high schools are not meeting the needs of students, and too many are either dropping out of school altogether or 

graduating students without the knowledge and skills necessary to 

be successful in college and the workforce. 

I have heard a lot about and support for career institutes or 

academies and appreciate how they provide the same academic content to all students but deliver it in ways that are relevant to the 

students. Do you support a federally funded high school reform program, and if so, would you envision maintaining the Administration’s ‘‘tight on goals, loose on means’’ philosophy? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Yes. All of these initiatives are, sort of, big 

buckets of work around innovation, around teachers and leaders, 

around a well-rounded education, supporting students. Title I, we 

are calling college and career ready. Supporting diverse learners. 

All of those have huge high school components. 

Whether it is making sure we have STEM educators at the high school level. We want to put $100 million in new money to make 

sure that we have more opportunities for students to take dual enrollment classes, college-level classes in high school. We have $3.5 

billion in school improvement grants to turn around chronically 

underperforming schools. Many of those are high schools. 

We are trying to put a huge amount of resources to increase the 

quality of instruction, to make sure those courses are more rigorous, to make sure students have a chance to experience that college experience while they are still in high school. All of our efforts, 

all of our buckets of work have significant high school pieces to it. 

Senator ENZI. I am also concerned about the potential impact the 

legislation has on rural schools, school districts, and States, and 

particularly the turnaround models that are detailed in the blueprint as they seem to be urban-centered. Many of the rural school 

districts aren’t able to implement, I don’t think, any of the four 

models because it is difficult to replace a principal, fire half the 

staff, close the school, or convert the school to a charter school 

when the next closest school is over 60 miles away. 

I appreciate the need to reform schools that have not provided 

an excellent education, but I think there are limited options that 

may not work in many areas of Wyoming. Are there other options 

or flexibility that would be provided to those rural areas? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Absolutely. One of the models is a transformation model, which is simply working with existing staff, trying to make sure they are having the quality time they need to collaborate, making sure we are lengthening school days where we 

need to. We think that model could be applicable in an urban area 

or suburban or rural. 

I am happy to continue that conversation with you. There are 

multiple models, and we think every community can figure out 

what the right fit is for their children and their neighborhood. 

Senator ENZI. OK. As a last question, I did ask in a letter that 

was dated January 25th about some contact information, the subject of which was the student loan program and the elimination of 

the FFEL program. I haven’t gotten any answer to that yet. Do you 

have any idea on how soon I will get that? 

Secretary DUNCAN. I think you have received that. 

Senator ENZI. Pardon? 

18 

Secretary DUNCAN. You should have received that. We sent that 

last week. 

Senator ENZI. OK. I will check. Yes. 

Thank you very much. My time has expired. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Enzi. 

I will have more to say about rural schools, since there were six 

of us in my eighth grade class, anyway, in my rural school. But 

technology, I want to get technology and high-speed connections to 

a lot of those rural schools, which can be very helpful. I am going 

to forego that question for now. 

Senator Reed, I know, has to go to another meeting, so I will recognize Senator Reed. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR REED

Senator REED. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is good to know that 

you were in the top 10 of your class. 

[Laughter.] 

You have important responsibilities. That is a good sign. 

Mr. Secretary, I understand that—and you talked about engagement of parents and community, which I think we all recognize is 

essential. As I understand it, only the transformation model explicitly requires family and community engagement. The turnaround 

model, the closing model, and the charter model don’t require that 

explicitly. Is there an incongruity here? 

Secretary DUNCAN. We can check on that. Again, whether it is 

looking at turnaround or high-performing schools, I don’t know how 

you have high-performing schools without parental engagement, 

community engagement. That should be a backbone of everything 

we are doing. 

Senator REED. Would you check that? Because I think that the 

other models are not explicit in requiring parent and community 

engagement. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Explicit on it, yes. 

Senator REED. The turnaround model requires the dismissal of 

all the instructional staff. Under your regulations, would it require 

the dismissal of everyone in the school? Could a local community 

do that? 

Secretary DUNCAN. These would be decisions made at the local 

school level, local community level. 

Senator REED. Well, but they are doing it under the color of Federal law, of your proposal, or at least they will if we adopt these 

proposals. Is it just instructional staff, or is it everyone? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Instructional staff. 

Senator REED. OK. I think that is something else that you might 

clarify, too, in terms of the scope of dismissals. 

The other aspect of the proposal, not just in terms of the authorization that we will consider, but also the appropriation of the 

budget, is a consolidation of many programs. There has been a debate for as long as there has been a Congress about flexibility and 

innovation versus accountability, transparency, ensuring that we 

are funding things that, collectively, we think are important. 

I think your approach is going to raise these questions again. 

One of the areas has been school libraries. It was an exclusive program in the 1965 act. It was eliminated under the Reagan adminisVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:49 Mar 30, 2011 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\55620.TXT DENISE
19 

tration. As a result, when I got here in 1990, you could still find 

library books on the shelves of most schools that said, ‘‘ESEA 1965’’ 

with copyrights dating from about 1955 and 1945. 

We began to put more emphasis on it. That was reversed under 

Speaker Gingrich’s leadership, among others. Now we are back trying to fund libraries. That is just one example. But the history of 

these block grants is that they become so amorphous that opponents—not supporters, but opponents find ways under the budget 

pressure to grind them down. 

No. 1, how are you going to ensure that doesn’t happen, since we 

all agree this is a major national priority? And No. 2, as you go forward, I would presume that you are going to try to reinforce success, which might mean more resources going to successful programs. So how do you do that? 

Secretary DUNCAN. These are really, really powerful questions. 

The unique opportunity we have—so, yes, we are trying to do less 

things and do them well. We did push for some consolidations. We 

think that it is much easier for our schools and districts and States 

to interact with us because the President is asking for historic increase in funding. 

As you know, most times when folks consolidate, they cut money. 

It is sort of an excuse to cut. In every bucket we are doing, there 

are actually increases. In innovation, a big increase. Teachers and 

leaders, a $350 million increase. Well-rounded education, $100 million increase. Student supports, $245 million increase. Right down 

the line. 

We actually have more resources, not less, if the fiscal year 2011 

budget passes. All those things that you talked about, whether it 

is libraries, whether it is STEM education, whether it is technology, we know we have to invest there. We want to invest there. 

We have more resources than ever before. 

I think that should help us guard against libraries which have 

been dramatically underinvested and that are hugely important. 

Not just school-based libraries, but classroom-based libraries, particularly in the primary grades, are very, very important. We have 

an opportunity with increased funding to increase resources, not 

decrease them. 

As we look at the competitive versus formula, that is another debate. The bulk of our money, almost three-quarters of our money 

will still be formula-based. We are going to be more competitive 

than before. We are not just going to reward excellence. We are 

going to look to go to places where there is great need. 

It is not just about rewarding success so the rich get richer and 

the poor get poorer. We want to use those competitive resources in 

communities that have been historically underserved where there 

is great need, and we are going to strike that balance. 

Senator REED. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Reed. 

Senator Burr. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR BURR

Senator BURR. Mr. Secretary, welcome. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Thank you, sir. 

20 

Senator BURR. I have a general comment at the beginning. If the 

quality of education is determined by how much we spend, Washington, DC would be the best school system in the country. I caution us against concentrating too much on how much we are talking about investing to overcome the deficiencies and that we all 

focus more on how to fix the system, whether that requires additional funds or whether it doesn’t. 

Nearly 50 percent of the math classes in high-poverty high 

schools are taught by teachers with neither a math major, a math 

minor, or a related field—engineering, physics, or math. A major 

study by the Urban Institute using students’ achievement data in 

the high school level in North Carolina found that Teach For America Corps members had a positive effect on student achievement 

relative to other teachers, including experienced teachers, traditionally prepared teachers, and those fully certified in the field. 

The impact of having Teach For America members was more 

than twice the impact of having a teacher with 3 or more years experience. Unfortunately, the budget and the blueprint does not 

fund Teach For America. How does your blueprint assure us that 

the top college graduates are going to find their way to this field? 

Secretary DUNCAN. I am a big fan of Teach For America. As in 

other areas, what we try to do is not just fund a single program, 

but create a competitive pool of resources and grow that. We have 

$235 million in money for teacher recruitment and retention. That 

is huge—a doubling of resources there, and we hope and expect 

Teach For America and other high-quality programs to compete 

vigorously there. There is an opportunity again not for them just 

to get their current levels of funding, but potentially significantly 

more. 

There is also the Investing in Innovation Fund, i3, which is trying to take to scale programs that have demonstrated the difference they make in students’ lives. We understand there is some 

heartburn there. There are many great programs that aren’t going 

to get their little slice of the pie. If they can demonstrate to us the 

difference they are making, they can not just get what they historically received, they could get significantly more. 

Your basic point is a huge one, Senator, that I keep saying. We 

can’t close the achievement gap if we don’t close the opportunity 

gap. So your fundamental point, how do we get more great math 

teachers? How do we get more great science teachers into underserved communities, be those rural or inner-city urban? We want 

to put a huge amount of resources. 

This is a little controversial. I think math and science teachers, 

we should pay them more money. There is a shortage there. You 

pick a number in the local community to make a difference, and 

we need to pay them to go into tougher communities. We have, 

again, flexibility and the ability for folks that want to create, that 

want to be innovative, that want to bring talent to communities 

where historically there hasn’t been enough, enough of critical 

mass. There has never been a larger opportunity to reward that 

local district and State innovation. 

Senator BURR. You said in your opening statement that we needed to have a laser focus on equity. In your blueprint, there is a discussion around funding equity at every level of the system. While 

21 

we all agree that high-poverty schools should receive their fair 

share of State and local funding, the blueprint says nothing about 

ensuring Federal funding equity. 

Now title I does not have funding equity. As a matter of fact, on 

this committee, you have 6 of the bottom 10 States from a standpoint of title I funding—Utah, Iowa, North Carolina, Tennessee, 

Oklahoma, and Arizona. They pull up the bottom. 

Mr. Secretary, it is not even close from the standpoint of the 

range from $1,238 for a poor child in one State to $3,576 in another 

State. The disparities only grew worse when we did the stimulus 

dollars. The ranges went from $2,125 per poor child in one State 

to $6,344 per poor child in another State. 

In ensuring that there is funding equity at every level, what in 

the proposal for eliminating these egregious inequities in title I do 

you have in ensuring that the Federal Government has equity in 

funding? 

Secretary DUNCAN. It is a fair question. I beg to differ. I don’t 

know if the stimulus money increased inequities. We funded existing formulas. I don’t know if we made those worse. 

Senator BURR. Well, in essence, what it did was that it provided 

for my Ranking Member, he went from $3,576 to $6,344, but in 

Tennessee, we went from $1,339 to $2,280. In other words, the people at the top of the list were rewarded. It is not necessarily where 

the greatest need might have been. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Well, the formula, as you know, is based 

upon concentrations of poverty. I am happy to have that conversation with you. But, just to be clear, the stimulus money didn’t go 

by some new formula or some more—— 

Senator BURR. No, my point was stimulus money highlights the 

flaw in our formula. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Yes, I hear the concern. 

Senator BURR. I look forward to working with you on it. 

I thank the chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Burr. 

Senator Murray. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR MURRAY

Senator MURRAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Secretary Duncan, I know that you and I agree that effective literacy instruction is really a critical educational tool that keeps kids 

engaged in school and on track to succeed in college and in their 

career. 

We also know that children who are not at least modestly skilled 

readers by the end of third grade are far less likely to graduate 

from high school, and they are far less likely to be successful today. 

And we know that literacy can be a critical component in turning 

around some of those schools who are struggling today. 

I wanted to start by thanking you for your enthusiastic support 

of the Striving Readers program, and I am looking forward to continuing to work with you on the concepts behind that program, as 

well as the LEARN Act, which is the legislation I have introduced 

to improve comprehensive literacy instruction in every State in the 

country. 

22 

I wanted to talk with you about one major difference between our 

proposals because I strongly believe that with content area like literacy, which is really at the base of all learning—if you can’t read, 

you can’t learn—every State, every State should have the support 

of the Federal Government in meeting the literacy needs of all of 

our students. In the Administration’s 2011 budget, you create a 

competitive literacy program for just some States, rather than a 

formula program for all the States. 

If we want every State to have a comprehensive plan in place to 

address the literacy needs of its students, why would we only support the efforts of 15 or maybe 20 States to help students get those 

skills? 

Secretary DUNCAN. It is a very, very fair question, and to be 

clear, we haven’t said we will just support the work of 15 or 20 

States. Obviously, we wanted to make sure folks were breaking 

through. We have about a 10 percent increase in funding for literacy. 

Your point is well taken. It is one I am happy to work with you 

on. 

Senator MURRAY. OK. I would like to work with you because I 

want to make sure we don’t leave out States in this important 

area. 

I also wanted to ask you about the issue of competitive funds. 

Look, your budget proposal, the ESEA blueprint, put additional 

emphasis on teacher evaluation, on educator preparation, professional development. I agree those are all absolutely critical. Our 

students, our communities have to make sure we have got the best 

educators preparing them for success. 

In my home State of Washington, they are working on legislation 

right now to improve teacher evaluation systems and raise student 

achievement, and I want all of our States to have the resources 

they need to prepare our teachers and school leaders. 

I have some serious concerns about how the Administration is 

proposing to allocate those funds again because States, all the 

States, every one of them is struggling. It takes significant resources at the State level to do a good job of evaluating and supporting our teachers. I am really worried about the Administration’s proposal that cuts $450 million from our Teacher Quality 

State Grants. 

If that funding is cut, my State is going to get a cut of $15 million a year for a very important program. You know all States depend on those grants to revamp their teacher evaluation systems 

and to increase opportunities for teachers. They provide opportunities to make sure our school leaders really are ready to take on the 

challenge that they have in front of them. 

My question to you is—what is the rationale behind cutting those 

formula grants to our States in one of the toughest budget climates 

we have had, at a time when we are asking our States to make 

major changes in teacher and leader preparation and when teachers and principals are taking on really significant added responsibilities today? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Again, let me just be clear for the committee 

and for the record that the overwhelming majority of our money, 

almost three-quarters of our money, will continue to be formulaVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:49 Mar 30, 2011 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\55620.TXT DENISE
23 

based. So title I money, $14.5 billion continue that way. IDEA 

money, $11.8 billion, up $250 million, will continue to be based on 

a formula way. And teachers and leaders, that large pool of money 

we have, there is about a 10 percent increase, up $350 million to 

$3.86 billion. 

The challenge, Senator, I think we face as a country is that we 

have invested billions of dollars in this, and teacher evaluation in 

our country is broken. I went before the NEA’s national convention 

with 5,500 teachers and talked about how evaluation doesn’t work 

for any of the adults, and everybody cheered. I went to the AFT’s 

convention with 2,500 members and talked about teacher evaluation being broken, and everyone cheered. 

We have spent as a country billions and billions of dollars on 

something that doesn’t work for high-performing teachers. It 

doesn’t work for teachers in the middle, and it doesn’t work for 

teachers at the bottom who, after support and improvement where 

it is not working, should be doing something else. 

So, we have haven’t broken through—— 

Senator MURRAY. OK. Maybe some of the States aren’t using it 

in a way that is currently effective. If we take the fund of Teacher 

Quality State Grants, and put it into a competitive fund, what I 

fear is that there is going to be an even bigger gap between the 

States that are ahead today and moving ahead and States that are 

just beginning these reforms. 

Secretary DUNCAN. To be clear, nothing precludes us from funding every State. What we are saying is that States have to take a 

close look in the mirror. States and districts, and a lot of this 

should be done at the district level, within the State’s parameters. 

This needs to be worked out at the local level between unions and 

between the local management there and the boards of education. 

There is nothing that precludes us from funding everybody. Honestly, what we don’t want to do is just continue to fund the status 

quo. When it doesn’t work for any adults, it is not working for children either. 

Senator MURRAY. I can understand requiring States to undertake 

activities to improve their teacher quality grants. If we make this 

into a win or lose or a competitive thing, we are going to create 

a bigger gap. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Yes. Again, to be very clear, it doesn’t have 

to be winners or losers. What we are saying—and people can agree 

or disagree—we are saying that the status quo is broken. It is absolutely broken after billions of dollars of investment. We have to 

fund in a different way. 

Senator MURRAY. OK. Be careful, what you don’t do is say, OK, 

you guys who are really starting to make progress and making 

progress, you get the money. Those of you who are struggling, we 

are just cutting you out—because that won’t help the States. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Right. Let me be clear, that has never been 

our interest. It has never been our intent. We are not interested— 

you know, it may be broken today. We are interested in are you 

willing to move? Are you willing to improve? 

So that State where the system is absolutely broken, OK, we all 

agree on that. Frankly, that is virtually every State in the country. 

It is not like anyone is knocking this out. 

24 

I had a great conversation the other day with Randi Weingarten. 

I said, ‘‘You tell me one place that is doing this impeccably well.’’ 

She couldn’t think of one off the top of her head. It is not where 

you are at, but it is where you are willing to go. 

If folks are willing to move, that is where we want to invest. 

Again, a 10 percent increase in investment. We want to put resources there. I promise you that. But if folks say, ‘‘we are fine,’’ 

status quo, don’t change. 

Senator MURRAY. I don’t think anybody is saying status quo. 

What we are saying is—don’t create a competitive grant where if 

you have already got the capability to win, you win more. And I 

want to work with you on that, Mr. Chairman. 

Before I lose my turn, I just wanted to thank you, Mr. Chairman, 

as well as you, Secretary Duncan, for really pushing to fix the Pell 

Grants and student loans as we move forward in the next week. 

With all of our States struggling, cutting back budgets, students 

not being able to meet their financial demands, this is an issue 

that is critical. Thank you to both of you on that. 

Secretary DUNCAN. It is a huge one. One other quickly before you 

go. You had talked in the previous year on your concern about the 

inability to use title I money to fund the transportation of homeless 

students. 

Senator MURRAY. Correct. 

Secretary DUNCAN. In our proposal, we will have that flexibility. 

Senator MURRAY. I appreciate that very much. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Transportation is a big issue. 

Senator Murkowski. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR MURKOWSKI

Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, Mr. Secretary. Good to see you. 

I know you made it up to the State. You mentioned that you had 

an opportunity to visit just about everybody’s State and get into 

the schools. We do look forward to your visit to Alaska where we 

can get you into the schools. 

You had some issues with weather and mechanical, and that is 

travel in Alaska. But we’ll welcome you back. 

Secretary DUNCAN. No. We went to schools. 

Senator MURKOWSKI. You didn’t get into the classrooms. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Hooper Bay. 

Senator MURKOWSKI. Well, I want to talk about Hooper Bay. 

Secretary DUNCAN. That was a fascinating learning experience. 

Senator MURKOWSKI. Because I do understand that you had an 

opportunity to spend a little bit of time with the principal there. 

This is how a community, like Hooper Bay, in a very rural part of 

the country would deal with how we anticipate we would move forward with these school turnarounds and how you take a school 

that is in a real difficult situation. 

As you know, they have been in need of improvement. They are 

at Level 5. They have been there for 6 years. Well, they haven’t 

been there for 6 years, but it is their sixth year of needs improvement status. It is a very difficult situation up there. 

The school proficiency—fewer than 30 percent were proficient 

last year, 50 percent graduation rate. Teacher turnover is, as you 

25 

know, absolutely impossible. The geography challenges everything 

that we do there. You are 153 miles by air from Bethel. There are 

no roads. 

When we look at, OK, how do you take a community, how do you 

take a school like Hooper Bay that is faced with not only the academic challenges, but the fact that you don’t have teacher housing. 

There is no place for anyone to live. When they get there, there is 

no running water, no sewer. You basically move your own human 

waste down a boardwalk in a 5-gallon bucket. These are not conditions that most teachers will be able to handle. 

When we talk about the options, replacing the principal, rehiring 

no more than 50 percent of the school staff, this is our problem. We 

can’t keep good people there. 

How much flexibility will there be to deal with? The Ranking 

Member addressed it from another very rural perspective. How do 

we deal with this realistically? 

Secretary DUNCAN. It is one we need to continue to work through 

together. Obviously, that is one model you referred to. The transformation model is another one. 

I want to get to the core because whether—I have got to tell you, 

that visit impacted me deeply. That, and a visit to a school in Indian Country in Montana, in northern Cheyenne, are—I have had 

some extraordinary days over the past year, but those are two that 

are always going to stick with me. 

To see the struggles of those communities, to see the lack of resources and what we need to do, I just want to give you my personal promise that I want to do everything I can to help those children be successful. In both those communities and I heard it in 

Senator Enzi’s, in Wyoming, teacher turnover is a huge challenge. 

Teachers come for a year or two, do great work, and leave. So, 

I can’t push this hard enough. We want to put a huge amount of 

resources on the table. I think teachers who go to Hooper Bay or 

go work on an Indian reservation, we should pay them more 

money. It is not just about money. We need to do lots of other 

things. We need great principals. We need to pay principals more 

money and keep them there. 

We treat all these jobs equal. When you go to a place like that 

that literally doesn’t have running water, that doesn’t—they actually in Hooper Bay did have teacher housing, but huge, huge challenges there. The school I visited in northern Cheyenne country 

with massive teacher turnover, how can students learn when every 

year, every 2 years, it is a whole new team there. 

Senator MURKOWSKI. You are never able to build a relationship 

or any kind of trust with a teacher or anyone within the Administration. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Exactly. I think we haven’t—Senator, I just 

want us all to think about this. I think, as a country, we have 

lacked total creativity in this area. We need to be very, very innovative about how we attract and retain great talent to underserved 

communities, be that rural, be that very rural, isolated rural, be it 

at the heart of the inner-city. 

We have had virtually no incentives and lots of disincentives. I 

keep coming back. If we are serious about closing the achievement 

gap and giving your children there a chance to be successful, we 

26 

have to close the opportunity gap. So, we want to put, again, unprecedented resources out there to people who are willing to do 

some things differently. 

We are not going to get it all right, and we will make some mistakes. We can’t just keep doing the same thing. Those students will 

never have a chance as a child where there is a much more stable 

workforce, will never have the same opportunity. So, we want to 

work—— 

Senator MURKOWSKI. Well, you say unprecedented resources, and 

yes, money is certainly an issue. If we are able to pay teachers 

more, perhaps we are able to see that. Actually, in some of the 

school districts up north where they are able to pay their teachers 

more, you would think that we would not have the turnover issues 

that we do. They are still there. It is still a difficult environment, 

and you saw for yourself. 

In addition to significant resources, I think, again, we have got 

to have the ability to be flexible. To look at different things and to 

say what might work in Iowa or Wyoming, even though they are 

real rural, doesn’t necessarily translate to Alaska. I would hope 

that we have, within your blueprint, a level of flexibility and ability 

to resolve things like this. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Absolutely. I give my commitment we will absolutely try and do that. That is the right thing to do. 

Let me be clear, it is not just about more money. It is about creating a climate and environment in which teachers and principals 

want to go there. What about, as a country, what if we had some 

schools of education specifically training teachers to go to rural 

communities, specifically training teachers to go to the heart of the 

inner-city. What is our pipeline of talent of folks where this is their 

heart, this is their dedication? 

What are we doing creatively to get a great, great principal and 

say, ‘‘You go to this community for 5 years, 10 years, whatever. 

You transform it.’’ That is the capstone of your career. That is not 

some—you know, we are not sending you out as a punishment. We 

are sending you to these communities because you have done such 

an extraordinary job, and we want to reward you for doing that, 

and we want to help you build a great team around that. 

There is so much, again, that we could do in a much more creative and thoughtful way. As a country, we haven’t touched that. 

Right now, we are selling our children short. 

Senator MURKOWSKI. Well, I would like to work with you on that. 

I know that we have some great administrators that have some 

good ideas. We have some good parents. We have a couple PTA 

folks from Alaska here that are listening to you this morning, and 

I know that they would like to be participants in giving you some 

good feedback. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Thank you. That visit impacted me deeply. 

Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you. Look forward to the next one. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Murkowski. 

Senator Sanders. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR SANDERS

Senator SANDERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

27 

Mr. Secretary, thanks for being with us. 

Let me begin by looking at this issue of enormous consequence 

in a broader context. One of the points that we don’t make often 

enough is that in our country, we have by far the highest rate of 

childhood poverty of any other country on Earth. Last week, Chairman Harkin did a very good thing, something that is unusual, he 

brought somebody from the OECD to us. We are not just talking 

about Iowa versus Vermont. More importantly, we are talking 

about the United States of America versus the rest of the world. 

What Mr. Schleicher told us, an expert in education from the 

OECD, is not good news. What he is saying is that in terms of the 

number of our kids who graduate high school, we are now behind 

every other country in the OECD other than New Zealand, Spain, 

Turkey, and Mexico. 

In terms of the percentage of our young people who graduate college, we have gone from 2d to 14th in the world between 1995 and 

2005. He didn’t talk about it, but we all know we have more people 

in jail than any other country on Earth, and I suspect that many 

of those people are high school dropouts. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Almost all of them. 

Senator SANDERS. Furthermore, and an issue that I want to 

touch on, I don’t know how we can expect kids to do well in school 

if the first 4 or 5 years of their lives, they don’t have their intellectual or emotional needs addressed. Today, our child care system, 

and I raise this because it has to be dealt with, is nothing less than 

unmitigated disaster. 

We are still operating like we were in the 1950s, where dad went 

out to work and mom stayed home with the kids. Well, let me just 

mention to people that is not the reality anymore. Well over 70 percent of women are out in the workforce. Now how in God’s name— 

in my State to get good child care costs $350 a week. How do you 

pay that? A, if you are a single person, it is impossible. And B, if 

you are a working couple, it is very, very difficult. 

I think that in needs of our priorities, we have got to get our act 

together and start changing our priorities. If we talk about family 

values, if we talk about children being the hope and the future of 

this country, we have got to pay attention to the youngest and most 

vulnerable among us. We need a revolution in child care—every kid 

in this country, as is the case in many European countries. 

I know some of my Republican friends denounce Europe. Well, I 

am not so sure. They have quality child care virtually in every 

country for their kids. College education is free in many cases. I 

don’t think that is such a bad idea myself. 

I would like to ask you, Mr. Secretary, I want you to talk about 

child care, talk about making college more affordable, talk about 

extended education, which means strong afterschool programs, Saturday morning programs, and summer programs, mixed recreation 

and academic. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Thank you so much, Senator, for your passion and for your leadership. 

I think we have a President who intuitively gets this, and this 

0 to 8 agenda is hugely important. If we want children to be college 

and career ready graduating from high school, they need to be kindergarten ready. 

28 

Senator SANDERS. Exactly. 

Secretary DUNCAN. For our children to be kindergarten ready, it 

is not just pre-K, 3, and 4, it is birth. It is birth through 5 and, 

really, birth through 8. 

Senator SANDERS. Do you agree that our current system is a disaster? 

Secretary DUNCAN. We have a long, long way to go. We have a 

long, long way to go. I think some children are served well. What 

we see—it is fascinating, Senator—is we look at the data, we see 

sort of kindergarten through eighth grade, we see students learning, but we see this stubbornly large achievement gap. 

What I keep saying in education, Senator, is we have to stop 

playing catch-up. We are all playing catch-up. How do we stop 

playing catch-up? We level the playing field for children and—— 

Senator SANDERS. Let’s get back—I know there is a lot to talk 

about. I don’t have a lot of time. Get back to child care. How are 

we going to revolutionize child care in America? 

Secretary DUNCAN. I think we have to make sure—and again, the President has proposed almost $10 billion in this early learning 

challenge fund for the next decade, historic investments. We are 

going to work with HHS on this. We want to make sure that we 

dramatically increase access, and we dramatically increase quality. 

If this is glorified babysitting, it doesn’t get us where we need 

to go. If children are entering kindergarten with their literacy 

skills intact, with their socialization skills intact, ready to read, 

ready to learn—— 

Senator SANDERS. To do that, you are going to have to pay child 

care workers commensurate salaries to what we pay teachers. Is 

that right? 

Secretary DUNCAN. You have to increase investment there. You 

have to increase training. You have to focus on outcomes. There is 

so much that we have to do. But yes, we have to invest, and we 

have to make sure, to your point, that the most disadvantaged children have access to the opportunities that they need. 

Senator SANDERS. Would you argue that a child care—and I don’t 

know if that is the right term. Specialists who work with young 

children are as important in our society as college professors? I 

mean, you know, we say college professor is a big deal. Yet you 

work with little children who are 2 or 3, you are shaping their 

lives. You leave that job to get a job at McDonald’s for a pay increase. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Anyone who works with our children in this 

country is undervalued, under supported, under resourced, and we 

need to increase those—— 

Senator SANDERS. Well, I look forward to working with you. I 

don’t know how we are going to make great advances in elementary and secondary education, lest we address child care as well. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Again, the President has this unprecedented 

proposal on the table, almost $10 billion over the next decade, for 

an early learning challenge fund. 

Senator SANDERS. Is that tied up in the reconciliation package? 

Secretary DUNCAN. It is part of the higher education—— 

Senator SANDERS. We are going to lose that, aren’t we? We are 

going to have to rethink that. 

29 

Secretary DUNCAN. I hope not. I know this is being discussed by 

the hour and by the minute. I hope it stays. If it doesn’t, we need 

to find another vehicle. 

Senator SANDERS. OK. Thank you. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Sanders follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR SANDERS

Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing today, and 

thank you, Secretary Duncan for coming to testify on your blueprint for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary 

Education Act. 

The blueprint for reauthorization that we have received from the 

Obama administration is a step in the right direction. Over the 

past decade, under the Bush administration’s ‘‘No Child Left Behind Law,’’ schools have been lowering their standards, the government has imposed unfunded mandates, teachers have been punished and worst of all, students have been left behind. Although 

well-intentioned, No Child Left Behind puts too much emphasis on 

testing, therefore narrowing the curriculum of many classrooms 

and putting the focus on ‘‘teaching to the test.’’ In addition, it punishes schools that are failing with penalties and lack of funding instead of helping them overcome obstacles so that those schools 

could be successful. Too often those failing schools are the ones 

that are servicing the students who need the most help. 

We have the chance to do much better with the reauthorizing of 

this law. The blueprint that you are sharing with us today from the 

Department of Education and the Obama administration certainly 

puts us on the right track. I commend you on moving towards 

using progress and growth to measure our students. In addition, I 

applaud your taking some emphasis off standardized testing by 

using other measures of accountability such as graduation rates, 

attendance rates and school climate measures. It is often these 

types of indicators that show what is truly successful at a school 

rather than standardized tests. 

There are however, some concerns I have with the blueprint. 

Most importantly, we need to remain aware of the concerns of 

small and rural States. The shift towards competitive funding that 

you emphasize does not represent progress in educational funding. 

In fact, it is the opposite. Many small and rural States do not have 

the resources to write large, comprehensive grants, especially in 

the current economic climate. The smaller States are then at a 

competitive disadvantage to receive this funding. The purpose of 

Federal education programs in the United States is to provide equity in our education system, by ensuring that disadvantaged communities have access to the same resources as wealthy ones. I am 

concerned that a shift toward competitive funding would be counterproductive to this goal. 

Recently, I wrote a letter to you with some of my colleagues, 

some of whom are represented on this committee, highlighting the 

concerns of rural States. Perhaps most importantly addressed was 

the issue of innovation. What is innovative in some States may not 

work in others. Requirements that emphasize the creation of charter schools are not always the best way to serve the needs of isoVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:49 Mar 30, 2011 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\55620.TXT DENISE
30 

lated or low-density populations. Vermont has explored some extremely innovative practices in education, including the opening of 

two magnet schools in Burlington, the Integrated Arts Academy 

and the Sustainability Academy, which is the Nation’s first K–5 

magnet school with a sustainability theme. I hope that as you explore innovation in education you look towards examples such as 

these from rural States. 

The task of reauthorizing this legislation will not be easy; however we have much work to do. Again, I thank you for your efforts, 

Mr. Secretary, and look forward to working on this with other 

members of the committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Sanders. I will 

talk to you about some of this. 

Senator Coburn. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN

Senator COBURN. Thank you. 

Mr. Duncan, welcome. 

Secretary, as you know, I am a big believer in a lot of your philosophy. I am supportive of a portion of it. I wanted to ask you a 

couple of questions. One is a hard question, and I think you owe 

it to the American public to explain it. 

We have 1,500 kids in Washington, DC that are going to lose 

their vouchers. Seventy-six percent of those kids are going to go 

into failing schools. How in the world can we let that happen? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Very, very fair question. I have talked about 

it repeatedly. We worked very hard to make sure students currently in that program could stay in it. 

Our research team did a pretty thorough analysis of what was 

happening, and I will get my numbers a little backwards. Over a 

3-year period, it was either reading or math, one of them there was 

no significant gain. One of them gained about 3 months over 3 

years. That is basically a month a year. That is a good tutoring 

program, but the results were mixed at best. 

The big thing, Senator, that I think folks don’t understand is 

how serious we are about if private philanthropy wants to help or 

individuals want to help with scholarships, I am all for that. I 

think we at the Federal Government level, at the local government, 

we need to be much more ambitious. What I don’t want, Senator, 

is to pull 2 children out and leave the other 98 to drown. When we talk about $3.5 billion in school improvement grants 

and what we want to try and do to turn around entire schools for 

every single child, that, to me, is where we need to be putting our 

efforts. We have a huge opportunity to break through there. 

Senator COBURN. Thank you. 

We had the good fortune to listen to Bill and Melinda Gates, and 

all the money that they put into education and what they found. 

As we have had teacher-pupil ratios decline in this country and not 

seen a significant difference in outcomes, it was revealing to me 

their statement. 

Class size doesn’t make any difference. The only thing that 

makes a difference is the quality of the teacher, and they not only 

have confirmed that with the spending of their own money. They 

have actually done studies that will support that view. 

31 

The question, and some of it comes back to what others have 

raised is, is creating an incentive system in this country where we 

highly value great teachers and we get rid of bad ones. I am not 

sure—first of all, I am not sure, as somebody who is probably more 

stuck on the Constitution. I am not sure of the role of the Federal 

Government here. I think we have not seen a tremendous positive 

impact, whether it is a Republican administration or a Democratic 

administration in the differences. 

I was just wondering now that you have been into your position 

for over a year, I know we have the blueprint—and the bell is 

going off. We have the blueprint, but the point is, is what really 

needs to change? If you weren’t within the constraints of us and 

the President, what would be coming forward here? 

Maybe that is an unfair question. I know you have the knowledge, and I know you have the heart. 

Secretary DUNCAN. It is a great question. I think I couldn’t agree 

more there is nothing more important than great teachers. Again, 

let me emphasize not just great teachers, but great teachers in historically underserved communities. Children in disadvantaged communities where all too often—not always, but all too often—talent 

flees, and we haven’t created incentives there. 

You have a lot of opinions. I have a lot of opinions. Senator Bennet has been an absolute champion on this issue and gets it. The 

luxury we have, the opportunity we have that I want folks to understand is we don’t have to come up with the good ideas here in 

Washington. 

What we have now, if this budget passes, historic increases, we 

have a chance to invest in what is working at the local level. And 

so, ideas in your State, ideas around the country, where folks can 

demonstrate that they are doing things differently, that they are 

identifying effectiveness effectively, which is hard to do, that they 

are getting those effective teachers to the students who need the 

most help in the communities in your State or in Hooper Bay. We 

can put huge resources behind that. 

I don’t think we have to come up with a great policy idea. All 

the facts are out there. What we need to do is invest in excellence, 

invest in success, and we have a chance to do that. I think that 

is a game-changer. I am very optimistic on that. 

Senator COBURN. Which brings me to another question. During 

your confirmation hearings, I asked you about the highly qualified 

provision for special ed teachers, and you said you would look into 

it. Then when I read the blueprint, what I see is more requirements in that area rather than less. 

What concerns me is, in Oklahoma, what you have done with the 

highly qualified mandate, and it really wasn’t yours—you have inherited it. The fact is, our best teachers for our kids with significant problems are gone because they are not going to spend the 

money to get a master’s degree in every one of those areas so they 

can be qualified when they have 25 years of experience and tremendous outcomes to show what they have done. 

In this blueprint, you are actually expanding that rather than restricting it. That actually goes against what you just said. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Yes. I beg to differ. I don’t think we are expanding it. If we are, we will reverse that. What we are actually 

32 

doing, and I will be very clear on this, is we want to move from 

highly qualified based on paper credentials to highly effective based 

on the difference that teachers are making in students’ lives. 

Senator COBURN. We have actually eliminated a bunch of highly 

effective teachers in Oklahoma to meet the requirements of what 

the Federal Government has said you have to meet. 

Secretary DUNCAN. I understand that. We will work with you to 

try and fix that. We inherited this—— 

Senator COBURN. Let me go back in to what your blueprint says. 

Secretary DUNCAN. What we want to do here is, and this is not 

just in Oklahoma. It is in Alaska. We heard it loud and clear in 

Wyoming. It is a big rural issue that where you have a teacher 

teaching four or five different subjects, how are they going to get 

the paperwork? 

Frankly, I don’t care if you have four advanced degrees, if your 

students aren’t learning, you are not that effective. If you don’t 

have any advanced degrees, but your students are really improving, that is the kind of teachers we want. 

Senator COBURN. That is exactly what I wanted to hear. In your 

blueprint, you require to develop the definitions of ‘‘effective teacher, effective principal, highly effective teacher, highly effective principal.’’ Well, that is another Washington mandate that we are going 

to develop those, and we are going to say whether you measure it, 

when, in fact, outcomes are what count. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Let me just be clear. We want to define effectiveness based on outcomes. We will work with you on this, but we 

are not adding paper credentials to where we are going. That is absolutely not where we are going. 

Senator COBURN. All right. Well, listen, I appreciate the job you 

are doing. I look forward to working with you and excited about 

you being in the position you are in. 

Thank you. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Coburn. 

Senator Hagan. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAGAN

Senator HAGAN. Thank you, Chairman Harkin. 

Secretary Duncan, thanks for your testimony today. I appreciated your quote, ‘‘that we are going to be moving from a compliance monitor to a creative innovator.’’ I think that is a good setting 

for reforming No Child Left Behind. 

I am pleased that the Administration’s blueprint represents significant improvements to No Child Left Behind, and I especially 

appreciate the focus on having our students college-ready and career-ready. I think we are now the only developed Nation with a 

younger generation that has a lower level of high school or equivalent education than the older generations. This is certainly an unacceptable position to be in. 

It is my hope that the clearly stated and obtainable goal that the 

United States will lead the world in college completion by the year 

2020 is the impetus that we need to move forward and reform our 

education system. 

33 

One of the areas that I have been focused on quite a bit is financial literacy education. When I was in the State senate in North 

Carolina, I championed legislation dealing with that. I am very 

concerned, especially when looking at the financial situation that 

we have been in recently in our country, that we really focus on 

teaching financial literacy to our students so they understand how 

to manage credit, mortgages, student loans, and living in the world 

today. 

You have acknowledged the importance of ensuring that every 

student receives a well-rounded education, but does the Administration believe that financial literacy education can be a part of 

that? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Not only do we believe it, it is part of that. 

In our bucket, which you called well-rounded education—trying to 

get away from this narrowing of the curriculum that I heard complaints about all over the country—we have $1 billion. A $100 million increase is a part of that. We have a $265 million set of money, 

a 17 percent increase. In that is history, arts, financial literacy, 

languages, and other things. 

We absolutely want to address the financial literacy crisis. We 

talk about educating our way to a better economy. Yes, it is reading and math and language arts. It is financial literacy. Our country would not be in the situation it is today, we would not have 

gone through that crisis, I think, if we had done a better job of this 

going back 10, 15, 20 years ago. 

We are committed to doing it. This is one that we are not going 

to do alone. We are partnering with Secretary Geithner and the 

Treasury on some really interesting programs and trying to raise 

the level of awareness. I will tell you this is a personal passion of 

mine. I got my start in public education by starting a small public 

school on the south side of Chicago, a pre-K through 8 school. 

The focus of that school’s curriculum is financial literacy. What 

the students are doing there is absolutely remarkable, starting 

with kindergarten. And guess what? Because you are teaching 

those things, math scores take off. Reading scores take off. It is one 

of the highest-performing schools in the city in a very, very poor 

community. 

I think a huge reason for the success of that school is because 

financial literacy has been ingrained, embedded in everything that 

school is doing. That is how I started in public education. 

Senator HAGAN. Thank you for that. We certainly need to replicate that in every school in our country. If our students had had 

that knowledge, I don’t think we would be where we are today. We 

have got to enforce that. 

Another issue that I am concerned about is what is happening 

to our kids outside of school. The fact that so many of our children 

today don’t have adequate nutrition. They don’t have adequate 

healthcare. They don’t have parental involvement in their day-today lives and the resources that they need. 

As you discuss your vision for school turnaround models, what 

thoughts do you have on ways that we can address these out-ofschool factors when restructuring our schools? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Yes, hugely important. Again, it goes back to 

Senator Sanders’ comments on early childhood education. We have 

34 

to be part of the solution, and we have to partner in very new ways 

with HHS. 

On your question, I will just take one of those issues, child nutrition. We have to partner in very different ways with the Department of Agriculture, and Secretary Vilsack is, I think, doing an extraordinary job of pushing to get more nutritious food into schools, 

more of the junk food out of the vending machines. 

Let me just take a step back. We are going to make a massive 

investment, $1.8 billion, in what we are calling student supports, 

extending the school year, extending the school day, making sure 

we have safe and healthy students, the Promise Neighborhoods initiative I talked about. There are some foundational things that if 

we don’t get right, I don’t think our children can learn. 

If our children are hungry, it is hard to concentrate in class. I 

grew up as part of my mother’s afterschool program, and the first 

thing she did every day when the children came to her is she fed 

them. She fed them. Then we started doing some academic work. 

If children aren’t safe in school or coming to and from school, it 

is hard to concentrate in algebra, trig, or biology. We have to create 

communities in schools and around schools, and one of the things 

we want to do which we haven’t talked about is really ask schools 

what is the climate? And survey students, ‘‘Do you feel safe? Are 

there high expectations?’’ Ask parents how they feel about it. 

We have to get at those environmental things. If students can’t 

see the blackboard, they can’t learn. So, we need to find those partnerships. In Chicago Public Schools every year, we gave away free 

tens of thousands of eyeglasses. If you don’t do that, you are kidding yourself. 

There are some foundational things around safety, emotional, 

physical, psychological safety, that if we are not hitting those, we 

are not in the game. We are going to do everything we can ourselves to do a much better job. We have to partner, again, with 

HHS, with the Department of Agriculture, attorney general’s office. 

Attorney General Holder is helping me think about violence in 

communities. I worry tremendously about the violence that so 

many of our children are experiencing not in school, but to and 

from school in their neighborhoods. 

We have to address all those things if we are serious about students not just graduating from high school, but being prepared to 

do something else afterwards. 

Senator HAGAN. I am glad to hear those comments. I had one 

other concern. When you were talking earlier, you mentioned that 

math and science teachers should be paid more. I think we have 

a critical shortage of math and science teachers in our schools and 

in our country, and I think that is an area that we, as a Nation, 

have got to be focused on. The ability of our teachers to teach and 

our students to learn science, math, engineering, and technology 

for all of the green energy jobs that are going to be available. Could 

you elaborate on that statement? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Yes. I think, again, this is where I think we 

have lacked, and this is a broad statement. There are pockets of 

innovation, but as a country, we have lacked creativity here. 

Whether it is math or science, whether it is special education stuVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:49 Mar 30, 2011 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\55620.TXT DENISE
35 

dents, whether it is foreign language teachers, where we have 

areas of shortage, we need to do some things differently. 

It’s how we reward and compensate folks, how we recruit them. 

I will tell you, in math and science, one of the only benefits of a 

tough economy is there are folks coming out of industry who have 

great math and science content knowledge, who actually know 

physics and know biology. We should be much more creative in 

how, through alternative certification tasks, how we bring in this 

great talent. 

Whether it is compensation, whether it is teacher pipelines, we 

haven’t done enough here, and there are great people out there 

who want to make a difference. I will never forget, I spoke with a 

gentleman—I won’t use his name—an extraordinarily well-respected national figure who wanted to come teach science in an 

inner-city high school, and because of the licensure requirements, 

he was prohibited from doing it. 

So guess where he ended up—Princeton University. He was good 

enough for Princeton, but he wasn’t good enough to go where he 

wanted to go. Something is wrong with that picture. He said, 

‘‘Arne, I was dying to go there. They would not let me.’’ 

That is not just an isolated case. That happens time ‘‘and time 

again’’. Where we have talent that wants to make a difference, we 

need to be much more thoughtful, much more creative in how we 

get that talent in. Again, unfortunately, given a tough economy, 

there is a lot of talent out there that we could be benefiting from 

today. 

Senator HAGAN. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Hagan. 

Senator Roberts. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROBERTS

Senator ROBERTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

I am interested in this business of a district and State definition 

of effective and highly effective teacher, and I am trying to find 

desperately here. ‘‘State-wide definition’’—this is page 14 of your 

very excellent summary here. It says, ‘‘State-wide definitions of effective teacher, effective principal, highly effective teacher, highly 

effective principal developed in collaboration with teachers, principals, other stakeholders based on significant part, on student 

growth, also other measures as classroom observations.’’ 

I am thinking then that, basically, somebody can come in and 

take a look at you when you are teaching and make some judgments. And then, second, what happens to your students? In other 

words, if you have student growth, if you have student performance, why then are you a highly effective teacher. 

The thought occurs to me that if you are a teacher, say, that you 

are a journalism teacher and say that you have the yearbook and 

say that you have the student newspaper. Say that you even have 

the debate team. You have great kids. They will wear you out. It 

is a 24-7 job, and anybody that comes into the classroom would 

probably be impressed, more especially if you were trying to put together the paper at the last minute or work on any particular job. 

36 

I am just wondering what about the rest? Other teachers will not 

have that kind of category of student. How do we give them a shot 

to become a highly effective teacher? 

Secretary DUNCAN. It is a great question, and there is actually 

some—not enough, but there is some very interesting work that a 

set of districts are doing around that. Whether it is goals that 

teachers set out at the start of the year and they are working toward that, whether it is principal observation—and to your point, 

if you come in for 15 minutes once, that doesn’t work. If you continue to work, I am a big believer in peer review and having teachers look at how other teachers are doing, and no teacher wants to 

be working next door to a teacher that is not pulling their weight. 

There are multiple ways to get at it through goals, through leadership. Again, if a teacher is volunteering on the yearbook team or 

the debate team or the academic decathlon, and there are a series 

of districts who have put in place very robust, comprehensive evaluation systems that look at many, many things beyond just a student’s test score, and that is the way it should be. No one should 

be evaluated by one test. It doesn’t make sense. 

Senator ROBERTS. The other thing that I would bring up from the 

rural standpoint, you are getting a lot of questions from the standpoint of rural and small town America, a lot of representation here 

in that regard. And you say that, basically, both States and districts must publish report cards every 2 years that provide information on key indicators such as teacher qualifications, teacher 

and principal designations of effectiveness, teachers, principals 

hired from high-performing pathways—I am not sure what that 

is—teacher survey data on levels of support, working conditions in 

schools, the novice status of teachers and principals, teacher and 

principal attendance, retention rates of teachers by performance 

level. 

States will also be required to report on the performing of teacher and principal preparation and program by their graduates. Obviously, the record of the football team. I tossed that last one in. 

[Laughter.] 

Secretary DUNCAN. I was hoping that wasn’t in there. 

Senator ROBERTS. I just put ‘‘wow’’ after all this in terms of a 

small school district trying to figure out—I don’t know if you have 

this computerized or if it is on a floppy disk or whatever. Or if floppy disks even exist anymore. 

[Laughter.] 

That is going to be quite a burden, it seems. Well, not a burden, 

but at least a challenge in that regard. And that is just an aside. 

What I really want to get at is on page 17, on teacher and leader 

pathways, and you say priority may be given to programs that 

work to recruit and prepare high-performing college graduates or 

nontraditional candidates, such as military veterans or mid-career 

professionals, i.e., somebody who said, you know, in college or precollege I didn’t want to become a teacher. That never entered my 

head, but I have always had this idea that I would like to be a 

teacher. 

The back door is shut because in terms of the certification, you 

have to have X, Y, Z in regards to a lot of college courses. The two 

favorites are standard—well, one is test and measurement and 

37 

standard deviation, where you spend 2 weeks trying to study math 

enough to do the standard deviation, which you never use in the 

classroom because you don’t have time. The other one is the famous 

B.F. Skinner, who fed pigeons and rats occasionally and then a lot 

and then maybe not at all and then tried to figure how that transferred into the classroom. 

Bottom line, if you give pop quizzes, you get better results because the kids don’t know when they are coming and they study 

all the time, as opposed to having a test every Friday, where they 

study every Thursday night. I am not too sure that we need to read 

volumes about B.F. Skinner, with all due regard to the great man. 

How are you going to do that? To eliminate incentives for teachers to obtain credentials that have been shown not to be linked 

with student performance. I have been fighting that for years. Say 

something. 

[Laughter.] 

Secretary DUNCAN. I was trying to take it all in and process. I 

was still in processing mode there. I will try and switch to speaking 

mode. 

Senator ROBERTS. Well, No. 1, do you agree with my back door 

assessment that there are a lot of good teachers out there that certainly could teach and should teach, but they have a lot of hurdles 

out there that— 

Secretary DUNCAN. That was our earlier conversation on alternative certification. So, yes, I am less interested in where teachers 

are coming from, and I am more interested in how well their students are learning. There are many different paths to be a great 

educator. There are great schools of education, and there are poor 

schools of education. 

I think there are great pools of talent, Troops to Teachers being 

one of them, that have been significantly underutilized. I think 

there are physicists and mathematicians and chemists and biology 

professors who would love the chance to teach in a public school, 

but we have made it far too hard. 

So, again, I keep coming back to it. We want to put significant 

resources behind those districts and States that are much more focused on getting great talent in and supporting that talent than in 

that candidate’s paperwork. 

Senator ROBERTS. I appreciate it. I have some other questions I 

may submit for the record, and I am already 2 minutes over time, 

which the chairman will tell you is a usual practice, and I apologize 

to my colleagues. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Roberts. 

Senator Franken. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR FRANKEN

Senator FRANKEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

If Senator Roberts wants to make a mid-career change to comedy, I know some people. 

[Laughter.] 

Secretary DUNCAN. I need him teaching. 

Senator FRANKEN. Bernie Sanders talked about Mr. Schleicher 

coming with the OECD results, and they were disheartening in 

38 

terms of where we have been going in recent years compared to the 

rest of the OECD countries. One thing I noticed that even in countries that are more diverse than we are, the achievement gaps are 

lower. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Smaller, yes. 

Senator FRANKEN. What it seems to suggest in the report was 

that these OECD countries put more effort into high-need schools. 

I was very, very happy to see the emphasis that you are putting 

on principals and putting principals in the high-need schools, recruiting them and training them. 

Senator Hatch and I have introduced a bill that is similar to your 

transformational leaders proposal, and because principals create 

the ethos in the school, teachers obviously are the key ingredient 

in the classroom. In recruiting teachers, in keeping teachers, and 

leading teachers, that is what a principal does. 

It is so important that principals become more than like an administrator of a building and be a school leader. Can you just provide some further details on the type of training aspiring principals 

would get under transforming leaders? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Absolutely. Let me say that we are challenging everybody to behave in different ways and move outside 

their comfort zones. I just want to let this committee know that 

every day we are trying to look in the mirror and be very self-critical. I think, frankly, in many ways, we have been part of the problem as well, and so we are trying to change our behavior very significantly. 

One of the areas where I think we have been part of the problem 

is, we have dramatically underinvested in principals. As I said before, there are no good schools without good principals. I think it 

was on a visit with Senator Enzi in Wyoming, talked to a teacher 

who drove an hour out of his way past a bunch of schools not for 

any money, but because he loved that principal and wanted to stay 

at that school. 

You see that time and again where you could pay a teacher 

$50,000 more, but if they are going to a bad school where there is 

no leadership, they won’t take it. Or you put a good principal in 

there, you have a chance to do it. We need to think about how we 

train the next generation of principals, how we train them to take 

on those toughest assignments. This is an area where Senator Bennet has huge interests, how they become those turnaround principals. 

Principals today are CEOs, and we need to train them as such 

and reward them as such. They have to be instructional leaders. 

They have to be able to attract and retain talent, probably the most 

important thing they do. They have to be able to often manage 

multimillion dollar budgets. They have to work with the community. They have to work with the media. 

If we had a great principal in every one of our 95,000 schools, 

we could all retire. We would be done. Our job would be finished. 

The schools would heal themselves. We can’t put enough emphasis 

on training and preparing the next generation of great principals, 

but to your point specifically, to going to those historically underserved communities. 

39 

Senator FRANKEN. Is mentoring, like putting a principal with another principal who has been successful in turning around a highneed school is, I think, a great way to create and recruit and train 

principals. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Ninety percent of this education is not going 

to be in some textbook. This is going to be hands-on, in the community, working with an established leader. Those kind of residency 

models, whether they are for principals or for teachers, sort of base 

them on the medical model, I am a big fan of. 

Senator FRANKEN. Every one of us has gone over a little bit. I 

still have some time left, but I know that each of us would probably 

like to have an hour with you on this at least. And we are going 

to continue. This is an ongoing discussion. 

I really love that you are focusing on progress and growth and 

not hitting an arbitrary score. When I introduced this principals 

bill and talked about it in Minnesota, I had principals talking 

about the current way of testing, and they called the test results 

‘‘autopsies’’. That you would give it in April and you would get it 

June, and kids were going out the door. And it was too late. 

In Minnesota, teachers and school superintendents have talked 

about a test that they have, the NWEA test, are you familiar? The 

Northwest Evaluation Association exam. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Very familiar with it. 

Senator FRANKEN. I am sure there are many like them around 

the country. It is a computer test. As you answer questions correctly, they get harder, and if you do them wrong, they get easier. 

You get the results right away, immediately. 

In Minnesota, they give them three times a year. You can measure—this is what I think parents thought we were going to get 

when we heard about No Child Left Behind. ‘‘Oh, great. My kid 

will be tested. The teacher will be able to look at it and diagnose 

what my child needs.’’ We had none of that. 

We are going to be able to do this kind of testing, right? Where 

you can test several times during the year, measure the kids’ 

growth, but the teacher can look at the kids diagnostically, right? 

Secretary DUNCAN. I don’t even call it testing. I call it evaluation, 

ongoing evaluation. What we are seeing around the country is a 

breakthrough in this. 

I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of great teachers who, 

as good as they were, they are saying this is taking their teaching 

to an entirely different level. They are not having to guess anymore. They know whether what they taught students picked up, 

and things that students didn’t pick up, they would have to reteach and they have to group students differently and do differential instruction. 

That is the tools that teachers desperately need that for far too 

long they have been denied. There are some great programs out 

there. I think this is going to continue to evolve and get better and 

better. 

That real-time data that tells teachers, that tells the children 

themselves, and tells parents these are my strengths and these are 

my weaknesses. And let me be very clear, If we get real collegeand career-ready standards in 12th grade, we should know in 9th 

grade and in 6th grade and in 3d grade, am I on track to hit those? 

40 

There should be no guessing. There should be no surprises when 

you get to that junior, senior year. 

We need to back map this all the way down and give everybody 

that real-time data. As I look around the country and see schools 

where we are seeing this remarkable increase in growth and gain, 

almost every single one, they are using these forms of assessments. 

It has been an absolutely powerful tool. 

One final thing I would say, one of the biggest critiques I am 

hearing from teachers is this is very rarely being taught in schools 

of education. This is new technology, new ideas, and we have too 

many professors of education who have been out of the classroom 

for too long who don’t know anything about this. 

All these great young teachers are saying this is wonderful. It is 

changing my practice. Why did I have to learn it on the job? Why 

didn’t I learn it before I got to the job? 

Senator FRANKEN. Another area I would love to ask you about 

is schools that teach teaching and how we teach teachers. I have 

gone way over my time, but most of it was you, frankly. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

I think it is fitting that we end this round—with two experts on 

our committee. We have a former Secretary of Education in Senator Alexander and Senator Bennet, former superintendent of a 

large school system in Denver, CO, both of whom have a lot of 

knowledge in this area. It is wonderful having them on this committee. 

Senator Alexander. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR ALEXANDER

Senator ALEXANDER. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, I congratulate you on your first year. I think you 

have approached it with passion and honesty and skill, and I appreciate the way you have worked with Republicans as well as 

Democrats. We don’t agree on everything. I greatly disagree on 

what you are doing on student loans, but I greatly agree on a number of other things. I would like to focus on those. 

One thing I congratulate you on is I counted, this is only 41 

pages, and we don’t do comprehensive very well around here. This 

is a helpful blueprint. We asked you for it. We worked with you in 

the development of it, and we will now take it from here. 

It is a good beginning for a complex area, and my recommendation is instead of getting bogged down in a comprehensive reauthorization of a 1,000-page bill, No Child Left Behind, that what 

we really ought to do is focus on a handful of agreed problems and 

fix what is wrong with No Child Left Behind. I think your blueprint is an excellent beginning for that. 

If I were going to list some of those problems—and I think there 

is general agreement—I would say, first, we need to start out by 

thinking of a different way to talk about the schools. We need to 

catch schools doing things right instead of catching them doing 

things wrong. I know you agree with that. It makes it look like we 

are just running around labeling schools as failing. 

No. 2, we need to figure out what to do about the 100 percent 

proficiency requirement in 2014. 

41 

No. 3, Senator Coburn and others have mentioned, the highly 

qualified teacher definition needs some work. 

No. 4, what do we do about State standards? A lot is going on. 

You are working with the Governors on that. I, for one, am watching that with a lot of interest. 

Greater flexibility in meeting those standards, you have talked 

about that. I think we can get some consensus on that in this next 

5 or 6 years. Maybe Washington can learn more from the States 

than try to teach the States how to reach their goals. 

Using charter schools and parent options, you have been courageous on that. In terms of dealing with failing schools, evaluation 

and testing of teachers, and rewarding outstanding teaching, you 

have taken a lead on that. 

I would like to see us—the late Senator Kennedy and Senator 

Byrd and I all worked to consolidate the existing U.S. history programs—in one way or another, make them part of this. 

I wonder what your reaction is to the thought of taking a set of 

agreed problems and fixing what is wrong as a good way to work, 

and then leave me at least 30 seconds because I have one more 

question. 

Secretary DUNCAN. I think it is a great, great thought. I just 

want to say, personally, how appreciative I am of your leadership 

and wisdom, and I have learned so much from you over this past 

year and have so much respect for your knowledge and your commitment on these issues. You and your staff have been phenomenal 

to work with, and I want you to know how much I appreciate that 

personally. 

A second quick thing I would say is that our staff has worked 

unbelievably hard on the blueprint, and we had staff staying up literally all night, night after night, hundreds and hundreds of community meetings. The ideas didn’t come from us. The ideas came 

from the community. My team has done an extraordinary job, and 

I just want to let you know it has been their hard work that got 

it to you. I am glad it was only 41 pages. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Mr. Secretary, last night, I was at a reception for a college president here, and a woman came up to me and 

thanked me. She said, ‘‘I am still a beneficiary of Tennessee’s Career Ladder program.’’ What she was talking about was in 1984, 

Tennessee became the first State to pay teachers more for teaching 

well. 

I was a naive Governor at the time, and I got into a 2-year brawl 

with the National Education Association over it. Eventually, the 

American Federation for Teachers actually supported it pretty well. 

It was the beginning of an effort to try to reward outstanding 

teaching, going back to something another Senator said—Senator 

Sanders—he pointed out that when 70 percent of women went to 

work outside of the home, it created many more opportunities for 

women. We couldn’t capture them in the classroom, and so we had 

to compete for excellent teaching. 

I agree with most people who say that parents are first, principals and teachers are next. After that, not much else makes much 

difference. 

How do we move ahead in rewarding outstanding teaching? We 

found, in developing our master teacher program in Tennessee, 

42 

that 10,000 teachers voluntarily went up, but it was sort of the 

Model T of all this. A week doesn’t go by that one doesn’t come by 

and say, ‘‘I wish we still had it.’’ After I left, they knocked it out. 

The forces of opposition are always saying, ‘‘Well, you can’t identify 

one teacher as better than another and relate pay to that.’’ 

Of course, that is just patently absurd because we all recognize 

better teachers. It is difficult, we have found—and everyone has 

found—to find fair ways to reward outstanding teaching and then 

to connect that to student performance. But it can be done. If our 

goal is to help the students, it needs to be the holy grail of what 

we are about. Senator Bennet has done a lot of work on that. Senator Corker did as the Mayor of Chattanooga. 

My question is you were doing a pretty good job, I thought, with 

the Teacher Incentive Fund because instead of telling school districts what to do, we said we will give you some money if you can 

figure out how to do it, and they are all doing it in different ways, 

rewarding outstanding school leadership, rewarding outstanding 

school teaching. I noticed in the blueprint that the Teacher Incentive Fund seems to be assimilated into a lot of other programs. 

Isn’t there a risk that you will lose the Federal Government’s 

best effort to help encourage rewarding outstanding teaching and 

tying it to student achievement whenever that is appropriate and 

done in fair ways? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Great question. I will tell you the best thing 

that the previous Administration did for me—when I was running 

Chicago Public Schools—was we got the largest Teacher Incentive 

Fund grant in the country. Our program was designed by 25 of the 

best teachers in the city. They did a far better job than I could 

have done, and we rewarded excellence. 

We had money for about 20 schools. We only went to schools 

where 75 percent or more of the faculty wanted it, and we had 120 

schools who showed interest. There is a huge unmet demand, huge 

unmet need with teachers out there. 

What we are doing, Senator, to show you we are not going to lose 

that focus, we have actually tried to increase that pot of money 

dramatically—$950 million for competitive and innovative teacher 

and leader reforms, including performance pay and tenure reform. 

Let us keep working it through together, and you keep an eye on 

it. 

Not only are we trying not to lose it, we are trying to take it to 

an entirely different level. We think there are many, many innovative school districts in partnership, management and teachers 

working together who want to do this, and we want to put far more 

money than the previous Administration had behind these efforts. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Alexander. 

Now Senator Bennet. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNET

Senator BENNET. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for holding this hearing. 

Mr. Secretary, it is great to see you here. I am on the Banking 

Committee also, and we are going through this discussion now 

43 

about the re-regulation of Wall Street, which is very important for 

us to do. I have been struck sitting here today, that those committee hearings are full of photographers, there are journalists 

throughout the room, covering what is going on. This room is not 

being covered in the same way. 

In my judgment, that is a shame because nothing is more important than the work that you are doing and the work that our teachers are doing, our principals, our kids every day. People sometimes 

say to me, ‘‘Michael, you know, not everybody is going to go to college. Don’t you know that not everybody is going to go.’’ This is 

what I want to ask you about. 

I say that is true, but I am not going to be satisfied until it is 

their choice whether they are going to college or not. The reason 

for that is that when you look at the jobs being created in this 

country, from 1992 to 2002, we created 6 million jobs for people 

with a 4-year college degree. We created another 6 million jobs for 

people with some sort of advanced degree. We created no jobs for 

high school degrees, and we lost jobs for people that had dropped 

out of high school. 

I don’t see any way of dealing with our economic issues unless 

we confront our education issues. We are not doing that as a country. The statistics sometimes are mind-numbing. Consider the fact 

that, today, a child in poverty in this country stands a roughly 1 

in 10 chance of graduating from college. 

I counted them up. There are 20 rows here. If this room were 

filled with children in poverty in the United States of America, you 

would have one row at this end with children that were going to 

go to college. You would have one row in the other end of this hearing room with children going to college, and everybody else in between would not go to college. 

Fifty percent of them would be high-school dropouts. Eighty-two 

percent of the people in our prisons, you alluded to this earlier, are 

high school dropouts. Over half the people that have not graduated 

from high school are not even in the labor force anymore. 

So, I don’t know. Mr. Secretary, what do you say when people 

say not everybody needs to go to college? 

Secretary DUNCAN. First of all, I just want to thank you for your 

leadership and passion. I learned so much from you during your 

superintendency in Denver and continue to learn from you now, 

and we are thrilled to have you on this committee. It is going to 

be a great, great partnership. 

There are no good jobs in the legal economy for high school dropouts, none. There are almost no good jobs if you just have a high 

school diploma. Some form of higher education—4-year universities, 2-year community colleges, trade, technical, vocational training—K to 12 has to be a starting point on the education journey, 

and all of our students have to have some form of education beyond 

that. 

I actually think it is a false choice between college and careers. 

Many young people, as you know, go to college and work part-time, 

or vice versa. Actually, skills needed to be successful in both are 

actually very much aligned today, more so than ever before. 

To your point, our challenge as a country is not that we are forcing students to go to college. Our challenge is that far too many 

44 

of our students are prepared for neither, neither the world of work 

or the world of higher education, and that is what is fundamentally 

happening. 

Senator BENNET. I think that is such an important point because 

when I was superintendent, if you blindfolded me, I didn’t know 

whether I was talking to a university president or somebody that 

was running the apprentice shop for the trades, I would hear the 

same thing, which is we need to do too much remediation for your 

kids in math. 

This shows 11 great American cities—Chicago being one, but you 

could put Denver in the list. It is not in the list—where 85 percent 

of our kids are not proficient mathematicians. Fifteen out of one 

hundred kids in these cities at most are proficient mathematicians. 

I just want to say that, as you know, I have an abiding interest 

in working on the question of how we are going to do a better job 

of attracting and retaining teachers in this country. Notwithstanding all of this evidence, notwithstanding the chronic shortages 

that we have all over the country, notwithstanding the fact that we 

are losing half the people from the profession roughly in the first 

5 years, we have done essentially nothing to change the way we 

think about the profession. We haven’t changed our thinking about 

paying people or training people or recruiting people or retaining 

people or inspiring people to be teachers since we had a labor market that discriminated against women and said you have got two 

professional choices; one is being a teacher and one is being a 

nurse. 

We subsidized our system of public education through that system of discrimination. Thank goodness, that hasn’t been true for 30 

years. In my judgment, and I appreciate your leadership here very 

much, this is a time for very bold thinking in this country for our 

school districts, our States, and this country to re-imagine the 

teaching profession as a 21st century profession because, otherwise, 

I think all this other stuff is just talk. 

I don’t know if you have a response to that? 

Secretary DUNCAN. No, I couldn’t agree more, and talent matters 

tremendously. In politics, in business, in nonprofit work, in sports 

teams, in orchestras, and yes, in education, talent matters tremendously. We have to convince the country that poverty is not destiny, that we have poor children around this country routinely now 

beating the odds because they had great adults in their lives. 

At any time, talent matters tremendously. As you know, we have 

a baby boomer generation that is moving toward retirement. Over 

the next 5, 6, 8 years, we could have as many as 1 million teachers 

retire. Our ability to attract and retain great talent over the next 

few years is going to shape public education for the next 30 years 

in this country. It is a generational shift. 

If we don’t take full advantage of this opportunity, if we don’t 

think creatively and boldly, as you said, we will condemn not just 

our current students, but a generation of students to a lack of opportunity. If we do this well, we transform things for decades. 

Senator BENNET. I would just say, Mr. Chairman, finally, thank 

you again to you for holding the hearing. I think, you know, and 

Secretary Duncan knows this as well, there is not a harder job in 

the country than being a teacher in an urban or rural school disVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:49 Mar 30, 2011 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\55620.TXT DENISE
45 

trict with children that are living in poverty. There is not a harder 

job. 

It would be difficult for me to imagine that we could do a more 

horrible job supporting their work than we are doing right now. I 

think part of this is going to be solved by all of us kind of getting 

out of our own way here and creating politics that will allow us to 

make revolutionary change, not just evolutionary change. 

Because the kids that are in the fourth grade today aren’t going 

to get the chance to go through the fourth grade again. This is it 

for them. I look forward to working with you on these issues and 

deeply appreciate your letting me be on the committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Bennet. 

It is a privilege to have you on this committee, believe me. We 

will be working together on this reauthorization. 

Well, Mr. Secretary, one of the benefits of sitting here listening 

to all this is I have pages of questions and follow-ups, but we don’t 

have enough time for all that. Let me just delve into a couple of 

things. 

I thought it was interesting when Andreas Schleicher was here, 

and we talked about the OECD countries. A question was asked of 

him, how much does it cost to go to college in some of these countries? And he said, ‘‘Oh, nothing.’’ As a matter of fact, in some of 

the countries, they pay kids to go to college. Boy, that is kind of 

mind-numbing. 

The second thing he said is they have active recruiting policies 

in these countries of recruiting the top 10 percent of students to become teachers. They obviously do that through pay, but also 

through career development, professional development, stature, 

sabbaticals for teachers so they can take time off to advance their 

career, do other things, and then come back into teaching. 

Teaching has a much different level of public support and stature 

in those countries than what we have had in ours. That is one 

thing that we have to be thinking about. 

Senator Bennet is right. I just wrote ‘‘bold moves.’’ It is time to 

make some bold moves. There is a story that I heard one time that 

I think illustrates some of our problems. There is a story about a 

small community that was on the shores of a lake, and they noticed 

that the beaches, that this community relied upon people coming 

in for vacations. They noticed that the shoreline was getting 

plugged up with refuse and all kinds of plastic bottles and junk like 

that. 

The community got together, the town council, and they wanted 

to clean it up. They levied a bond issue to raise some money to hire 

a company to come clean up all their water and their beaches. And 

the community did that. They cleaned it all up, and for a couple 

years, it was fine. People came back to the beaches. People spent 

money, and then all of a sudden, they noticed after a few years, 

there was refuse along the beach again. They went out and floated 

another bond issue and got a company in, cleaned it all up. 

Well, this went on for several cycles until finally someone at one 

of these city council meetings got up and said, ‘‘Where is this all 

coming from?’’ No one had asked that question before. They found 

out the lake was fed by a major stream, and they went upstream 

and found out where all the stuff was coming from. 

46 

They passed a bond issue to go upstream and stop it all. It cost 

a little bit more, but they did it and they never had any problems 

after that. 

Now I think that story illustrates a lot of the problems that we 

have in elementary and secondary education because these kids are 

coming to school in kindergarten, and they are already way behind. 

They are behind in terms of their health because they come from 

poverty, low-income families, as Senator Sanders talked about. 

Their health is bad. They have had no intellectual stimulation from 

the time they were born until the time they walked into that school 

at kindergarten. 

Maybe they have tough home lives. Maybe there are single parents who are working one or two jobs just to keep things together 

in our low-wage society. Now we are trying to patch and fix it. We 

are trying to patch it up, and we are always kind of playing catchup. 

Now that is not to say you can’t, of course. And you have illustrated it. You have said that when a lot of these poor kids come 

in, they are low achieving. With great teachers and good schools 

and good motivation, you can move them on. It seems to me that 

we have got to start focusing upstream on where this is coming 

from. 

You know, here we are talking about elementary and secondary 

education. Why do I have to accept that all we can talk about is 

the time they enter kindergarten until the time they graduate from 

high school? Why am I constrained by that if, in fact, we know 

what is happening on the front end? 

As you have heard me say before, I think it is time to rethink 

elementary education. I am not just saying this to you. I know 

there are a lot of educators in this room. I know there are a lot 

of people who work for education publications and things. Maybe 

I am talking to them, and I am talking to the general public out 

there. 

Maybe we ought to rethink elementary education, as beginning 

at birth. It doesn’t begin when that kid walks into kindergarten. 

It begins at birth. If elementary education really begins then, then 

we start to think about how we can approach early learning programs. Should it be segmented and differentiated out from all the 

rest of elementary education, sort of set aside? Or should it be integrated into it? 

You have heard me say this before, and I think we need to keep 

looking at it. This is not really a question, but just an observation. 

The first question I might have is in regard to your blueprint, 

which calls for ‘‘encouraging increased resource equity at every 

level of the system.’’ 

I have always had a problem with the way we fund education. 

I have always said that in the United States we have a wonderful 

system of education, which is not top-down, not so structured that 

you can’t have diversity and innovation and creativity. Local control, the way we have done education, I think, is one of the 

geniuses of our system. 

The failure of our system is how we pay for it. I have said for 

years, where does it say in the Constitution of the United States 

that education has to be paid for by property taxes? That is how 

47 

we have done it even since before we were a country. We paid for 

it with property taxes. 

If you live in an area where there are high-valued housing and 

businesses and good property taxes, you have great schools. If you 

live in a poor area with low property taxes, you have bad schools. 

We always say, that we have got to attract teachers to those 

schools and that kind of thing, but now you are also saying, we 

must encourage increased resource equity at every level of the system. I don’t know that I have ever heard this before in all my years 

on this committee, with all the Secretaries of Education, the Presidents, and all the different administrations. 

Again, what are your thoughts on what States and districts 

would be required to do to achieve that equity? Not only in comparability of resources between high- and low-poverty schools, but 

also in creating a more equitable education system overall, where 

students have access to the same opportunities and educational 

quality regardless of the zip code in which they live. 

Could I just ask you to expound on that a little bit? Because I 

have not seen this before. This is good. This is good stuff. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Senator, when I ran the Chicago Public 

Schools, 90 percent of my children came from the minority community, and 85 percent lived below the poverty line, 85 percent. Six 

miles north of me, in a much wealthier community, those children 

there received twice as much money, more than twice as much 

money per year on their education. Compound that every single 

year over 12 or 13 years, and is that fair? Is that equitable? 

I keep saying if we want to close the achievement gap, we have 

to close the opportunity gap. How is it fair that some children have 

access to 60 different types of AP classes, and some children have 

no AP classes, zero? How is it fair that some children have stateof-the-art computer labs and science labs, and other students are 

still working with Bunsen burners? 

We have to give every child a chance to fulfill their great potential. How do we get great teachers into underserved communities? 

We keep coming back to that. We have created almost no incentives and many, many disincentives. I have also been fortunate 

enough throughout my life to see poor children from very tough 

backgrounds and tough communities and sometimes dysfunctional 

families do extraordinarily well because they had opportunity. 

So, if we are serious about doing something better, if we are serious about just stopping and talking about all the statistics and the 

studies, but actually doing something about it, we have to give 

every child a chance to be successful. That is what we are aiming 

at. 

The CHAIRMAN. With both of my hats—on this committee, and as 

chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee, I am anxious to 

work with you to find a solution. Even if we don’t have the wherewithal to do it overall, right away, I am looking for places where 

we can target it and show examples and innovate things on an experimental type basis. 

Secretary DUNCAN. And Senator Alexander’s point, we need to 

catch more people doing things right. 

The CHAIRMAN. That is right. 

48 

Secretary DUNCAN. There are folks who are doing things right 

often in very, very tough circumstances, and we need to highlight 

that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, some States have passed equalization formulas to try to equalize this out. Quite frankly, some States have 

done a pretty good job of equalizing the property tax. Then they 

use it from their general fund. 

With the States being under the problems now with their economies, it is very tough to do that, and some States, quite frankly, 

don’t have that kind of revenue. Some States don’t have income 

taxes. They don’t have very good equalization formulas. We still 

exist with this kind of a problem. 

I am anxious to, as you say, encourage increased resource equity 

at every level of the system. How do we encourage that? How do 

we do that? I look forward to working with you on that. 

The second thing—getting back to early learning. Quite frankly, 

you are the Secretary of Education. You have everything, including 

higher education. We are interested here in elementary and secondary education. If we are going to solve the problems of higher 

education, we have got to make sure our kids are better educated 

in elementary and secondary education. 

Regarding early learning and how we focus more on early childhood education, is that a proper thing for us to be thinking about? 

Secretary DUNCAN. We have to think about it. I don’t see how we 

get where we need to go if we don’t think about it. Again, if we 

want students to be college- and career-ready as seniors, they need 

to be kindergarten ready when they are five. So, we can’t not think 

about it. 

The President has put out a bold blueprint, a bold plan, a vision. 

Again, almost a $10 billion increase in investment to increase access and quality for early childhood education around the country, 

particularly in disadvantaged communities. 

You have worked extraordinarily hard, and I want to thank you, 

to work on this higher education bill to dramatically increase access at the higher education side. I hope early childhood can be a 

part of that. If it can’t, we need to find another way to do that. 

If we want to get out of the catch-up business, if we want to stop 

playing catch-up, we need to do a much better job of making sure 

every child enters kindergarten ready to learn and ready to read. 

Again, that is not just 3- and 4-year-olds. That is starting at birth, 

to your point. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Mr. Secretary, we are still trying to get 

money in there for early learning. It is being worked on now, as 

a matter of fact. I don’t need to delve into what happened, because 

of the CBO scoring and all that. It is a shame that we lost that 

$10 billion, which was sorely needed. 

We are still working to try to save some of it anyway. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Phenomenal, the work that you are doing. 

The CHAIRMAN. And I know you are, too, and the Administration 

also. 

I want to ask you about ongoing assessments. There have been 

a lot of questions about using a snapshot from a test to evaluate 

student learning. What can they do with that information? 

49 

There are good programs out there that help teachers constantly 

assess their students. We have one in Iowa that has been ongoing 

for some time. I think it is in two or three States, and I have 

looked at it. I am not an expert in this area at all. I have looked 

at it, and I have talked to teachers, and it has been well accepted 

by teachers. They love it, and we don’t have it in all our school districts in Iowa because of money issues. 

It does give the teachers—it is a software program—a constant 

evaluation of each student, plus the resource materials that they 

need for whatever that student is lacking in. Even a simple thing 

like in math, one teacher told me there was a student who was 

doing fairly well in geometry. But they, for some reason, had a 

problem with angles. They couldn’t figure out what angles were all 

about. 

Well, that is an important subset of math. So, they were able to 

get the resource materials to that student and they caught up in 

just that one area where the student couldn’t excel. 

There are programs like that. There are probably others around 

the country. Are we going to focus on trying to find the ones that 

are really working and try to fund those and get those out to 

schools and out to teachers? 

Secretary DUNCAN. Absolutely. Again, this is an area that 8, 10 

years ago just didn’t exist. There has been this flourishing, a breakthrough. There are some phenomenal programs out there. I think 

none of them are perfect. I think this next generation is going to 

be even better. 

As you know, as part of the Race to the Top, we have carved 

out—which we didn’t talk about today—$350 million to invest in 

the next-generation assessments. This has to be a huge piece of 

that. There are wonderful things out there. I think, honestly, we 

are scratching the surface, and I think 5, 10 years from now, we 

should be at an entirely different level as a country. To your point, 

we can just take those examples of success and take them to scale. 

The CHAIRMAN. Last, you know how I feel about a well-rounded 

education. I know we are focusing on science, technology, math, 

and engineering, all of which are extremely important. I don’t denigrate that whatsoever. As you heard from that young man in Iowa 

this weekend, he was concerned about music and the arts. Where 

does that fit into this picture? 

Again, I know how you feel about that. We just want to make 

sure that kids get that exposure. It just pains me to see because 

of the downturn in the economy, and in some cases because of No 

Child Left Behind, that the first people let go are art and music 

teachers. 

Not every kid’s brain is wired for math, science and engineering. 

Some of them are more artistic, more creative, in music and the 

arts. I hope you feel that is also something we just can’t throw 

overboard. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Hugely important. Again, $265 million for 

history, the arts, financial literacy we talked about, languages, a 17 

percent increase. Let me say, Senator, it is so important. We are 

trying to put our money where our mouth is, a major, major investment. 

50 

We can’t do this alone, and I do worry. As you know, times have 

never been tougher at the district and the State level. Everyone is 

cutting back. I worry that the wrong things are getting cut. These 

are very, very tough decisions. When you start eliminating band 

and orchestra and the extracurriculars, if we are serious about reducing the dropout rate, those are often things that keep students 

motivated in going to school every day. 

I would argue that there is huge data, huge research around the 

correlation between music and math, and students who have exposure to music do much better in math. It doesn’t take away from 

their math performance. It actually enhances it. 

We are going to invest, but we need districts and States, despite 

horrendously tough times—I know how tough. I have heard it everywhere. I heard it with you on Sunday. Despite those tough 

times, we have to put scarce resources where we need it most, in 

those art, music, drama, PE—physical education—those things that 

keep students engaged, keep them motivated. If we walk away 

from those things, we do a grave disservice to our children. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Secretary. The last thing I 

would say—and I don’t need a response from you—is the point that 

Senator Hagan brought up on financial literacy. You just mentioned it. Also in the area of leaving no child behind in terms of 

their health and their well-being. 

We need to have this in our schools, physical exercise, and measure that. We know that it can be done. I look forward to working 

with you on making sure that is a part of our reauthorization. 

Last, Mr. Secretary, thank you. I think it was Senator Bennet 

who said we have to have some bold changes here and some bold 

innovations. Quite frankly, you are doing that. I appreciate that 

you have this kind of a vision for the future. We look forward to 

working with you on implementing it in the reauthorization. More 

importantly, working with you in this Administration to make sure 

we have the resources to implement this bold vision for the future. 

Thank you for your great leadership, Mr. Secretary. We really 

look forward to working with you on getting a great bill through 

this year. 

Secretary DUNCAN. Thanks for your leadership and partnership, 

we have an opportunity of a lifetime here. If we can do the right 

thing here, we are going to change education in this country for 

decades to come. It is an extraordinary opportunity. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, you are the right person in the 

right place at the right time. 

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

The committee will stand adjourned, but we will keep the record 

open for 10 days for closing comments and other questions. 

[Additional material follows.] 

51 

1 National Education Association. (February 4, 2008). Funding Gap: No Child Left Behind. Retrieved April 27, 2009, from http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/fundinggap.pdf. 2 U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey. (2005). School Enrollment, Table 1. Retrieved April 7, 2009, from http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/cps2005/tab01- 

01.xls. 3 National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). (September 18, 2006). Participation in High School Sports Increases Again; Confirms NFHS Commitment to Stronger 

Continued 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN

Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Enzi, and members of the committee thank 

you for the opportunity to submit testimony for the hearing ‘‘ESEA Reauthorization: 

The Obama Administration’s ESEA Reauthorization Priorities.’’ 

The American Association of University Women is a membership organization 

founded in 1881 with approximately 100,000 members and 1,000 branches nationwide. AAUW has a proud 128-year history of breaking through barriers for women 

and girls and has always been a strong supporter of public education. Today, AAUW 

continues its mission through education, research, and advocacy. 

AAUW believes that quality public education is the foundation of a democratic society. In 2002, AAUW joined in the bipartisan enthusiasm when the No Child Left 

Behind (NCLB) law—which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education 

Act of 1965—was first passed, hoping the law would provide a remedy for ailing 

schools and low student performance. There are some good ideas in NCLB, such as 

increased teacher and school accountability, higher standards of achievement for 

student progress, supplemental service funds for low-income students, and public 

school choice for students who attend underperforming schools. In addition, AAUW 

worked hard for the inclusion of programs to serve girls’ special needs and was successful in ensuring that NCLB included provisions to reauthorize the Women’s Educational Equity Act; strengthen dropout prevention measures; protect girls from sexual harassment in schools; and increase girls’ access to and interest in technology. 

It has become clear, however, that there is a large difference between the ideals 

espoused in the law and the implementation and realization of program goals. While 

NCLB set lofty aspirations for public education, its poorly targeted punitive measures and the law’s unfunded mandates have left many States and school districts 

in dire straits; in fact, NCLB has been underfunded to the tune of over $85 billion 

since its inception—a figure local school boards cannot possibly supplant.1 AAUW 

believes it is possible—and necessary—to maintain a commitment to high standards 

and greater accountability in our Nation’s public schools, but the Federal Government must develop measures that do not impose sanctions in a way that undermines success. As Congress and the Administration begin to contemplate ESEA reauthorization, AAUW offers the following recommendations for strengthening the 

law’s goals, improving its implementation, and making clear progress in closing the 

achievement gap: 

• Strengthening STEM Education: AAUW supports promoting and strengthening science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, especially for girls and other underrepresented populations in the fields. In order to close 

the gender gap in the STEM fields, AAUW supports efforts that train teachers to 

encourage girls and other underrepresented groups to pursue STEM careers, and 

recommends a grant program from which schools can cover a number of expenses 

including mentoring, after-school programs, summer programs and internships, field 

trips, etc. Moreover, ESEA should include science as a required area of assessment 

used to calculate Adequate Yearly Progress goals. 

By measuring student performance and disaggregating data by gender, race, and 

socioeconomic status, we can obtain valuable information about student aptitude in 

science and better identify opportunities to improve girls’ exposure to and achievement in science. 

• Requiring High Schools Sports Data Collection: AAUW believes that high 

schools should be required to report basic data on the number of female and male 

students in their athletic programs and the expenditures made for their sports 

teams. Access to such data will enhance compliance with title IX and aid in the continued expansion of athletic opportunities for girls at the high school level. This is 

important because while girls comprise 49 percent of the high school population,2

they receive only 41 percent of all athletic participation opportunities, amounting 

to 1.3 million fewer participation opportunities than male high school athletes.3 StaVerDate Nov 24 2008 16:49 Mar 30, 2011 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\55620.TXT DENISE
52 

Leadership. Retrieved April 7, 2009, from http://www.nfhs.org/web/2006/09/participationlinlhighlschoollsportslincreaseslagainlagainlconfirmslnf.aspx. 4Women’s Sports Foundation. (December 12, 2007). Women’s Sports & Physical Activity Facts 

& Statistics. Retrieved January 16, 2008, from http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/binarydata/WSFlARTICLE/pdflfile/191.pdf. 5 AAUW Educational Foundation. Hostile Hallways: Bullying, Teasing, and Sexual Harassment in School, p. 4 2001. 6Members of the National Safe Schools Partnership (June 2007). Bridging the Gap in Federal 

Law: Promoting Safe School and Improved Student Achievement by Preventing Bullying and 

Harassment in our Schools. Retrieved on April 7, 2009, from http://www.glsen.org/binary-data/ 

GLSENlATTACHMENTS/file/000/000/912-1.pdf. 7 National Education Association. (April 2008). Joint Organizational Statement on ‘‘No Child 

Left Behind’’ Act. Retrieved March 3, 2009, from http://www.nea.org/home/1400.htm. 8 AAUW Educational Foundation. (May 2008). Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender 

Equity in Education, 18–19. 

tistics have shown that girls thrive when they participate in sports and are less 

likely to get pregnant, drop out of school, do drugs, smoke, or develop mental illness.4

• Supporting Reauthorization and Implementation of the Women’s Educational Equity Act: This law was first enacted in 1974 to promote educational 

equity for women and girls, through the provision of funds to help education agencies and institutions meet the requirements of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. AAUW strongly supports the principles of WEEA and full funding 

of this act, as well as the appropriate application of these funds to meet the goals 

of the program. Title IX remains a vital tool in providing equal educational opportunities and WEEA, when used properly, can provide critical technical assistance to 

schools as they work to comply with title IX not just in athletics but in all educational programs that receive Federal funds. 

• Creating Environments Free of Bullying and Harassment: The implementation of stronger policies to deter bullying and harassment will help to ensure a 

safe learning environment for all students. Almost a decade ago, AAUW’s own research revealed that 83 percent of girls and 79 percent of boys reported having experienced sexual harassment, and over one in four students stated that harassment 

happens ‘‘often.’’ 5 More recent research shows that bullying affects nearly one in 

three American school children in grades 6 through 10.6 AAUW advocates passing 

legislation to better address bullying and harassment; these measures should include the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights’ definition of harassment 

and identify the classes that are protected (including actual or perceived race, color, 

national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religion). 

• Decreasing the Use of High-stakes Testing and Using Multiple Measures: AAUW believes in holding schools accountable for demonstrating that they 

are meeting educational goals. However, it is both problematic and discriminatory 

to rely on tests as the sole indicator of student progress. AAUW is supportive of provisions encouraging the use of multiple measures of student achievement—including 

flexible and innovative growth models and tracking the same group of students over 

time to determine whether schools meet annual benchmarks and allowing schools 

to use a number of factors for determining Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). AAUW 

joined more than 120 national education, civil rights and religious organizations in 

signing a statement stating that other key measures that demonstrate student 

achievement and progress should be explored and utilized.7 While these measures 

will provide more flexibility, accountability must not be lost in the process. 

• Closing the Achievement Gap Once and for All: The past 50 years have 

seen continued improvements in proficiency levels among both girls and boys across 

a wide range of subjects. However, the existence of an achievement gap continues 

to stand in the way of true educational progress for all. While AAUW’s 2008 report, 

Where the Girls Are, showed girls’ educational gains have not come at the expense 

of boys, the report also further illuminated large gaps in test scores among children 

of different races and ethnicities and among children from different family income 

levels. For instance, a majority of African-American and Hispanic 12th graders score 

below a basic level of proficiency in math, while a 23- and 24-point gap exists between students of lower-income and higher-income families in reading and math, respectively, at grades 4, 8, and 12.8 AAUW believes that a quality education is a civil 

right, and strongly supports efforts to close this persistent and detrimental achievement gap. 

53 

9 Center on Education Policy. (2006). From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 4 of the No 

Child Left Behind Act, 4. Retrieved December 30, 2008, from http://www.cep-dc.org/ldata/ 

global/nidocs/CEP-NCLB-Report-4.pdf. 10Girl Scouts of the USA. Girls & Overweight: Key Facts. Retrieved December 30, 2008, from 

http://www.girlscouts.org/research/publications/original/gslkeylfactslp1c.pdf. 11 Ibid. 12The Office of the President-Elect (2008). Education: The Obama-Biden Plan. Retrieved December 23, 2008, from http://change.gov/agenda/educationlagenda/. 

• Making NCLB Funding Mandatory at the Authorized Levels: Research by 

the Center on Education Policy found that approximately 80 percent of school districts said they have costs associated with the law not covered by Federal funding.9

Ensuring Adequate Physical Education Classes, and Ensuring Equity in 

Facilities and Equipment Access and Usage: Over the past 25 years, the percentage of overweight girls has more than doubled; currently, 16 percent of girls 

ages 6 to 19 are overweight, up from 6 percent in 1974.10 Further, minority and 

low-income girls have the highest rates of childhood obesity.11

• Continuing to Offer Public School Choice and Flexibility: AAUW believes 

it is in students’ best interests to be offered public school choice and flexibility, and 

schools should continue to encourage innovative programs and classroom techniques. Such flexibility and innovation, however, must be consistent with civil rights 

law, including title IX, and public funds should only be used for public education, 

not private school vouchers. 

• Improving Teacher Training and Retention: AAUW believes there should 

be a highly qualified teacher in every classroom. NLCB reauthorization should include an expansion of programs that improve teacher training and retention. 

• Holding Schools Accountable: Schools should be held accountable for demonstrating that they are meeting educational goals, but only in such a way that it 

doesn’t create a bigger problem than it seeks to solve. NCLB designates schools that 

fail to meet AYP as ‘‘low-performing’’ and provides sanctions against such schools. 

AAUW believes the Federal Government should offer incentives and assistance to 

struggling schools, rather than punishment, which only serves to further harm students. 

• Cross-Tabulating Data: AAUW recommends that data be cross-tabulated for 

State assessment systems, State reporting requirements, AYP goals, and graduation 

rate requirements. Having the most accessible, accurate and detailed information 

will encourage action specifically tailored to improve outcomes for those falling behind. School districts, educators, and policymakers cannot create the right solutions 

if they do not have the right data to truly know what segments of the population 

need help. 

• Expanding Afterschool Programs through 21st Century Learning Centers: After-school programs should be expanded to enrich the school experience and 

improve educational outcomes. One program vehicle might be the 21st Century 

Community Learning Centers; this could also be used to expand STEM programs— 

currently allowed as an option but given no real incentive. 

• Increasing Access to and Funding for Early Childhood Education: Providing a foundation of strong early childhood education will help improve and sustain achievement in later years. AAUW supports funding increases for Head Start 

and Early Head Start to ensure all children are prepared for school, as well as access to high-quality and affordable child care to ease the burden on working families 

and expand educational opportunities.12

For more than 125 years, AAUW has fought for educational equity and achievement in our Nation’s public schools. Reauthorization of ESEA represents a tremendous opportunity to make significant strides in this direction, and we are committed 

to putting our full resources behind this effort. AAUW looks forward to working 

with you on this significant legislation in the year ahead. 

Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony. 

[Whereupon, at 12:41 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

Æ