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26–255 PDF 2006

S. HRG. 109–426

ROUNDTABLE ON COMPETITIVENESS: BUILDING

AND FILLING THE PIPELINE

HEARING

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, 

LABOR, AND PENSIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

ON

EXAMINING THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

FEBRUARY 16, 2006

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

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming, Chairman 

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire 

WILLIAM H. FRIST, Tennessee 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

MIKE DEWINE, Ohio 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas 

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts 

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland 

JAMES M. JEFFORDS, Vermont 

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico 

PATTY MURRAY, Washington 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York

KATHERINE BRUNETT MCGUIRE, Staff Director 

J. MICHAEL MYERS, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2006

Page

Enzi, Hon. Michael B., Chairman, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, 

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

Riddile, Mel, Ph.D., principal, J.E.B. Stuart High School, Fairfax County 

Public Schools, Falls Church, VA ....................................................................... 5

Willner, Robin, vice president, IBM Global Community Initiatives, Armonk, 

NY ......................................................................................................................... 5

Varner, Edna, former principal, Hamilton County Schools, Chattanooga, TN .. 6

Ajax, Erick, vice president, E.J. Ajax and Sons, Inc., Minneapolis, MN ............ 7

Bzdack, Michael, Ph.D., director of corporate contributions, Johnson and 

Johnson, Inc., New Brunswick, NJ ..................................................................... 8

Day, Sandra, magnet school administrator, Omaha Public Schools, NE ............ 9

Langston, Carrie, teacher, Wyoming Writing Project, Chugwater, WY .............. 10

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11

Schwarz, Eric, president and CEO, Citizen Schools, Boston, MA ....................... 12

Bailey, Bob, National Science Foundation, grant project manager, Central 

Virginia Community College, Lynchburg, VA ................................................... 13

Freeney, Reygan, a doctoral candidate, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA ........ 14

Layzell, Tom, Ph.D., president, Council of Postsecondary Education, Frankfort, KY ................................................................................................................. 15

Morningstar, Mary, Ph.D., associate professor, University of Kansas, Department of Special Education, Lawrence, KS ......................................................... 17

Shelton, Jim, executive director, Education Division, Bill and Melinda Gates 

Foundation, Washington, DC .............................................................................. 19

Brooks-Crocker, Wanda, NDE certification administrator, Framatome, ANP, 

Inc., and Areva and Siemens Company, Lynchburg, VA .................................. 20

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL 

Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.: 

Prepared statement of Senator Kennedy ........................................................ 35

Letter from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, Thomas 

Layzell ............................................................................................................ 36

(1)

ROUNDTABLE ON COMPETITIVENESS: 

BUILDING AND FILLING THE PIPELINE 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2006

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in Room 

SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Michael B. Enzi 

[chairman of the committee] presiding. 

Present: Senators Enzi, Alexander, and Ensign. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN ENZI

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. I am going to go ahead and start. 

We will have a little interruption around 10:30 for a vote. We will 

try and keep the roundtable going and gathering the information. 

I want to thank Ranking Member Senator Kennedy for his participation and availability and allowing this kind of a new system 

of gathering information, which is a roundtable. Normally, we have 

hearings, and sometimes hearings become very divisive. They are 

designed that way. We are having a roundtable, which we think is 

designed to gather information. We don’t think we are unique, but 

we are unusual in that we try and gather information before we 

do a bill. 

[Laughter.] 

So I would like to welcome you to today’s roundtable, which is 

on competitiveness, which is building and filling the pipeline. We 

have already made some provisions for college, but we are very 

worried about birth through 12th grade. We have a Head Start bill 

that has already passed committee that will take care of some of 

the birth to kindergarten, but we are very concerned about the kindergarten through 12th grade. We are even concerned about the 

complacency among Americans, thinking that maybe we are okay 

in those areas. So we are very fortunate today to have this outstanding group of individuals to talk to us about high school as a 

critical piece of the competitiveness pipeline. 

Last week, the HELP Committee kicked off its consideration of 

the competitiveness agenda with the Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, and she talked about the President’s American 

Competitiveness Initiative and the critical role that education plays 

in addressing the challenges of a global economy. We all know that 

knowledge is the key to our ability to compete and lead. She emphasized the need to support creativity and entrepreneurial talent 

2

while making high schools more rigorous. Teachers must be prepared to help students achieve. 

She used the word ‘‘pocket protector skills’’ that will ensure that 

America’s students are the best in the world, that they speak the 

language of success and that, as an economy, we get more than a 

passing grade. As the Senator’s only accountant, I look forward to 

pocket protectors being cool— [laughter]—which my kids assure me 

they never were. 

Throughout the discussion with Secretary Spellings, one theme 

consistently emerged, and that is unless more students complete 

high school on time, prepared for postsecondary education or the 

workforce, we won’t have enough people in the pipeline to take the 

challenging and rigorous coursework that will produce the mathematicians, the scientists, the engineers, the technicians, or the researchers that we need. 

By 2010, two-thirds of the 7 million worker gap will be a skilled 

worker shortage. That is unacceptable. Without an educated workforce, we will certainly lose our preeminence in the world to developing nations that are quickly growing, educating their citizens, 

and innovating at a much faster rate than we are. A student who 

takes just one remedial reading course in college is eight times less 

likely to graduate than a student who is fully prepared for college. 

At a time when most jobs will require some postsecondary education, we have to focus on how to graduate more students on time 

with less need to repeat basic reading and math courses and a 

greater likelihood of success in college and the workplace. 

To be competitive in a global economy, we must ensure coordination and accountability in our education and workforce programs 

across all the agencies, departments, and levels of government, and 

it goes across 207 programs and 13 different agencies. We must ensure that everyone has an opportunity to achieve academically and 

achieve the critical skills they need to succeed regardless of their 

background. 

To stay in the competitiveness race and to win it, we must ensure that school is never out and learning is never over. 

It is no secret that institutions of higher education and employers have expressed their dissatisfaction with the level of preparation of our high school graduates and their need for remediation in 

order to do college work or to participate in the workforce. Each 

year, taxpayers pay in excess of $1 billion to provide remedial education to students at our public universities and community colleges. Businesses report spending even more to address the lack of 

literacy and basic skills of our entry-level workers. 

Let me share a few facts that speak to the seriousness of the 

issue. American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of the 29 developed nations in mathematics, literacy, and problem solving on the most recent international assessment. Reading proficiency among 12th 

graders has declined to the point where just over one-third of them 

are even considered proficient readers. Nearly one-third of entering 

college freshmen need at least one remedial course. The United 

States has the highest college enrollment rates, but a college completion rate lower than most developed countries in the world. 

And in this decade, 40 percent of job growth will be in jobs requiring postsecondary education, with those jobs requiring assoVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:12 Jun 19, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\DOCS\26255.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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ciate degrees growing the fastest. Eighty percent of jobs require 

postsecondary education or the equivalent, yet only 52 percent of 

Americans over the age of 25 have achieved that level of education, 

which leads us to why we are here today. 

We are here to listen and learn from the participants about what 

is working in our high schools, about how secondary and postsecondary partnerships can be strengthened, and about how our students can be better prepared for the challenges and opportunities 

they have beyond high school. By taking this opportunity to 

strengthen and focus our education and our training systems on 

ensuring the knowledge and skills that we as individuals and the 

Nation need, we are assuring that America’s students will be the 

best in the world. They are. We want that to continue. We want 

them to speak the language of success, and we want our country 

to get more than a passing grade. 

I want to thank all of you for being here today, your willingness 

to share your experiences and your insight. We have a rather limited forum. We want to get a lot of information. In fact, we want 

to get more information from you than you will be able to give during this forum, so I want to remind you that as people are making 

comments, feel free to make some notes and share those with us 

later, as well. We will keep the record open for 10 days for additional thoughts that you might have. 

We want this to be the beginning of the stimulation of ideas, not 

the end of all. There may be some questions that come as a result. 

We have a number of staff people from people on the committee 

and they may have some questions that they would like to follow 

up on in regard to answers that you have given, and I would hope 

that you would participate that way, as well. That is the way that 

we can get the most out of the limited time that we have to be able 

to do these things. 

We will have Senator Kennedy give a statement when he is here. 

We will interrupt the proceedings to do that. 

I mentioned this is a roundtable format, so it allows a little more 

discussion than a typical Senate hearing. The purpose of the roundtable is to hear the variety of viewpoints on the roles of schools, 

institutions of higher education, businesses building the pipeline of 

educated and skilled workers. 

Now, we have requested that participants not make any official 

oral opening statements. We will be happy to have the opening 

statements in written form to make a part of the record today and 

we will review all of those, but that saves a lot of time, and as you 

are commenting on these things, as concise as you can be on it will 

allow more viewpoints, as well. 

If any of you would like to answer a question or comment on one 

made by your colleagues, if you would stand your name tag on its 

side, my staff will try and help keep track of the order in which 

those happen so that we can get to them in order. Again, we do 

request that you limit your statement or your responses and would 

hope that those would stay under 2 minutes. 

I will begin with the introduction of witnesses. Again, I feel extremely fortunate that you have been willing to take the time out 

of your day and your careers to be able to do this. All of you are 

4

experts in your respective areas. I will go through the participants 

in alphabetical order. 

We have Erick Ajax, the Vice President of E.J. Ajax and Sons, 

Inc., of Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Bob Bailey, the National Science Foundation Grant Project Manager of Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg, Virginia. 

We have Wanda Brooks-Crocker, the NDE Certification Administrator for Framatome ANP, Inc., an AREVA and Siemens Company, of Lynchburg, Virginia. 

We have Michael Bzdack, Ph.D., Director of Corporate Contributions of Johnson and Johnson, Inc., New Brunswick, New Jersey. 

We have Sandy Day, the Magnet School Administrator of the 

Omaha Public Schools in Omaha, Nebraska. 

We have Reygan Freeney, a doctoral candidate, University of 

Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, a former Upward Bound math-science teacher. 

Carrie Langston is very special to me. She is a Wyoming Writing 

Project teacher from Chugwater, Wyoming. How many here know 

where Chugwater, Wyoming is? 

[Laughter.] 

It is not our biggest city, but I would like to take a moment to 

do a special welcome to Ms. Langston. My daughter was the principal of Chugwater School, so I have heard a lot about the good 

work that is being done there and I welcome and thank you for 

being with us today. 

We have Mr. Tom Layzell, also a Ph.D., President of the Council 

of Postsecondary Education from Frankfort, Kentucky. 

Mary Morningstar, also a doctor, Associate Professor, University 

of Kansas, Department of Special Education in Lawrence, Kansas. 

We have Mel Riddile, a doctor, Principal of the J.E.B. Stuart 

High School in Fairfax County Public Schools from Falls Church, 

Virginia. 

Eric Schwarz, the President and CEO of Citizen Schools in Boston, Massachusetts. 

We have Jim Shelton, the Executive Director of the Education 

Division of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Washington, 

DC. 

We have Edna Varner, the former Principal of Hamilton County 

Schools in Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

And we have Robin Willner, the Vice President of IBM Global 

Community Initiatives in Armonk, New York. IBM has Transition 

to Teaching initiatives in North Carolina and New York. 

We are pleased at the start of the roundtable to also have Senator Ensign and Senator Alexander. Do either of you want to make 

a quick comment? 

Senator ENSIGN. I am pleased to be here. 

The CHAIRMAN. Likewise. 

[Laughter.] 

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we will be following up 

on the role of education in global economy. We provided two questions for you to consider that will help us frame today’s conversation, and today we want to focus specifically on high school and 

what needs to be done to increase high school graduation, preVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:12 Jun 19, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\DOCS\26255.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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paredness for postsecondary education, and to decrease the need 

for remediation. 

The first question that we asked was, what are some of the strategies that have been proven effective at helping all students complete high school with the knowledge and skills needed to pursue 

postsecondary education and enter the 21st century workforce? 

With all of this talent here—Dr. Riddile. 

STATEMENT OF MEL RIDDILE, PH.D., PRINCIPAL, J.E.B. STUART HIGH SCHOOL, FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

FALLS CHURCH, VA 

Mr. RIDDILE. I am a high school principal and I am not shy. 

[Laughter.] 

In terms of competitiveness on an international level, I could say 

that our school, despite having 70 percent of our students speak 

English as a second language, high levels of poverty, mobility, and 

all the risk factors, including gang activity in our area, our students consistently out-perform students on international tests as 

measured by the International Baccalaureate Program. Our students exceed 80 percent pass rates, and the international average 

is about 70 percent and those students go to selective schools, private schools around the country—I mean, around the world. 

We do that in a simple way. We said to the President when he 

visited and delivered his high school reform speech at our school 

last year, we spell hope ‘‘R-E-A-D.’’ The great equalizer, and I think 

the key to raise achievement levels of our students is to emphasize 

literacy K through 12. It is not just a high school issue, it is an 

issue for all students in all grades. 

Literacy actually helps students perform consistently higher on 

standardized tests and gives them the ability to do just about anything in our school. If you look at students who aren’t performing, 

they consistently have low reading levels. If we want to continue 

to perpetuate a servant class in our society, all we have to do is 

continue to do what we have been doing, and that is stop teaching 

reading at the 3rd grade and that will ensure that we have students falling through the cracks or falling off the bus or whatever 

way you want to describe it. 

So I would say that if you look at our ELL students, our special 

education students, our emphasize on literacy enables them to perform and consistently out-perform other students on State and national tests. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Willner. 

STATEMENT OF ROBIN WILLNER, VICE PRESIDENT, IBM 

GLOBAL COMMUNITY INITIATIVES, ARMONK, NY 

Ms. WILLNER. Good morning. First of all, thank you for having 

us here. This, I know, is going to be an exciting conversation. 

Clearly, reading is important, but as you mentioned before, math 

and science, engineering, the stem careers are critical for preparing 

an innovation society. I know that everyone here in the Senate and 

in Congress has been hearing from business. IBM was privileged 

to bring the National Innovation Initiative forward last year and 

you have been hearing about our concerns. 

6

At IBM, we wanted to also be part of the solution and we started 

Transition to Teaching, which you mentioned earlier. We are investing in IBM-ers to encourage them to consider second careers as 

teachers. We will only have great high schools when we have great 

teachers, and that takes investment, that takes preparation. 

At IBM, we have thousands of people who have those pocket protector skills. We want to make sure that they also take all the 

skills they learned in coaching and leading teams and being adventurers, learn how to be great teachers and go into our schools. So 

we are providing financial incentives, $15,000 per participant to 

cover their tuition, their related costs, and also to give them a stipend. We want IBM-ers to take up to 4 months of a leave of absence and really go into schools, spend time teaching, so that when 

they are ready to become a full-time teacher and be the only adult 

in that room responsible, they are going to be prepared, they are 

going to be terrific, they are going to know their match and science, 

and they are going to know how to teach. 

So we just launched this initiative and we are very excited about 

the opportunity to be working all over the country. We actually are 

focusing on New York and North Carolina, where we have a large 

number of folks, but we do have applicants from Tennessee. We do 

have applicants from Texas, Minnesota, Vermont, you know, IBM 

is everywhere in this country and we have folks who would love to 

become teachers everywhere in this country. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Varner. 

STATEMENT OF EDNA VARNER, FORMER PRINCIPAL, 

HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS, CHATTANOOGA, TN 

Ms. VARNER. When I was introduced, I was introduced as the 

former high school principal, and that is true, but I do want you 

to know I am not out to pasture. 

[Laughter.] 

Currently, I am working with principals. I am an advisor to the 

Hamilton County School District and Public Education Foundation, 

and I also work as a Leadership Associate with the National Literacy Initiative. 

We also want high expectations for students, but in our district, 

what we found is that while we all really believe in high expectations for students, we had different definitions of ‘‘high’’ for different students. We actually had different ceilings for different students and we were working hard to help them reach those different 

high expectations. 

One of the most important things we have done, and it has been 

difficult, is that we decided 2 years ago to have a single diploma 

and a single set of graduation requirements. If you look at the Web 

site, it will say a single path, but it is not a single path at all. It 

is really many paths to a single diploma, and what that diploma 

offers is not just postsecondary education, but that diploma is designed to make sure students are eligible for all of the opportunities available to them, and for some of them, that is going on to 

a 4-year college. For some, it is going on to a 2-year college. For 

some, it is going on to the workforce and continuing to learn. For 

7

some, it is going to the military. But the goal is to have them graduate eligible for every opportunity possible. 

Now, that is a tall order for a district, and the work we have 

been doing since our board passed that, and like I said, that was 

difficult because our students have struggled even with the different ceilings and the greatest fear was that our struggling students will struggle even more if we raise the bar. Well, that is not 

what is happening. What is happening is what many of us have always believed, and that is that struggling students want rigor, too, 

but they need to know the skills that will help them to be successful even when the curriculum is more rigorous. 

So what we have been about the business of doing is working 

through four goals. One of those is personalization, and we started 

this with a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to redesign our 

high schools. One of them is personalization, and it is not just becoming buddies with students. There is a reason for getting to 

know students, and it is getting to know what students need in 

order to succeed with a rigorous curriculum. 

Then the other goal is flexibility, and that is trying to make sure 

our schools fit the needs of students instead of trying to make students fit the needs of schools. 

The other is rigorous curriculum and understanding what rigor 

really means, and what rigor means when you want to graduate all 

students eligible for all of the opportunities available to them. 

And then the other is professional learning, because it requires 

a different kind of teacher, a different kind of principal, and a different kind of school district to graduate students who are eligible 

for all of the opportunities available to them. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Ajax. 

STATEMENT OF ERICK AJAX, VICE PRESIDENT OF E.J. AJAX 

AND SONS, INC., MINNEAPOLIS, MN 

Mr. AJAX. Thank you, Senator Enzi. I am pleased to be here this 

morning. I am a manufacturer. I hire the people that come out of 

our educational institutions, and I have to say that our world in 

manufacturing is simply getting rocked with intense global competition and India and China, Internet auctions on an ongoing 

basis, a low-cost race to the bottom. But I am happy to say that 

we are winning. 

It is something that our employees—we have added 25 percent 

growth to our employees in the last year. We have been able to put 

down the best month in the 60-year history of our company. For 

the last 15 years, we have invested 5 percent of our total payroll 

in professional development and education of each and every one 

of our employees. We continually have to reinvent ourselves as our 

competition changes. And we really believe that it is a lifelong cycle 

of learning and continual improvement. 

We really think Minnesota has a unique program where the private sector started a $1.5 billion endowment fund and a foundation 

to fund early childhood development to help subsidize our Head 

Start program. We have 20,000 low-income students, or not students, but children that simply only about 10,000 are those are 

8

funded by the Head Start program. This endowment, when we 

have it fully funded, will have 100 percent participation. 

We believe in involvement with the business community and our 

colleges. We have had some phenomenal partnerships that we have 

been able to develop with the Minnesota Department of Labor and 

Industry and have very solid success, and again, providing that ongoing training for not only incumbent employees, but also entrylevel. In the past 6 months, we have worked with a program 

through the Center for Workforce Success in the National Association of Manufacturers and several foundations where we have actually graduated 60 low-income, at-risk individuals through a training program at a local technical college, and more than 40 of those 

have found work and are on career ladders in our industry. So it 

truly is a team effort. 

One last thing I would like to mention, we have had a lot of success with experimental learning, with a Junior Achievement program. We have a Battlebots program where we built, the manufacturing sector has built a competition dome for robots that students 

build. We have had a lot of success with EarthWorks, a science program, a hands-on program. the Junior Achievement exchange city 

has been very, very successful for us, as well. So we have some 

good things going on in education and industry in cooperation in 

the State of Minnesota. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Dr. Bzdack. 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL BZDACK, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, CORPORATE CONTRIBUTIONS, JOHNSON AND JOHNSON, INC., 

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ 

Mr. BZDACK. Echoing what Mr. Ajax just said, the hands-on experience, we have found in our programs is very valuable. But before I talk about that, I wanted to just mention that there is an 

incredible amount of evidence already out there in programs that 

work, and many of us are out looking to create new programs when 

there are measured programs that have already proven success. So 

I think I am going to stress that over and over, that there are some 

great models out there already and they just need to be scaled up. 

From our experience, we have found that the magic ingredients 

to these community partnerships that increase student achievement are the participation of higher education, the participation of 

the businesses in the community, and the employee engagement. I 

mean, that seems like a simple formula, but it boils down to children exposed to the real world and real people and those people 

that do those jobs. This again sounds simple, but if it is done over 

time and a minimum of a 3-year period, we found that we have evidence that we can improve student achievement and college readiness for these students. 

We often say when we begin a program in a community that college is like going to the moon and the workplace is like going to 

Mars, so our whole goal is to break down those barriers and 

demystify both experiences. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Day. 

9

STATEMENT OF SANDRA DAY, MAGNET SCHOOL 

ADMINISTRATOR, OMAHA PUBLIC SCHOOLS, NE 

Ms. DAY. Thank you. I wanted to start my comments just by 

clarifying a little bit about what magnet schools are so we are all 

on the same page. Magnet schools are public schools of choice that 

offer a really innovative array of curriculum offerings that are not 

offered at the neighborhood school so that parents will opt, choose 

to send their child to a different neighborhood. This becomes a very 

important and effective integrative tool for the Omaha Public 

Schools. 

We have learned that not only does a curriculum have to look 

different, it has to be delivered in a different way, and that is one 

of the things that the Omaha Public Schools for 25 years now, 

working with the Council of Great City Schools and Magnet 

Schools of America, have developed some really terrific strategies, 

and one of them is and has been echoed here already and that is 

engagement of the learner, be that child engaged at pre-K or all 

the way through 12th grade. It is engagement of the learner. 

How do you know what they are interested in? Well, we have developed something that we call the Approaches to Learning Survey. 

In the fall of every year in grades 2 through 12, which are magnet 

grades, we deliver this survey to students and it asks them to selfassess, do I learn best with hands-on experiences? Do I learn best 

from auditory learning? Do I learn best from reading? 

And so from that information—it is literally just a survey—the 

teachers are able to come together in a team teaching situation. We 

do a lot of looping, and I am not going to take the time to define 

those, they are in the record that I have submitted for today, and 

some of the teaming at the various grade levels from kindergarten 

all the way through 9th grade and 10th grade, the teachers sit 

down at a common time plan and they look at which students are 

interested in hands-on issues that relate to science. 

And so as a teaching staff, you tailor the lesson to the students’ 

learning style. You wouldn’t see in a magnet school, and I do want 

to stress that these are strategic plans at magnet schools. They are 

not at all 80 of the Omaha Public Schools, only the 15 that are 

magnet schools. The key is to know the learner, find out what their 

interests are, tailor the lessons to them, and you will have an engaged student. 

I would like to also say that one of the things that is unique 

about magnet curriculum is it has something that—we built in 

something that we call extra value standards, and those are additional sets of standards that lay on top of the regular State standards. They are typically community involvement-based, and I want 

to give you an example of that. We have instituted in one of our 

high schools, Omaha North High School, that is a math, science, 

and engineering magnet school, a program called Project Lead the 

Way. It is a pre-engineering program. I see lots of heads shaking 

around the table. The key to this particular program is taking an 

in existence math and science curriculum, math and technology, 

and lay over the top of it a very engaging, hands-on, stimulating, 

very rigorous pre-engineering program. 

There are students in North High School that I am talking about 

in grades 9 through 12 who have—this particular program has speVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:12 Jun 19, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\DOCS\26255.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
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cifically changed the diversity of who comes out the other side of 

this particular pipeline. It is no longer typically your extremely 

bright white male students. The statistics on this particular course 

draw is amazing. We have got approximately 30 percent women involved in this and 30 percent minority students involved in this 

program. 

And the piece that is the capstone piece, which is the community 

involvement piece, the students design or redesign a particular 

issue in the community that is a problem. For example, one of our 

nonmagnet students, or nonmagnet schools, Boyd Elementary—actually, where my own children went to school—had a very, very unsafe off-loading and parking area in the front of their building. The 

students in the engineering design and development course went to 

the school several times and worked with the community engineers 

that are part of the advisory committee, worked with people at the 

university, worked with architects out in public business to design 

a safe off-loading area for these students. 

That was about 2 years ago. The PTA in that building is working 

very hard to get the funds together. They are working with city 

planning to actually implement that project, and that is an example of what an extra value standard project might look like. Typically, these projects are a year or so in the making at that level. 

But the key, we feel, truly is engagement of the student at every 

level. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Langston. 

STATEMENT OF CARRIE LANGSTON, TEACHER, WYOMING 

WRITING PROJECT, CHUGWATER, WY 

Ms. LANGSTON. Keeping my comments to 2 minutes should be 

really easy because that is the attention span of most of my classes—[laughter]—so I will try not to talk too fast, but I feel so passionately about what I want to share today. I am grateful and excited to hear that IBM and business communities are becoming involved in the education process and bringing in teachers. I am excited to hear that someone still thinks we need to teach them to 

read, even past the 3rd grade. We have principals here who are 

dedicated to making this system work better. 

Perhaps the most meaningful thing I have heard so far is that 

there are models that do work, that we have some research, we 

have something to show you that will say, this will help engage 

kids. This will help kids work and learn and stay involved in the 

process. 

I have been very fortunate to be involved with the National Writing Project and the Wyoming Writing Project for nearly 20 years 

now, more actively in the last 3 to 4 years, and I have found by 

taking this situation where we take kids where they are, find what 

their interests are as the magnet schools are talking about, tailor 

that situation to reading and writing and addressing literacy so 

they can make the connections between their math classroom and 

reading their math textbook and applying, using higher-level thinking skills to work across the curriculum. We are finding that we 

are having real success. 

11

I could tell you about a lot of students. I could tell you about a 

lot of facts. But the bottom line is that we have got to find a way, 

and I would suggest that this model whereby we give students an 

opportunity to explore their thoughts and generate ideas, write 

them down, share them with colleagues in a situation much like 

this, do some revision, do some writing until they have something 

that is excellent and publish that just even for the classroom is 

where the students are learning to make the connections and the 

meaningful connections between their writing, their reading, their 

math, their science, their social studies, their special education. 

Some of my best writing and best products are coming from special education, and it takes a commitment from the teacher and 

well-trained teachers, but we have to provide the kids something 

that is theirs, something that is truly, truly meaningful to them. 

I am finding that through the model of the Writing Project, 

through teaching other teachers how to use this in the classroom, 

through networking with our universities and our business community, that we are finding a way to get these students who seem to 

not care, some of the parents who seem to not value education, 

truly engaged, and I am happy to be able to share that with you 

today.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CARRIE LANGSTON

I am honored to participate in the roundtable discussion of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions entitled ‘‘Competitiveness: Building and Filling the Pipeline.’’ The issues we are addressing today in the context of 

our Nation are the same issues I address nearly every day in my classroom. 

If our goal is to find strategies to motivate, engage, and enable our young people 

to reach their full potential, and to raise the academic bar while recognizing individual gifts and talents, I am delighted to share what I have learned in a variety 

of settings working with diverse ages and ability levels. 

The National Writing Project as an Effective Strategy to Benefit Teachers 

and Students 

I first became involved with our local site of the National Writing Project 20 years 

ago. Participating in the Wyoming Writing Project summer institute was a lifechanging experience for me. I learned that my students would achieve more if they 

had the opportunity to use a process that includes generating ideas, sharing them 

with others, revising, proofreading, and finally, when the writing is of excellent 

quality, publishing. I learned to emphasize the content of the writing and the clear 

presentation of that content. I learned that academic success depends on learning 

to write well, and also on learning to use writing as a tool for problem solving and 

for understanding complex information in other subject areas. 

I was able to apply the substance of the institute in my classroom. I found without 

exception that with the processes of writing I could reach students of all skill levels, 

challenge them to become personally responsible for their own learning, teach them 

to strive for excellence, and provide them the opportunity and tools to be successful. 

The National Writing Project also provides me with a key tool: a network of teachers across the country with whom I can collaborate on a variety of projects. I am 

proud to be one of the 100,000 teachers a year who are ‘‘in the trenches,’’ working 

daily to bring not only literacy, but the application of higher-level thinking skills 

to students and to my colleagues who teach social studies, math, science, business, 

foreign language, and special education. 

In fact, the skill of writing is as critical to a scientist, a mathematician, or an engineer as it is to an English teacher. Improving writing in all disciplines contributes 

to solving the pipeline problem, ensuring that more high school graduates will have 

the motivation and skills to succeed in the STEM fields. For this reason, the writing 

project workshops we conduct are for all teachers. 

Making a Difference Student by Student 

Working in partnership with their universities, writing project teacher-leaders are 

tackling the demands of the 21st century in their local areas. I could share with 

12

you hundreds of stories about students I have worked with in rural schools in Wyoming, young people at a residential treatment center for troubled youth, and even 

adults who are seeking to finish their high school studies. But perhaps the story 

of Kelly represents all of them in some way. Kelly was expelled from the largest 

high school in our district because of his drug use, defiance, and assorted personal 

issues. Sporting a number of tattoos and piercings, he enrolled at Chugwater High 

School where I teach English. Through the process of writing, sharing with classmates, revising, and finally producing publishable pieces, Kelly found that he could 

make his life ‘‘make sense.’’ He told me that he was able to connect the dots between 

school and his ‘‘real life’’ and to make connections between various classes. He also 

found a way to connect with the best parts of himself, because writing helps us to 

recognize and develop our own voice, our own humanity. Kelly will be graduating 

in May with a 3.4 GPA and plans to continue his education at a community college. 

Equipping students with ways to invest in their own learning, motivating them 

to continue education after high school, and helping them choose a path to excellence is a daunting task. Learning to write has provided that path for my students. 

The writing project has given me the knowledge and confidence to teach writing effectively and the professional standing to help other teachers do the same.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Schwarz. 

STATEMENT OF ERIC SCHWARZ, PRESIDENT AND CEO, 

CITIZEN SCHOOLS, BOSTON, MA 

Mr. SCHWARZ. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you. 

I am Eric Schwarz. I lead Citizen Schools, which is a network of 

after-school programs operating with middle school kids and kids 

bridging into high school in Massachusetts, California, Texas, New 

Jersey, and as of next year, North Carolina. 

I think you well framed the challenge of the high high school 

dropout rate as well as the challenge of too many young people not 

having the 21st century skills they need in the workforce and for 

college even if they finish high school. I think the two solutions I 

would like to propose are, one, more time, and two, more people engaged in young people’s lives during the critical middle school and 

sort of early high school years. 

We do that at Citizen Schools through an apprentice model in 

the after-school hours where we recruit volunteers who are lawyers, business people, architects, chefs, and challenge them to 

spend one afternoon a week with a team of kids making amazing 

things, and the kids get a chance to work with engineers from IBM, 

architects from the finest firms in the country, Web designers to 

build useful products for their school and for their community. It 

is a mentorship program, but mentorship with a purpose and a 

chance for kids to build high-level skills and get a taste of the joys 

of work and get a taste of the relevance of the things that they are 

learning in school, as well. 

I think it is important to add time to do this, because the school 

day is already so squeezed. What we are seeing in schools around 

the country where we partner is the schools are forced more and 

more to focus on the basics and focus on basic math and basic reading, and the extracurriculars and more hands-on learning activities 

that many kids need to thrive and others have mentioned are being 

squeezed out of the school day. 

After school provides a great opportunity to build those skills and 

build 21st century skills. Our model allows them to do it both 

through apprenticeships as well as through academic coaching and 

leadership development led by a young staff of educators. 

13

And then our real focus on how do you get kids when they are 

still in middle school dreaming about college and thinking about 

college and bringing them—we bring our youth leaders to 10 college campuses in that year and use that as a window into the high 

school choice. 

And the last thing I would emphasize is the importance of high 

school choice in building an educated consumer who is an 8th grader who realizes the implications of the track they get on in high 

school, the courses they take, and the choices they make, and getting those young people when they are 12 or 13 and haven’t yet 

mentally dropped out to realize the path to high school, to college, 

and to the workforce is critical. 

We have done a major evaluation—we are in the middle of it—

led by folks in Washington, Policy Studies Associates. So far, what 

it is showing is really encouraging, that kids in Citizen Schools as 

against a comparison group are out-performing their peers on six 

out of seven academic indicators back in middle school. They are 

getting by more than a two-to-one margin into college-track high 

schools as against a comparison group. Even though they are in 

more rigorous high schools, they are outperforming their peers significantly in math and English in their freshman year and they are 

getting to 10th grade on time, which is the best early indicator of 

high school completion on time at much higher rates. 

So I think more focus on time and getting extra people, citizen 

teachers, we call them, into education. 

Senator ENSIGN. [Presiding]. Good. 

Mr. Bailey. 

STATEMENT OF BOB BAILEY, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, GRANT PROJECT MANAGER, CENTRAL VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, LYNCHBURG, VA 

Mr. BAILEY. Thank you. We are all very, very fond of the pipeline 

metaphor, so I am going to play with that a little bit with my comments. If you have a pipeline and you are losing—if you have a 

leak or if you are losing pressure behind it, the first place you go 

look are at the transition points because that is typically where it 

happens. Even more so, if you build a pipeline and leave a six-foot 

gap, or a six-inch gap, between the transition points, the only thing 

that gets through is the material moving very fast and the rest of 

it falls on the floor, and that is what happens in the education system. 

The transition points are critical from grade to grade, from elementary school to middle school, middle school to high school, high 

school to college. Each transition can be more intimidating to the 

student and more likely to make them say, that is it. 

And so one of the things that we have been involved with, I have 

seen other organizations involved with, is incorporating activities 

from the next level into the previous level so that students get a 

flavor of it. They find out that they can do the work, they are more 

likely to move on. 

The same transition exists from the education to the workplace. 

It seems intimidating and overwhelming, don’t think you can take 

it. If you can integrate work-based learning activities, internships, 

14

youth apprenticeships into the educational pipeline, that transition 

to the workplace becomes a lot easier. 

Senator ENSIGN. Very good. 

Ms. Freeney. 

STATEMENT OF REYGAN FREENEY, A DOCTORAL CANDIDATE, 

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, IOWA CITY, IA 

Ms. FREENEY. Good morning. I am glad to be here. I come today 

wearing many hats. I want to talk about being one of the students 

who was a participant in one of these pipeline programs. Coming 

from the environment that I came from—I am from Iowa. I grew 

up in a small town in Iowa, poor area, poor schools, and I was able 

to participate in a program that provided me with the necessary 

tools to be able to make that transition, to first of all graduate from 

high school, then make that transition easily into college and to 

succeed in college, not walk through, but excel because of a lot of 

the tools that I learned because of my experience through the Upward Bound programs. 

Coming from the 8th grade and a single-parent home where my 

mom worked menial jobs just to try to make things, you know, try 

to make things happen for her kids, she had no idea about college. 

She wanted me to go and I wanted to go, but she had no idea what 

was entailed in that process. And being a participant of a program 

that worked with students who were very similar to me, you know, 

and sitting in class, a lot of times you don’t know the circumstances 

of a student. And we talk about engaging these students, but a lot 

of times, students are worried about their day-to-day needs. 

And so this program gave me an opportunity to get away from 

my day-to-day needs and to see other students much like myself 

who had interests like I did and want to achieve and succeed. And 

so this program gave me tools on the things that I needed. It gave 

me an opportunity to see other college students, students who came 

from similar situations like myself, and it gave me an opportunity 

to mentor these students and also an opportunity to meet college 

professors. It lowered the barrier for me to know what it will take 

to be a college student, and college was not just for students unlike 

myself. 

And so I made that bridge. I crossed that bridge and I saw the 

valuable impact on mentoring, relationships, and seeing that a scientist is just not an old guy with white hair with a lab coat. 

[Laughter.] 

It also gave me the opportunity to see that it is not a dark or 

cloudy field, but there are areas, a variety of areas that are real 

world applicable. And so being able to see and gain a research experience through the Women in Science and Engineering program 

and the Upward Bound program, it gave me a lot of tools that I 

needed in order to succeed. And so I saw the value in how the program impacted my life because not only did it give me a way out, 

it gave me a way in. It gave me a way in to influence other students. 

And so I saw the value of the program, and so after I obtained 

my master’s degree in chemistry, a little poor girl from Waterloo, 

Iowa, I decided to go and work for the program. And so I have 

worked for a few years and I, too, had a chance to change the lives 

15

of students and to open the door for students who were—some of 

our students were great students and some of our students were 

mediocre students. I had a student in my program who, if you 

talked to her, she is very intelligent, but when it came down to taking exams, she didn’t do so well. We had her tested and we found 

out that she had dyslexia. This girl will be graduating in a year 

in nursing. 

So we have the tools. We have programs that currently exist that 

can help students, and this is not just one success story. I am not 

just one success story. There are many stories like mine. 

And I want to say also, and I will be brief, but understanding 

the role that it is a pipeline. I think it is very important to have 

the colleges and universities involved with the high school and also 

having business professionals, I mean, businesses engaged in colleges and universities. If you want to change our workforce and 

make sure that we have the opportunity to fill in these gaps that 

we see, I think it is necessary to look at some of the tools that we 

currently have in place and go from there. 

And I do have information that I will submit for the record, so 

thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Dr. Layzell. 

STATEMENT OF TOM LAYZELL, PH.D., PRESIDENT, COUNCIL 

OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, FRANKFORT, KY 

Mr. LAYZELL. Thank you. I agree with everything that has been 

said. I just want to add maybe a couple of different perspectives 

from the postsecondary education standpoint. 

I think we have done our students a disservice in this country 

in the past several years by ignoring the fact that the world has 

moved to a place where, I don’t care what you want to do, as has 

already been said, you are going to go to work, you are going to 

go in the military, you are going to go to postsecondary, you need 

that rigorous curriculum in high school and even grades below 

that. 

So we are very supportive of this movement toward a single rigorous curriculum. I think, as has been said, the students will live 

up to the expectations we have of them. 

A couple other things I think are important for all of us is to remember something that was said over 30 years ago by a man 

named Bud Hutchinson, that this really is all one system that we 

are talking about here. We happen to come into it at different 

points along the way, but we have got to make that a reality, that 

colleges and universities and the K–12 system understand that we 

are all linked together. We cannot build a strong postsecondary 

system on the back of a weak K–12 system. They cannot succeed 

if we have a weak postsecondary system. We have to have a lot 

more interchange, interaction, inter-relationship, collaboration between the two systems. 

A couple other things that I think are important. We have mentioned teachers and teacher preparation in passing. That is a huge 

challenge for all of us, to make sure that those of us in postsecondary education are preparing the teachers to teach in today’s 

classrooms and there is some evidence that we are not. 

16

Educational leadership programs are crucial. You cannot have a 

strong school without strong principals or strong superintendents. 

Again, that largely falls in our bailiwick in postsecondary education, to make sure that our educational leadership programs are, 

in fact, attuned to the realities of today. 

We have got to have better induction programs for young teachers. We lose too many young teachers in the first 2 or 3 years of 

their teaching experience, and I am a father of one of those young 

teachers that left the profession very quickly because I think we 

didn’t do the kind of training, the induction that was necessary for 

her and for many others like her. 

I had the opportunity to attend the National Governors Association summit on the high school about a year ago now. There were 

kind of two general themes that came out of that conference that 

were troubling. These came from Governors, for the most part. 

They either said their citizens in their State were complacent about 

the quality of their educational system, or, on the other side, they 

were cynical that anything could be done, and those are—the convergence of those two themes is pretty ominous for all of us, I 

think. 

And I think there are too many people yet today, certainly we 

have encountered this in Kentucky in my short period of time 

there, that do not understand some of the statistics that you cited, 

Mr. Chairman, at the beginning about the need for how many jobs 

in today’s economy need postsecondary education, the importance 

of training for the workforce essentially the same way that you 

train for postsecondary education. We have got to get that message 

out. 

As has already been said, there is a number of programs, initiatives, studies that have been done that I think show us a way to 

go and we just need to pay some attention to the evidence in front 

of our faces. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. [Presiding]. Thank you. I want to thank my colleagues. They have to run and vote. That is what I just got back 

from doing. Both of them have some outstanding bills that deal 

with competitiveness and getting us from here to there, so would 

you like to say anything before you leave to vote? 

Senator ENSIGN. Yes, I appreciate it, Mr. Chairman, simply because I have to preside in the chair from 11:00 to 12:00, so I won’t 

be able to continue to participate. I appreciate you holding this 

hearing and just wanted to raise one point. I think all of us recognize the need for more of our kids to be motivated to learn math 

and science. I was over with Margaret Spellings this morning having a little coffee with her and we discussed how we identified the 

problems our kids had with reading, why our kids weren’t learning 

to read, and the debates surrounding whole language and phonics. 

We recognized the problem and we did good studies to fix it. 

But we don’t have studies to tell us why our kids aren’t learning 

math and sciences. You know, there are some theories out there, 

but the problem hasn’t been totally dissected. Are students just not 

motivated like they used to be motivated? Is it teaching techniques? Is it parents that aren’t helping motivate our kids or are 

not putting enough importance on learning math and science? Is it 

teacher competence? Is it a combination of things? 

17

The bottom line is we have to find the things that seem to be 

working, and find what was causing the problem in the first place. 

As it was mentioned, we have to spend more time teaching core 

subjects. It could be that one of the reasons we have to spend more 

time teaching core subjects to students is because teachers maybe 

aren’t teaching the way that we used to teach. We used to learn 

math and science in the same amount of time and still have time 

for P.E. and still have time for other important subjects. We have 

to ask ourselves some fundamental questions to effectively solve 

this problem. 

So the direction you are taking this committee is exactly right, 

holding these types of roundtables, and I appreciate your leadership on this and thank you to everyone participating. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. What a flood of ideas we have already had, and I appreciate it. 

Dr. Morningstar. 

STATEMENT OF MARY MORNINGSTAR, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL EDUCATION, LAWRENCE, KS 

Ms. MORNINGSTAR. First, I want to just thank you for including 

me in this discussion. I was thrilled that the focus on students with 

disabilities at the secondary level was included. I want to start—

so I want to acknowledge the inclusion to participate. 

I want to start just by giving you a few statistics, briefly. I think 

the most recent report out of the National Council on Educational 

Statistics is that 64 percent of high school students attend some 

form of a postsecondary setting. Their expectation is a lot higher. 

I think it is around 82 percent of students expect to attend college. 

For students with disabilities, the most recent research coming 

out of the second wave of a national longitudinal study, a 10-year 

study on high school outcomes for students with disabilities is that 

32 percent of students identified with a disability go on to a postsecondary setting, not quite at the same rate. Now, interestingly, 

it is double what it was 10 years ago, and so the question you have 

to ask is what has changed? 

Certainly, some might think, well, kids with disabilities can’t go 

on to college, but clearly, the research is showing that that is not 

the case. What has changed is that there are high expectations 

that students with disabilities participate in rigorous coursework 

with the accommodations that they need and the instructional 

techniques that meet their learning differences. 

I was very pleased to hear Ms. Varner talk about the ceilings, 

the differentiated ceilings, and I bet one of the lowest ones at one 

time was for students who were in the resource room classrooms. 

If we all have the same expectations for those students, we know 

they can be successful. 

I think, Ms. Day, you talked a lot about multiple approaches to 

learning, your survey on how kids learn best. In our field, we call 

that adaptive pedagogy, that we have teachers who have expertise 

in individualized learning, and one of the most recent sort of research-based practices that have come out of the field of disability 

is universal design for learning. I think many of you may be familiar with a concept of the universal design. The curb cuts in front 

18

of the Senate are a good example. They were designed for access 

for disability, but they are available to all of us. And universal design for learning at its core essentially says we have multiple ways 

to represent the text or the content, the knowledge base, multiple 

means of expressing it, and multiple means of engagement. So a 

lot of you have talked about that level of engagement. 

What I still hear, and my focus within higher student learning 

is around teacher preparation, well, we are preparing teachers 

using similar concepts. We are calling them different things. And 

what we haven’t done successfully, particularly at the secondary 

level, is work together. So we still have separate educational systems that need to start merging so we have better partnerships 

with the general educators who have innovative practices and they 

are using our practices. 

One other practice that I will mention, and I think I will save 

the issue of wearing two hats, both disability as well as teacher 

preparation, I will save my teacher prep for the second question 

about what we need to do next, but one of the probably biggest successes that we have seen within the field of disability in the last 

years is assistive technology. It is interesting, it hasn’t come up yet 

in discussion around science and math because it comes out of the 

computer industry. So assistive technology primarily has been designed for students with disabilities. 

I had a conversation with Ms. Willner right before where she was 

talking about what IBM has done in terms of making Web sites accessible using a variety of computer software and computer hardware available for people who are visually impaired. So they can’t 

read the screen. They can hear it instead. The computer reads the 

screen for them. 

Well, I immediately started talking with her about the advantages of that for a variety of individuals, not just people who are 

blind, so kids with learning disabilities, when they have access to 

that technology, they, too, read better. Their reading scores, the research on the reading programs that use universal design and assistive technology have shown large increases in reading skills for 

all kids, not just students with disabilities, but any low reader can 

show improvement with the assistive technology that is designed. 

The other thing that I just might mention in the discussion—

well, actually, I will touch on what you have talked about in terms 

of your mentoring program with Upward Bound. Again, what we 

are seeing within the field of disability, that where we have mentoring programs, National Science Foundation funds regional centers called Access for STEM, so it is to provide additional support, 

probably very similar to Upward Bound and the TRIO programs, 

additional support, college fairs, ongoing support from high school 

through college specifically designed for students with disabilities 

so that we are promoting their involvement in the STEM career 

paths. 

Again, from my perspective, I think we should be jointly proceeding so that we are not doing our thing over here while IBM is 

doing their thing over here, but we need to start building those 

bridges and collaborating between the knowledge base that we all 

can bring to the table. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Shelton. 

19

STATEMENT OF JIM SHELTON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EDUCATION DIVISION, BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION, 

WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. SHELTON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I agree with so 

much of what has been said today that I just want to offer a few 

framing comments. 

The first is that I think it is important for us to keep in mind 

that when we talk about the competitiveness of our country, we actually have two goals at the high school level we have to achieve. 

One is the obvious one of actually getting more kids college ready 

so they can enter the workforce, the knowledge economy as we normally describe it. But I would submit that increasing our graduation rates nationally and reducing our drop-out rates is also a very 

important part of our ability as a country and, therefore, our competitiveness. I think it is very important for us to make sure that 

when you use definitions of what works, that we are very focused 

on recognizing that those two goals need to be tied together and 

that there is an inherent tension. 

The second thing is that, as you have heard, there are many, 

many very important parts to strategies for making school successful and for making systems of school successful at graduating their 

students college ready, and the one thing I want to point out is 

that it is not either/or. It is and/both. 

The places where I see success in my work with the Gates Foundation are the places that keep in mind that it is about expectations, that it is about preparation, that it is about awareness and 

information, that it is about understandings for students of affordability, because if they don’t know that they can afford to go, then 

why bother? And networks and support and how they get the time 

and resources they need to be successful with these new demands 

that we are placing on them. 

One of the things that we have to keep in mind is, in fact, we 

are actually trying to do what is unprecedented. The idea that the 

systems and resources that we used before, something is now different about the students because they are not being successful, is 

actually not so accurate. What is accurate is that we are trying to 

get many more students than have ever had access to the kinds of 

curriculum, to the kinds of opportunities that we need them to 

have access to, that we need new strategies, that we need much 

more holistic environments that are going to address the needs of 

all the students. 

So I am going to come back to something that Ms. Varner said, 

because she laid out four goals and I have tended to find them all 

the same in all the schools that I see that are really successful. 

Common, high expectations identified in the standards with accountability for that performance specifically, actually especially in 

reading, writing, and mathematics. The others are very important, 

we need those problem solving skills in all of the areas, but the accountability for performance regardless of what pathway the student goes through in reading, writing, and math is very important. 

The second thing is the creation of school environments, whatever they look like—I am used to very structured school environments with traditional academic tracks. Since doing this work, I 

have found schools that are highly rigorous that have no classes. 

20

They do all of their work through projects in school and life internships out in the field. 

They have great relationships with their students. All great 

schools know how to create great relationships between the adults 

and the students in the building, the students with each other in 

the building, and most importantly, actually, the adults in the 

building so they can work together to problem solve around the 

needs of the students. 

And then finally, the relevance, so kids know why this matters. 

As all the teachers in the room and all the principals in the room 

know, the worst thing you want to hear when you walk into a 

classroom is, what am I ever going to use this for? We have to 

make those connections for students so that they understand how 

what they are learning in the classrooms is going to be connected 

to the real world, and then the best cases we can show them how 

that is going to happen. 

The challenges of integrating these things, making them all happen at one time with the systems and capacity and the policy challenges that we have today is a complicated set of solutions. So it 

is going to take time and it is going to take joint effort, and so I 

am really happy to hear Dr. Morningstar’s commentary about us 

working together. There is lots of individual effort going on. We 

need to figure out how to pull it together in a cohesive period of 

change. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. And for our last speaker on question 

number one, Ms. Brooks-Crocker. 

STATEMENT OF WANDA BROOKS-CROCKER, NDE CERTIFICATION ADMINISTRATOR, FRAMATOME ANP, INC., AN AREVA 

AND SIEMENS COMPANY, LYNCHBURG, VA 

Ms. BROOKS-CROCKER. First of all, thank you for having us here 

today. I work in a very specialized field. It is nondestructive testing. I don’t know how many of you may have heard something 

about nondestructive testing in your life, but I know when I got 

into it, I came into it completely by accident. I worked for a company called Babcock and Wilcox and a group moved into the building that did this type of testing, and guess what, it is the thing 

that keeps our infrastructures safe. It is transportation, railroads, 

airplanes, nuclear power plants, and that is the field that I work 

in, is nuclear power. 

Since this is such a specialized field, it is not talked about a lot 

in the curriculums that exist right now. There have been a few initiatives locally. The company that I work for, AREVA, Framatome 

ANP, has put into place some summer academies where middle 

school students come in and they get some exposure to nuclear 

power and nondestructive testing, robotics, and then at the internship level, we have some students that come in, high school-age, 

and they work about 6 weeks with us. The summer academy is a 

week-long thing. Recently, the local community college, since we 

are a big employer in that area, they contacted us about putting 

in a program. We have a work-study program that is now about 3 

years in existence and been very successful. 

We are faced with other challenges in our industry, of course, because the workload tends to happen in very concise periods of time 

21

in the spring and fall, so that leaves some other challenges probably for another type of discussion. 

And most recently, the local high school, after the community college had this work-study program, the local high school came to us 

and said, can you do something for us, so they are now starting 

their second year of nondestructive testing. We have realized 

through this evolution that at the high school level, they need more 

than just high school graduation to go into this type of a work environment, so the local community college and the high school are 

working very closely together to develop a high school introductory 

level to four different areas in nuclear technologies, and then from 

there they can decide which one they want to focus on and go to 

the local community college and get further education. 

So it is definitely an area, I have heard many of you talk about 

the business and business leaders and educators need to work together. The educators need to know what the needs of the world 

are, you know, what do our students need to learn, especially in 

these specialized areas? 

So I thank you for holding this roundtable discussion today and 

look forward to more things happening here, so thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. I am going to move on to the second 

question. I will have everybody put their name tags down. I apologize for you not having a chance to respond again, and some of you 

were fairly early in the discussion, so there are other things 

brought up that you need to respond to and I hope that you will 

jot those down and share them with us in writing, because some 

of the best ideas are actually the ones that come after somebody 

else said something, and we need those. 

That question was kind of on strategies we can use, and I am 

always impressed with the volume of information that we get from 

these, the ideas that just ripple through there. And, of course, one 

of the reasons is because we invite outstanding people to these 

roundtables to provide that information. 

The second question deals with partnerships, and what I noticed 

was that it is pretty hard to separate strategies from partnerships. 

[Laughter.] 

And I am sure that will be the case on the second question, as 

well, but I think it is working well. We want to talk now about 

strong partnerships among high schools, postsecondary institutions, businesses, and government which are essential to making 

the high school experience beneficial for all students. Any information you have on the respective roles of each partner and what can 

be done to start these partnerships and then to facilitate communication and coordination so that the partnerships work out, any 

experiences you have had with that that you think might have 

some universal application. 

Part of what we have found is that there are a lot of great ideas 

around this country, but most of the people don’t know about them 

and it is pretty hard to implement them if you don’t know about 

them. So part of our role is to help communicate those, and again, 

you are invited here because we knew that you had real information on this sort of thing. 

We will begin the discussion on the second question. Before you 

put up your name tags—[laughter]—I want to remind you about 

22

the 2 minutes. I did notice that as the further we went into it, the 

longer the 2 minutes got—[laughter]—because there were so many 

more things to react on. But what this is is kind of a contest on 

ideas rather than an explanation of the ideas, because we will be 

getting back to you to get more of the detail on the ideas. So if you 

can kind of hold it to 2 minutes, I would appreciate it. Dr. Layzell. 

Mr. LAYZELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to just 

briefly outline the approach that has been taken in Kentucky, because I think it does have applicability for other States. 

The policy challenge, as you and others have noted, is how do 

you attack these problems in a way that is not dependent upon the 

individual personalities of a particular school district or a particular university? Is there a way you can do this, and I think there 

is. 

In its reform legislation, which is now 8-plus years old in Kentucky, they turned the usual approach on its head and they said, 

look, we want to focus on the needs of Kentucky, not on the needs 

of the educational providers. We want the educational providers to 

help us meet those needs. And they created a concept called the 

Public Agenda. Later, they added adult education to postsecondary 

education’s portfolio and instructed us in statute that we were responsible to work with the K–12 schools because of a recognition 

of things that already have been said here about the importance of 

the two systems to each other. 

From that overall policy framework, we created a State-level P–

16 council, which involves K–12, higher education, business, labor, 

adult education, all the partners that you would want involved in 

a collaborative discussion of how do you attack the educational 

problems that are facing you, and in our face, it was very low levels 

of educational attainment in Kentucky. We have since created local 

P–16 councils throughout the State. There are about 21 of them 

now. 

I think this structure, which provides the opportunity for conversations among the various actors involved and has led to some 

really innovative approaches in a number of areas is a structure 

that could well be emulated around the country. There is nothing 

unique about it and it is not unique to Kentucky. They just happened to do it first. I would certainly think—I would certainly commend this to other people’s attention because it is a way to force 

the various parties to deal collectively with these problems. Thank 

you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Varner. 

Ms. VARNER. Oh, I was second. I won! 

[Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Good work. 

Ms. VARNER. Thank you. I want to talk a little about the partnerships that have really made a difference in Chattanooga. When I 

talked about the high ceiling and the single diploma, that actually 

came out of collaboration with our business partners who were saying what we should have already known, and I guess we knew, 

that it is not just the students who are graduating and going to college that need high-level thinking skills. The students that are 

23

going straight to the workforce. So while, as I said, that would 

have been a difficult feat, we had the business community with us. 

For our students who go to college, we had what is happening, 

I am sure, around the country, they will get to college and then 

they drop out the first year. They are either in remedial courses 

or, as you said, never get through and they just don’t make it. We 

have sat down with our local universities and looked at the students who are succeeding and trying to look back to see, what is 

their history? What happened that may have contributed to their 

success and then what is not happening? 

In our district now, all seniors, regardless of how clever they are 

in getting all of their course requirements in, they have to take 

math because we were really struggling there. And so during your 

senior year, because what we learned is that kids who take a year 

off from math don’t do as well when they get to college, so you are 

taking math in your senior year and folks understand that. 

In both our magnets and our academies, we have really strong 

partnerships with our magnet schools. We have, for example, the 

museum magnet, and you were talking about some of the things 

that kids have to give up when they are struggling with their poor 

subjects. What we have found is providing that context for kids to 

do what adults do, and that is pursue their passions and interest. 

So one of our magnet schools, for example, is the museum magnet. Kids have the same high requirements. They have to pass the 

same end-of-course tests. They have the same set of standards. But 

they learn through that context. Our academies, the curriculum is 

developed in collaboration with our business partners. 

One of our schools has a medical academy. The CEO said, I am 

no dummy. I am investing my time, my financial resources because 

we need doctors and nurses in Chattanooga. And so the curriculum 

is being developed jointly. 

Our construction academy at one of our schools, East Ridge High 

School, is one of the most successful, and kids who are taken in the 

construction academy are outscoring their peers in traditional 

math on traditional tests. But it is providing that context and it 

is because we are developing, not just doing the business day and 

the business people in the schools for a day, but developing strong 

relationships with them, with our Chamber of Commerce, with 

local attractions, with communication, and that is one of the things 

that is really making the difference. 

That is what is allowing us, I think, those contacts and those 

partnerships, to have a single diploma and have our graduations 

go up, our graduation rate go up, our dropout rate go down. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Ajax. 

Mr. AJAX. Thank you. I would like to share a similar successful 

partnership that we have been able to develop in Minneapolis, and 

that is we, 17 years ago realized that 70 percent of the students 

coming out of high school were not obtaining a high school degree, 

and we also know that in the manufacturing sector, that for every 

college degree and every engineer, we need between seven and ten 

technicians, and these are high-skill, high-wage, high-demand occupations. These are men and women that can be tool and die makers 

and electricians and earning between $40,000 and $70,000 a year. 

24

So we have worked with several of the Minneapolis public 

schools, the at-risk schools in particular, and over the last 17 years, 

we have put 800 students through a mentoring program and an internship program and one-on-one attention, and we work with the 

students and their parents and explain that you can have a free 

ride. Your entire education is paid for. You will have a 2-year technical degree. You will have the opportunity to go on to a 4-year degree if you choose. All of your education is paid for. You will enter 

a 4-year apprenticeship training program with 8,000 hours of onthe-job training, 144 hours worth of additional professional development every year after that, and you will graduate from your apprenticeship program while you are being paid and you will be 

making between $40,000 and $60,000 a year without any student 

debt or any student loans. 

I am happy to say that of the 800 students through the YCAP 

program, more than 92 percent of these at-risk youth have graduated from high school. Most of them did go on to postsecondary 

education. Some of them went on to a 4-year degree. But what I 

would like to recognize is we need to think about and focus on the 

70 percent of the students that will not have a 4-year degree, and 

there is almost a social prejudice that exists with educators and 

students and parents, where we look down our nose at someone 

that does not have a 4-year degree. My son has to have a 4-year 

degree, absolutely. There is no other choice. 

Well, we think there are some other choices and we need to work 

harder as business and industry and promote some of the opportunities that are available other than a 4-year degree. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Dr. Morningstar. 

Ms. MORNINGSTAR. Thank you. There are several things I could 

talk about. I think what I will focus my 2 minutes on this time is 

the role that I see within higher education and teacher training, 

and I know that teacher education and schools of education don’t 

always get the best rap and I think that some of that is because 

there may not be a good understanding of what we are doing and 

how we are changing our practices in training teachers. 

I know now I have an advantage because I am faculty in the 

number one department of special education among public universities in the country, so we take very seriously our role in teacher 

education for special educators, and we take very seriously the importance of the current legislation around high-quality teachers. 

What we are starting to see is that, well, number one, we understand that schools are different and we have our students out in 

those schools on a regular basis, so it is not like we are not aware 

of the current context within which high schools operate, and in 

fact, my program at the secondary special education and the transition to adulthood, which is my area of expertise in training teachers, they learn about secondary school context first and then the 

role of specialized instruction, their role within that as a special 

education teacher with some individualized, specialized skills. 

And what we are seeing from current legislation, I think is a 

good thing. It is hard for us, you know, the shift from the way we 

used to teach, pull-out model, resource room teachers teaching 

science and math for a variety of kids, that model has got to end 

25

and we are helping those teachers move into a push-in model of 

services, where they are eco-teaching in science classes and the 

kids with disabilities are in those science classes. 

My perspective is for students who do need specialized attention 

and perhaps not within a regular science class, science teachers 

still need to be providing that instruction with the support of the 

intensive work that special educators can do in those alternative 

settings. I would hold to the focus that we feel very strongly about 

our role in preparing the best teachers for tomorrow, getting that 

word out. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Freeney. 

Ms. FREENEY. I will be brief. I will keep it under 2 minutes. And 

what I do need to say is that I think it is very necessary to offer 

supplemental programs. I don’t think we are—it is not an isolated 

case. It is not just high school, it is not just college, and it is not 

just the business community. I think it is necessary to provide supplemental programs both for teachers and for students. I think allowing teachers to work jointly with colleges and universities and 

also industry provides them an opportunity to obtain additional 

training and receive materials and also provide some—for them to 

obtain some additional instructional support in which they can 

transfer into their classroom. 

I also believe that it is necessary for the students to have access 

to this opportunity which allows the students to receive, one, a 

real-world experience, hands-on training, and also to see that the 

loop between what they are learning inside the classroom has application outside of the doors. And I think that there are several 

programs in place that will provide a great role model for this, and 

I just really want to stress the point that we are not in this alone. 

And so an interdisciplinary approach to both student learning and 

teacher learning and teaching will provide assistance. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Schwarz. 

Mr. SCHWARZ. Thank you. I am seeing some wonderful themes 

emerging around high expectations, the importance of transitions, 

customized learning in school and out of school, the importance of 

mentors. 

I wanted to mention three additional partners that aren’t explicitly mentioned in the lists you went through but I think are maybe 

implicit, but call them out. One is parents, and we are thinking 

through how community groups can engage parents very powerfully as a full partner in their kids’ learning. We think it is critical, 

and we think that after-school programs, citizen schools and others 

have the unique opportunity to play a bridging role, connecting to 

the school teachers during the day and the parents in the later 

afternoon and evening and bringing them together. 

I was in Redwood City, California, last week and heard from a 

single parent of three middle school girls in our program and she 

talked about the transition and just what it meant like to be a parent and to have the support of an after-school program that was 

reinforcing things and values that she believed in during the school 

day and how it had kind of lifted a weight off of her shoulders. And 

then she contrasted when she was a kid and had been to a fire station and briefly wanted to become a firefighter, was told, you can’t 

26

do that, you are a girl, contrasted that with the positive reinforcement that her three girls were getting in our program. 

Second is kids. I don’t think we are going to get out of the gap 

that we have and the challenges we have if we don’t challenge kids 

to be really producers and take responsibility for their own education. The apprenticeship model, at its best, really challenges 

young people to produce for their community. So rather than just 

being a passive recipient of education, they are out there producing, and we have young people working with Fidelity Financial 

Advisors, as one example, coaching their older brothers and sisters 

on college access and college savings and learning how to share 

those skills in a way that really brings meaning and brings useful 

information to their broader community. 

Third, I think, is philanthropy. I think there is a big role that 

private philanthropy can play as a partner with K–12 education 

and with government in scaling what works. I flew down this 

morning from a conference in upstate New York with a number of 

philanthropists and social entrepreneurs, and many people in that 

community are very interested in partnering in new ways with government to take stuff that is proven to work and bring it to new 

communities and additional children. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Willner. 

Ms. WILLNER. Thank you. I am going to quickly touch on two 

things that were said earlier to underscore them and then talk a 

little bit specifically about partnerships. 

First of all, thanks to Jim Shelton for mentioning that we don’t 

want to go back to some supposed golden age. We all had a great 

time in school when we were young, but it wasn’t the golden age. 

Those schools were good for the time. They achieved the goals that 

were set before them. They will not meet the needs we have today. 

We have much higher expectations. 

Just the breadth of human learning and understanding is so 

much larger than it was before, our expectations for students, and 

as well as the fact that, as Jim mentioned, we now expect every 

student to get through high school. It is not okay to skip high 

school. It is not okay to drop out. As was said earlier, it is not even 

okay anymore not to go to postsecondary school. We need schools 

for tomorrow that will train our children to live in the innovation 

economy. 

If we only focus on—the second issue I want to raise, and it was 

my colleague from J&J mentioned this, the need for hands-on 

skills, the need for problem-based kinds of activities in the schools, 

very, very important. Rote learning is not enough. We will, if we 

just focus again on the pocket cover skills and we teach all of our 

children to use slide rules, they are not going to innovate for the 

future. They are going to get left behind. We need them to focus 

on problems, and it is a two-fer. 

Problem-based learning is a great thing because it is a great bargain. It is a two-fer. It engages children in real-life problems and 

experiences that are relevant to their lives, that excite them, and 

it teaches them the skills that they will need in the workplace to 

work collaboratively, to address problems, to uncover patterns, and 

27

to communicate those solutions to others. So we need problembased skills. 

I want to talk a little bit about partnership, and I don’t think I 

have time for my top 10 list of things that partners should try to 

do, but I will give you my top four or five. No. 1—maybe number 

one, two, and three, actually—is listen. If you want to have a good 

partnership, everybody has to listen. Everybody is shaking their 

heads. That is a good sign. We have to listen to each other. We 

have to really agree not to just be in the same room, not to have 

side-by-side players. We have seen the little children that really 

don’t listen and engage with each other. 

The second very important piece of advice I would give to partners is have some humility. As folks from the private sector, we 

can’t walk into schools and say we are more efficient. We are the 

private sector, we know how to make this happen. Frankly, my colleagues from the school side, you can’t just tell us, we are the education professionals. Just give us the money. Let us all have some 

humility and work together. 

Third, we need to get rid of jargon. You all know what I mean. 

There is a certain language that is used in the education spheres 

and the private sector certainly has it, as well. I have worked on 

both sides of the aisle and everybody is great at creating new jargon. There is even a little jargon on Capitol Hill sometimes, so you 

know what I mean. 

[Laughter.] 

And finally, innovation. We come together to find new ways to 

do things. Let us not just try to find ways to do more of the same. 

Let us not do the same thing faster, more often. You know what, 

if it doesn’t work and we do it faster and more often, we will just 

fail sooner. So let us try to work together to innovate. 

And the last thing I want to mention just in terms of ventures, 

and we can provide you with some more of the partnerships that 

we have, but I am thrilled to hear about the citizen skills. IBM has 

about 8,000 folks who are online mentors. I actually live in New 

York and I mentor a young 4th grader in Las Vegas, and last year, 

I mentored a student in North Carolina. 

And also, we have beginning on Sunday, for those of you who 

may not know, it is National Engineers Week, so last year, just 

from IBM, we worked directly over the course of National Engineers Week with 200,000 high school and middle school students, 

and we are just one company out of the dozens and dozens that 

participate in National Engineers Week. We are all geared up for 

this coming week. We are going to have activities in virtually every 

city in America at our plant site. We have to make that the start 

of partnerships that go forward, not just 1 day, but it is a great 

example of something we can build on. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Dr. Riddile. 

Mr. RIDDILE. Thank you. In your opening statement, you made 

a profound statement, that is, schools are always open, learning 

never stops. And underlying that is the idea that, given time, all 

students can learn. Now, in the old school, we said all students can 

learn, but today we understand that we want all students to enVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:12 Jun 19, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\26255.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
28

counter complex subject matter. They may take more time to do 

that. 

I am constantly battling elitists who contend that if students 

take one more day to learn a subject, somehow, they are a failure. 

If we continue to hold time as a constant, we are going to continue 

to have what we had in the past. That is the bell curve of performance, and the bell curve in the knowledge age is not acceptable to 

anyone. 

So recognizing that some students may take more time and that 

time now is a variable and not a constant brings up my point of 

our most important partnerships. Now, our school has partnerships 

with 4-year colleges, community colleges, Rotary Clubs, service organizations, businesses, and we have had award-winning partnerships. But our most important partnership is with our own feeder 

schools, middle and elementary schools, that ensure that the time 

students spend in school, during that time, no student falls behind 

and that there is a safety net for all students. 

So instead of focusing outside, the solution is really inside, and 

the answer has always been right in front of us. If we really believe 

that given time, all students can learn, and we develop a continuum of professionals who continually provide services that every 

students need. Now, we may need to compress more learning time 

for some students, after-school programs, summer programs. Our 

school, for example, we get a creative calendar, college-like calendar. We are able to get 51⁄2 years of schooling in 4 calendar years 

for some students. All students don’t need more time. But unless 

we look at time now as a variable, we will continue to get what we 

have gotten. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. Day. 

Ms. DAY. Thank you. This definitely, and Sandy Day excluded on 

this one, but this definitely just falls—the whole morning falls 

under the category of, wow, great minds think alike, because it is 

interesting listening to Dr. Morningstar’s adaptive pedagogy as our 

approaches to learning and Mr. Bailey’s pipeline is our pathway, 

and getting back to magnet schools, magnet schools are aligned in 

those transitional pathways and that is exactly what you are also 

talking about, looking inside what we are doing to see how we can 

adjust, refine, and fine-tune what it is that we are pushing through 

our pathway. 

I want to tell you that one of the things that is critical to pathway organization, so, for example, if I am talking about one of our 

schools that has the theme of economics, we have an elementary 

magnet school called Conestoga. Students receive the economic 

extra value curriculum in grades 2 through 6. Then they move on 

to R.M. Magnet [ph.] and receive extra value curriculum in economics there, and then on to high school and then on to the community. 

And what we do with that, of course, is we pull those teachers 

together over the summer so the teachers get year-round school, 

not the students in Omaha Magnet Schools, because they have to 

take a look at what they are delivering. And if we are not sending 

to the middle school students who truly understand what is exVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:12 Jun 19, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\26255.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
29

pected, let us say, out of that economics curriculum, then we are 

failing them and we are building it into our system. 

So I just want you to know that magnet schools have it easy 

when it comes to building these advisory boards that assist them 

with transitions through because they have a theme, but actually, 

any school could develop a theme. It really is incumbent upon the 

principal to come up with, let us say, a vision quest and determine 

what this regular neighborhood elementary is finding important in 

terms of how to encompass the life-long learning that are trying to 

envelop for their students, have professional development through 

the summer and make sure that part of that professional development involves partnering with the universities. 

Omaha is lucky enough to have Metro Community College as 

well as the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Dr. Layzell 

talked a lot about our chancellor, who is—that is where that K 

through 16 component came from. One of our magnet themes in 

one of our schools is a university partnership. We have planned a 

pathway that is K through 16. 

And one set theme is developing partnerships with whatever 

higher level of institutional learning you have in your community. 

That is when you start building the business partnerships, and I 

agree 100 percent with what Ms. Willner is saying about the top 

five or six and she has got ten. One thing I would add that is working very well in our construction academy is invest those advisory 

board members. Make them be invested, and one of the best ways 

is to make sure they put up an internship, paid or unpaid, between 

the junior or senior year to really get those kids out into, and what 

I am particularly thinking of is our construction academy, and I am 

so glad that you mentioned it, Ms. Varner. 

She is our model in Omaha Public Schools. We developed a construction academy that takes up the junior level and there is regular junior English class, math class, a technology class, and a construction laboratory, and the way they are able to make those 

achievement gains. We have students with 11 percent achievement 

gains from last year to this year in mathematics and the way they 

are doing it is through learning algebra. It goes right back to what 

is relevant to them. They are not just learning an algebraic equation, they are actually having to figure out the size of the drywall 

that is supposed to go on the wall that they are building in their 

construction class. 

That is what keeps them engaged. That is what keeps them attuned to their learning, and then if you promise them that paid 

or—in our case, paid, thank goodness, thank you very much Peter 

Hewitt Construction—paid internship over the summer between 

the junior and senior year, they actually put some of those skills 

to work. 

I echo exactly Mr. Schwarz. You need to have parents, teachers, 

students involved in that advisory board, because if we are not listening to what they have to say, then, again, we are doing them 

a disservice. But I will tell you what, great minds do think alike. 

It is amazing to listen to what is happening across the country and 

seeing that Omaha, Nebraska, is not far behind. 

[Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

30

Mr. Shelton. 

Mr. SHELTON. Thank you. Four specific kinds of partnership really quickly. Partnerships around alignment, so universities working 

with the local school system to make sure that they actually align 

the exit standards from high school to the entrance standards for 

college. In particular, some places have actually gone so far as to 

make available the placement exams for especially the English language, arts, and mathematics in the high schools so the kids can 

put together individualized plans for how they are going to make 

sure they are ready by the time they graduate if they were not already. 

The same thing, actually, on the industry side, so industry partners working with the school systems to make sure that the career 

and technology programs that they offer actually lead to an industry certification, tying it to things like internships and apprenticeship programs so those very specific things that we actually make 

sure that we are connecting kids to pathways that are going to be 

meaningful for them when they graduate. 

Third is actually partnerships around data, and there are a 

bunch of different kinds that matter. One is actually making sure 

that the data allows for information sharing about students from 

school to school and from school system to school system in close 

proximity, so that when a kid makes a transition from elementary 

into middle school or changes middle schools in the middle of the 

year or changes high schools in the middle of the year, the information about what they have accomplished and what they need makes 

it to them almost immediately. 

Just as importantly, though, information sharing between agencies, so when a kid comes back from the criminal justice system, 

what happens in terms of their records as they come back into the 

school system and how do we know that that kid needs services? 

When a student is in the foster care system, how do we make sure 

that the school system is aware of the challenges that students 

faces and that the services we are providing for those students in 

those different agencies actually meet up to actually serve the students well. I can’t tell you how many different places I go where 

four different agencies are touching the student and a family and 

none of them know. 

The last thing I will talk about is a very special kind of partnership called an early college high school. It is a partnership, a very 

specific partnership between a high school and a college where, in 

fact, you blend the institutions, the objective being that you are actually going to graduate kids from school with about 60 credit 

hours or an associate’s degree. And this is not an elitist program, 

this is a program that takes kids who oftentimes are not thinking 

that they are college bound and making college accessible to them 

in two ways. 

One is, as soon as they are ready, it introduces them to collegelevel work and lets them know that they can actually do that. The 

second thing is if you actually accumulate enough credit hours, it 

reduces the cost of college, and so therefore you are making college 

accessible both in terms of the expectations, but also addressing 

the affordability issues. I am done. 

31

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. I have got to say, on almost all of 

these, I have got a lot of questions I would like to ask to follow up 

to get more information, but there is not a lot of time at this particular time, but we will get that other information. 

Ms. Langston. 

Ms. LANGSTON. I would like to address specifically two kinds of 

partnership, one related to, when you said there are a lot of great 

ideas out there, but it is kind of hard to get on board when we 

don’t know what they are. So I think in the educational community, we really need to address a lot of communication and partnership within that institution, so within school districts, within 

States, and now at the national level, to find ways to partner one 

with the other, and this has got to cross curriculum lines. 

It is not math or science or English or reading. It is we need to 

read and write so we can go on and explore math and science. You 

need to read so you can get the input of the information, and you 

need to write well so that you can express yourself and take that 

on out to the business community. And so insofar as partnering, we 

need to do that on a professional level, one with each other. 

And then the second thing is that we really truly need to partner 

with our parents, and there are a variety of ways to do that, especially in Wyoming because there are great distances and very small 

communities and not a lot of population. It is easy to feel isolated, 

and a lot of our parents feel very, very isolated. 

Once again, one way that I have been able to address that issue 

through the Writing Project is to invite parents in to participate in 

writing journals back and forth with their kids so they can see 

what their kids are doing, back and forth among parents in the 

community, and with the students and the teachers, just to set up 

a dialogue. No one has to be right or wrong, it is just a sharing 

of information. And as we develop that trust, then there is a way 

to proceed with that to develop true partnership. 

If I have 15 seconds left, we don’t have a lot of opportunity to 

partner with business since we have one convenience store and one 

rest stop. However— 

[Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Don’t forget your brother, though. 

[Laughter.] 

Ms. LANGSTON. Oh, that is right. Truly, that is in a trailer, I 

want you to know. 

[Laughter.] 

I am glad to know IBM in New York will partner with a student 

in Wyoming, where business people across the Nation and the technology now to make that a reality for these people. So I am just 

very, very encouraged and very grateful to have been able to have 

heard what you have had to share. Thank you so much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Bailey. 

Mr. BAILEY. I will be very brief. Productive partnerships occur 

first and foremost when the partners sit down and agree upon—

explicitly agree upon a common set of outcomes. Quite often, that 

doesn’t happen. When it doesn’t happen, the best case scenario is 

you get lucky. The worst case scenario is you waste a lot of time 

32

and a lot of money and you end up with a lot of very frustrated 

people. 

So if you are talking about entering partnerships, I would have 

to say you have to be encouraged to listen, but beyond listening, 

actually discuss, come to an agreement on a common set of dialogue, not dictate your outcomes on the other parties. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Dr. Bzdack. 

Mr. BZDACK. Yes. Picking up where my colleague Robin Willner 

left off, there are five attributes of partnerships, but first of all, as 

a company, as a corporation, as a small business, as a large business, you have two choices and they are parallel. You can do your 

own initiative or you can join a coalition, and I think that there 

are a lot of strong models for stakeholders. It is business coalitions 

that work, and we have stolen many ideas from North Carolina, 

Texas, and Kentucky. 

So those need to be looked at closely, and the five attributes of 

the successful partnerships is that they have the power to convene 

all stakeholders; they listen; they act as true collaborators; they 

put their own agendas aside; they focus on evidence, as I said earlier. And the other power, the hidden power that we have as corporations is that we can leverage the power of our own employees, 

and that is at the very top level and at the very bottom level. And 

who are our employees? They are parents, they are school board 

members, they are voters, they are taxpayers, and many of our employees serve on the boards of colleges and universities and nonprofits in our communities, so there is tremendous power. 

And my final comment is that there is incredible potential among 

the corporations in this country to collaborate in the communities 

where they have a presence. We have talked about it, but we 

haven’t done it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. And again, we conclude with Ms. 

Brooks-Crocker. 

Ms. BROOKS-CROCKER. Yes. The best for last, right? 

[Laughter.] 

Again, my comments are coming from a specialized background 

and that sort of thing. One of the questions is what are the roles 

of the partners, and as the business partner, I would like to say 

these things, I think, are important. Visibility, of utmost importance. We have noticed a big difference when we send people out 

to that school to actually work with the kids on learning this nondestructive testing. It is a very hands-on thing. They tend to like 

it quite a bit in the high school and community college levels. And 

what Ms. Willner said about being engaged, I mean, you have to 

be engaged with those students. 

The next thing is assisting with curriculum development. Since 

it is a specialized area, it is essential to making the program concrete. 

And also, teacher education. One thing that we have talked 

about for this year is having some workshops in the summer where 

all the teachers, not just those teaching nondestructive testing, but 

all the teachers can learn something about it and incorporate it 

into their classes—little small bits and pieces, but that way, it will 

trickle down to the younger grades and that sort of thing. 

33

And last, actually assisting with instruction. A lot of our workforce is 40 to 65 years old, 38 to 65, something like that, so we are 

all kind of looking at retirement in the not too distant future and 

I think that is an excellent resource for assisting with the actual 

teaching of nondestructive testing in particular, because it is one 

of those areas that it is easier to teach if you have actually been 

there and done that. 

So I would just like to offer that those things, I think, are important for the business partner. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. I want to thank all of you for participating. I am hoping that your help will not end at this moment but 

will continue on through some additional comments that you may 

have had based on what others may have said, or ideas that you 

may have gotten, or ideas that you already had that you didn’t get 

a chance to share. 

I like having a roundtable as opposed to a hearing. Many of you 

may not have been at a hearing. Hearing is an oxymoron. 

[Laughter.] 

We invite in and it is kind of a Republicans versus Democrats 

atmosphere where each of us get to invite some witnesses and then 

the part that we hear is the part that we like from the witnesses 

that we invited. We spend our time, instead of listening, trying to 

come up with questions that we can either ask the others to embarrass them or ours to continue to emphasize our point. 

The participation is about the same, but with this kind of a format, we get a lot of ideas. What I was writing down were—sometimes it wasn’t what you said, it was an idea that I got because 

of what you said. A lot of times, it was some phrasing that you 

used, which I will use in the future. The Senate rule is the first 

two times, we have to attribute it. 

[Laughter.] 

Often not observed. 

[Laughter.] 

You have just been a font of information. I go back to Wyoming 

most weekends and drive around the State and do kind of one-onone polls on how we are doing out here. I have got to say, though, 

that even in my travels back there, a lot of what I get to hear is 

what doesn’t work, and so I appreciate these roundtables where we 

get to hear what does work. That is really what we want to duplicate. But a lot of times, we already know what doesn’t work and 

a lot of times it is through a lot of repetition. Sometimes, that is 

what it takes for us, too. 

But this has just been extremely helpful and we will keep the 

record open longer, both so that you can contribute and so that 

staff members here that have questions they want to have followed 

up on, and so that my questions can be followed up on, as well. 

So I really appreciate the participation. I think the last time that 

we had a real surge in education in the country was when Sputnik 

was launched, which will be 50 years ago next year. The engineers 

and scientists and innovators that came out of that, we have been 

living on for a long time. Now, we have got to make sure that the 

surge keeps going for our country to have the kind of competitiveness that we have grown used to and so that the next generation 

34

of kids can have the same benefits as the previous generations of 

kids. 

I really appreciate all that you are doing to make that happen. 

Thank you for being here today. 

That concludes the roundtable. 

[Additional material follows.]

35

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR KENNEDY

I commend Chairman Enzi for convening today’s roundtable on 

education reform in our middle and high schools, and I thank each 

of the participants for joining us. 

As a White Paper commissioned by the 2005 National Education 

Summit on High Schools stated, ‘‘High schools are now the front 

line in America’s battle to remain competitive on the increasingly 

competitive economic stage.’’ Our concern is obvious. 

Education is the key to the Nation’s competitive strength in the 

coming decades, and the key is rusty. We’re falling behind other 

countries. Our schools are still competitive internationally through 

4th grade, but by the end of elementary school, we’re losing out. 

Of 100 students in 9th grade, only 68 will graduate from high 

school in 4 years, and only 40 of them will enroll in college, and 

only 18 will graduate from college in 6 years. Germany, France and 

Japan do far better, and our college graduation rates would be even 

less competitive if we compared the rates for 8th grade students. 

Fortunately, strategies are available to reverse these downward 

trends and enable American students to excel academically again. 

We can encourage States to align high school courses with college 

expectations, and give students the support they need to succeed 

in their coursework. Doing so will also reduce the $2 billion a year 

we spend on remedial education. 

We can upgrade standards and revitalize curriculums so that 

students can take more rigorous courses and learn the skills they 

need to do well in them. We can improve the training of teachers 

who teach those courses. We can advise students earlier about the 

classes they select, so that they understand the role of the courses 

they take or don’t take on their future opportunities. We can offer 

more help earlier to students who struggle with reading and math, 

and other academic courses. 

Seasoned school principals and teachers know that it takes a 

strategy of prevention—not just intervention—to reduce the high 

dropout rate. We in Congress can learn from them as well. 

Sixty-five percent of today’s jobs require some postsecondary education and all estimates show that figure will continue to rise. 

Entry level jobs increasingly require skills in literacy, communication, and technology. Employers expect employees—even recent 

high school graduates—to analyze information and solve problems 

in the workplace. At a minimum, we should require every high 

school program to teach these skills to acceptable standards. 

We’ve sent each of you several questions to consider for today’s 

discussion. We’re especially interested in learning more about the 

strategies that have built the pockets of excellence that exist in 

middle schools and high schools today. We’d like your thoughts on 

how to apply proven practices more widely, so that States and local 

school districts can improve the participation of all students in effective academic and technical coursework. 

We look forward to your ideas in these areas, and we thank you 

for joining us this morning.

36

KENTUCKY COUNCIL ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, 

FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY 40601, 

March 2, 2006. 

Ms. LISA SCHUNK, 

Einstein Fellow, 

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, 

U.S. Senate, 

Washington, D.C. 20510.

DEAR MS. SCHUNK: Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the February 

16 roundtable discussion on ‘‘Competitiveness: Building and Filling the Pipeline.’’ 

Our reform agenda in Kentucky highlights that very issue. I am submitting my remarks and some additional materials, as requested, into the record. 

Kentucky’s education reform is built on a comprehensive legislative foundation 

that drives funding and strategic initiatives. In 1990, Kentucky was among the first 

States to embark on groundbreaking standards-based reform in K–12 education. In 

1997, the Kentucky General Assembly passed the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act. This legislation called for improving the standard of living 

and quality of life of all Kentuckians by creating an adequately funded, seamless 

system of education so that Kentuckians would meet or exceed the national average 

in educational attainment by 2020. In 2000, additional legislation set the stage for 

restructuring adult education and channeling it into the postsecondary system. Kentucky was unique in the Nation in creating a structure that focused adult education 

on attracting undereducated adults back into the education system to prepare and 

enroll them in college. Kentucky’s P–16 pipeline strategically includes both traditional P–12 and nontraditional adult students. Most recently, the Kentucky Innovation Act of 2000 formalized in legislation the role of postsecondary education in expanding the capacity for knowledge-driven research and development in Kentucky 

to attract businesses, create jobs, and prepare a skilled workforce for a globally competitive, 21st century economy. 

From this policy framework, which continues to drive funding and strategic initiatives, the Council on Postsecondary Education (Kentucky’s postsecondary education 

coordinating board) has developed, in forums and meetings with constituencies 

across the Commonwealth, a ‘‘Public Agenda for Higher Education’’ that includes an 

accountability system organized around five questions. These five questions focus 

postsecondary education on outcomes (‘‘key indicators’’) that will produce better lives 

for Kentuckians and address the goals for postsecondary reform http://cpe.ky.gov/

planning/strategic/default.htm.

• Are more Kentuckians ready for postsecondary education? 

• Is Kentucky postsecondary education affordable for its citizens? 

• Do more Kentuckians have certificates and degrees? 

• Are college graduates prepared for life and work in Kentucky? 

• Are Kentucky’s people, communities, and economy benefiting?

The first of the five questions is of particular interest for this roundtable discussion. Kentucky’s postsecondary institutions are held accountable for their role in ensuring the preparation of traditional and adult students for college. Although it has 

taken time, the public agenda has shifted the conversation in Kentucky beyond the 

‘‘blame game,’’ where each level of education blames its failures on the inadequacies 

of the preceding level (e.g., employers blame colleges, which blame high schools, 

which blame middle schools, which blame elementary schools, which blame families). Through a variety of strategies over nearly a decade, Kentucky’s education 

leaders are coming to understand that no part of the system can truly succeed if 

another fails. 

Kentucky’s P–16 agenda to build our educational pipeline has encompassed several initiatives.

• A State P–16 Council was established in 1999 as a voluntary collaboration between the P–12 Kentucky Board of Education and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Today, the P–16 Council includes representatives from all education sectors, the State’s financial aid agency, government, and the private sector. 

The P–16 Council has focused on alignment of standards and assessment across the 

system, teacher quality, and strategies that support the transition of traditional and 

adult students upward through the system. Twenty-one local P–l6 councils have 

been created throughout the State under the guidance of the State council to provide grassroots support for the P–16 agenda. 

• In 2000, the State launched ‘‘Go Higher Kentucky,’’ a highly successful college 

access marketing campaign, to address cultural barriers to educational advancement 

and to convince all Kentuckians that postsecondary education should be in their fuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:12 Jun 19, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\26255.TXT SLABOR3 PsN: DENISE
37

ture. The campaign has received national and regional recognition for its quality 

and success. Kentucky is now working with the Southern Regional Education Board 

and the Southern Governor’s Association to assist States throughout the south in 

developing similar campaigns. It also has worked with other States across the Nation. The campaign produced record numbers of new adult learners pursuing the 

GED and college and contributed to record college enrollments in Kentucky during 

this period. A Go Higher Kentucky Web portal is in place to provide what students 

need to plan for, prepare for, and pay for college. 

• In 2000, Kentucky successfully applied for a Federal GEAR UP grant that provided $21 million in Federal and matching State funds to work with low-income 

middle/high school students and their parents and teachers to motivate, prepare, 

and successfully enroll them in college. In 2005, Kentucky secured a second GEAR 

UP grant—more than doubling the resources available for this program. P–12, postsecondary, agency, and private sector groups have partnered through GEAR UP to 

address P–16 challenges for low-income students. To date, the program has produced academic achievement gains in our poorest schools that exceed State averages, provided scholarship guarantees to students who meet program requirements, 

and increased the number of low-income students and their parents preparing for 

college attendance. 

• Kentucky’s focus on alignment led to its selection as one of the initial five pilot 

States participating in the ‘‘American Diploma Project.’’ Sponsored by Achieve, The 

Education Trust, and other national groups, the first ADP pilot produced a clear set 

of standards defining what every high school and adult student should know in 

math and English to succeed in college or the skilled workplace. Based on that 

work, Kentucky secured agreement from all of its public postsecondary institutions 

on a common set of standards and a common assessment for guaranteed placement 

into credit-bearing mathematics and English courses across the community college 

and university system. Kentucky’s Statewide Public Postsecondary Placement Policy 

clearly defines what ‘‘college readiness’’ in these core subject areas entails, and we 

are communicating this across the system (see Statewide Public Postsecondary 

Placement Policy brochure). Kentucky currently spends more than $24 million per 

year addressing the needs of underprepared college students. Working with our middle and high school and adult learning center partners to implement these standards should reduce these costs and increase student success. 

• For the last 6 years Kentucky has assembled teams of key faculty and staff 

from across university programs (e.g., education and arts and sciences colleges) to 

develop and implement plans to increase the quality of teacher preparation and professional development programs. The Council on Postsecondary Education is currently working with the State teacher standards board, the legislature, and the Office of the Governor to implement a redesign of these programs for teachers and 

school leaders following best practices identified by the SREB and other national reports. Through the work of the State’s certification board, the P–12 system, and 

postsecondary education, Kentucky’s teacher quality has improved as indicated by 

numerous national assessments and recognitions. Much more needs to be done, however—and it will be—to address teacher shortages and assess the effectiveness of 

teacher preparation and professional development programs in producing student 

achievement gains tied to college and workplace readiness. 

• The Kentucky Community and Technical College System, created in the postsecondary reform legislation, plays a central role in implementing the P–16 agenda. 

As a primary postsecondary access point for many students, the KCTCS has invested funds in high school partnerships to provide early assessment of students’ 

college readiness and created successful early and middle college models to ease the 

transition from high school to college. It has been the primary provider of dual enrollment opportunities for high school students. Statewide, the number of high 

school students dually enrolled in college courses has grown from 9,321 in 2001–

02 to 18,291 in 2004–05.

Several recent developments hold great promise to accelerate the success of P–

16 work in Kentucky and address current challenges.

• In 2005, the Business Forum, made up of important private sector leaders, 

many of whom spearheaded the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act, issued a 

comprehensive report identifying and supporting a range of initiatives in education, 

particularly focusing on strengthening P–16 connections and programs. The support 

of the business community will be important in sustaining the political will to advance P–16 initiatives. 

• In early 2006, the Kentucky Board of Education, following the recommendation 

of the State P–16 Council, voted to implement a single rigorous curriculum for all 

students, raising the State’s high school graduation requirements and eliminating 

38

the ‘‘general track’’ diploma. Assessment standards also are being revised, in response to the American Diploma Project recommendations for English and mathematics, to prepare all high school graduates for college and skilled employment. The 

assessment system also will provide, for the first time, student-unit-level data that 

will better track individual student achievement across the system. Kentucky Adult 

Education is revising its curriculum to align with ADP benchmarks and Kentucky’s 

Statewide Public Postsecondary Placement Policy. 

• The State acquired a new Federal GEAR UP grant that will allow it to double 

its capacity to implement successful programs for low-income students developed in 

its first grant. Also, funding is being put in place for the next phase of the ‘‘Go Higher Kentucky’’ college access campaign to reach Kentuckians who still do not have 

college on their radar screen or who believe college is beyond their reach. 

• A recent study of postsecondary affordability has produced funding and proposals for new scholarship programs that address the needs of students for whom 

affordability was identified as a barrier. 

• Finally, in late 2005, for the first time, Kentucky’s key education agencies, 

under the leadership of the Education Cabinet, submitted a joint budget request to 

integrate data and virtual learning programs. The request was submitted by the 

Governor for approval by the legislature. If funded, this program will allow systematic assessment of student success across the P–l6 system, identification of the factors that predict success at every level, and coherent implementation of effective virtual learning programs by all agencies. We anticipate this joint proposal will be the 

first of many. It demonstrates the commitment of Kentucky’s education system to 

the logic of an integrative, systemic P–16 approach to education issues.

Again, I thank you for the opportunity to share some of Kentucky’s initiatives 

with the Senate committee and your other guests. 

Sincerely, 

THOMAS D. LAYZELL, 

President.

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[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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