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21-648 PDF 2005

THE ROLE OF NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IN

STATE AND LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL REFORM EFFORTS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION REFORM

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 

AND THE WORKFORCE 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

June 9, 2005

Serial No. 109-21

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house 

or 

Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio, Chairman

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin, Vice Chairman 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Sam Johnson, Texas 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Charlie Norwood, Georgia 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Patrick J. Tiberi, Ohio 

Ric Keller, Florida 

Tom Osborne, Nebraska 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Jon C. Porter, Nevada 

John Kline, Minnesota 

Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado 

Bob Inglis, South Carolina 

Cathy McMorris, Washington 

Kenny Marchant, Texas 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Luis G. Fortun ̃ o, Puerto Rico 

Bobby Jindal, Louisiana 

Charles W. Boustany, Jr., Louisiana 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

Thelma D. Drake, Virginia 

John R. ‘‘Randy’’ Kuhl, Jr., New York 

George Miller, California 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan 

Major R. Owens, New York 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. Scott, Virginia 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Ron Kind, Wisconsin 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Betty McCollum, Minnesota 

Danny K. Davis, Illinois 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Chris Van Hollen, Maryland 

Tim Ryan, Ohio 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

John Barrow, Georgia

Paula Nowakowski, Staff Director 

John Lawrence, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION REFORM 

MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware, Chairman

Tom Osborne, Nebraska, Vice Chairman 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Ric Keller, Florida 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado 

Bobby Jindal, Louisiana 

John R. ‘‘Randy’’ Kuhl, Jr., New York 

John A. Boehner, Ohio, ex officio 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Danny K. Davis, Illinois 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Ron Kind, Wisconsin 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

Susan A. Davis, California 

George Miller, California, ex officio 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Hearing held on June 9, 2005 ................................................................................. 1

Statement of Members: 

Castle, Hon. Michael N., Chairman, Subcommittee on Education Reform, 

Committee on Education and the Workforce .............................................. 1

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3

Miller, Hon. George, Ranking Member, Committee on Education and 

the Workforce ................................................................................................ 4

Woolsey, Hon. Lynn C., Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Education 

Reform, Committee on Education and the Workforce ............................... 3

Statement of Witnesses: 

Henriquez, Andres, Program Officer, Education Division, Carnegie Corporation of New York, New York, NY ......................................................... 16

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 18

Howard, Deborah, Program Director, School Improvement, 

KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Cincinnati, OH ........................................... 10

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 12

Vander Ark, Tom, Executive Director, Education, The Bill and Melinda 

Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA ................................................................... 5

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 8

(1)

THE ROLE OF NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS 

IN STATE AND LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL REFORM EFFORTS 

Thursday, June 9, 2005

U.S. House of Representatives 

Subcommittee on Education Reform 

Committee on Education and the Workforce 

Washington, DC 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in 

room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael N. Castle, [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Castle, Ehlers, Osborne, Kuhl, Woolsey, 

Scott, Hinojosa, and Davis of California. 

Ex officio present: Representative Miller. 

Also present: Representative Fattah. 

Staff Present: Amanda Farris, Professional Staff Member; Kevin 

Frank, Professional Staff Member; Lucy House, Legislative Assistant; Alexa Marrero, Press Secretary; Krisann Pearce, Deputy Director of Education and Human Resources Policy; Deborah L. 

Samantar, Committee Clerk/Intern Coordinator; Alice Cain, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Lloyd Horwich, Minority Legislative Associate; Ricardo Martinez, Minority Legislative Associate; 

Joe Novotny, Minority Legislative Assistant. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL N. CASTLE, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION REFORM, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

Chairman CASTLE. The forum for the Committee on Education 

and the Workforce will come to order. 

We’re meeting today to hear testimony on The Role of Non-Profit 

Organizations in State and Local High School Reform Efforts. 

I want to get to our witnesses today, so I am going to limit statements to the Chairman and the Ranking Minority Member of the 

Subcommittee. I would also like to welcome the distinguished 

Ranking Member of the Full Committee, Mr. Miller to the hearing 

and invite him to make a statement. 

Therefore, if other members have statements they will be included in the hearing record. With that I ask the unanimous consent for the hearing record to remain open for fourteen days to 

allow members’ statements and other extraneous material refVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:46 Nov 16, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\DOCS\21648 NNIXON
2

erenced during the hearing to be submitted in the official hearing 

record. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

Today marks the second in a series of hearings our Committee 

will hold to examine the status of secondary education and what 

efforts are currently being made to strengthen high schools across 

the country. This Committee recently heard from Governors Romney and Vilsack about high school reform efforts in their states. 

Today, we will hear from three nonprofit organizations about the 

partnerships they have across the country, and the innovative ways 

in which they are driving change in our high schools. 

High school reform is surfacing as a necessity. This is, in large 

part, due to recent research that indicates: 

One quarter of America’s high school students read below basic 

levels; 

America’s 15-year-olds performed below the international average in mathematics, literacy and problem solving, placing 27th out 

of 39 countries; 

30 percent of students do not graduate from high school; 

And 50 percent of African-American and Hispanic students do 

not graduate. 

These are unacceptable statistics, and resemble what we saw in 

our elementary schools leading to the enactment of No Child Left 

Behind. High school is no longer about simply moving students 

from ninth grade to graduation. We now must ensure all students 

are leaving their secondary education with the skills necessary to 

reach their next goal. Whether that goal is college, the military, or 

to enter the workforce does not matter. All students now need the 

basic skills to excel. 

A recent study by the Education Commission on the States suggest that most high school students expect to graduate from college. The study also shows, however, that only about half of the 

students take a rigorous academic program, and that few can perform anything but relatively simple tasks in mathematics and 

reading. 

The importance of having a post-secondary degree is resonating 

with our high school students. To me, this is good news, but we 

have to make sure we are getting it right in high school. For example, students need to realize that the senior year is still an academic year, and the schools should seek to eliminate student apathy once students have gain admittance into their next endeavor. 

I am sure that every person in this room has heard me say more 

than once that I am an advocate on behalf of No Child Left Behind. 

It is the right thing to do, and is making significant headway in 

closing the achievement gap. I commend the President, the National Governor’s Association, local school districts, and nonprofit 

organizations for recognizing we now need to address our nation’s 

high schools. I am not yet sure if there is a Federal role, or what 

that role should be, but I continue to be committed to learning 

more and doing whatever I can to make this part of the education 

reform dialog. 

I thank you all for being here and look forward to hearing from 

our witnesses. 

3

Chairman CASTLE. I now yield to the gentlelady from California, 

the Ranking Minority Member of the Subcommittee, Ms. Woolsey. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Castle follows:]

Statement of Hon. Michael N. Castle, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Education Reform, Committee on Education and the Workforce 

Today marks the second in a series of hearings our Committee will hold to examine the status of secondary education and what efforts are currently being made to 

strengthen high schools across the country. This Committee recently heard from 

Governors Romney and Vilsack about high school reform efforts in their states. 

Today, we will hear from three non-profit organizations about the partnerships they 

have across the country, and the innovative ways in which they are driving change 

in our high schools. 

High school reform is surfacing as a necessity. This is, in large part, due to recent 

research that indicates: 

One quarter of America’s high school students read below basic levels; 

America’s 15-year-olds performed below the international average in mathematics literacy and problem-solving, placing 27th out of 39 countries; 

30% of students do not graduate from high school; and 

50% of African–American and Hispanic students do not graduate. 

These are unacceptable statistics, and resemble what we saw in our elementary 

schools leading to the enactment of No Child Left Behind. High school is no longer 

about simply moving students from ninth grade to graduation. We now must ensure 

all students are leaving their secondary education with the skills necessary to reach 

their next goal. Whether that goal is college, the military, or to enter the workforce 

does not matter—all students now need the basic skills to excel. 

A recent study by the Education Commission on the States suggests that most 

high school students expect to graduate from college. The study also shows, however, that only about half of these students take a rigorous academic program, and 

that few can perform anything but relatively simple tasks in mathematics and reading. The importance of having a postsecondary degree is resonating with our high 

school students. To me, this is good news, but we have to make sure we are getting 

it right in high school. For example, students need to realize that the senior year 

is still an academic year, and schools should seek to eliminate student apathy once 

students have gained admittance into their next endeavor. 

I am sure that every person in this room has heard me say more than once that 

I am an advocate on behalf of No Child Left Behind. It is the right thing to do, and 

is making significant headway in closing the achievement gap. I commend the President, the National Governors Association, local school districts, and non-profit organizations for recognizing we now need to address our nation’s high schools. I am 

not yet sure if there is a federal role, or what that role would be, but continue to 

be committed to learning more and doing whatever I can to make this part of the 

education reform dialogue. 

I thank you all for being here, and look forward to hearing from our witnesses. 

STATEMENT OF HON. LYNN C. WOOLSEY, RANKING MEMBER, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION REFORM, COMMITTEE ON 

EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for today’s hearing, and thank you witnesses for being here. I am anxious to hear from you. 

High school reform has not been a really hot topic in Washington, but it’s something that the Congress is looking at becoming 

more involved in, because of the future of these young people, and 

the future of our nation with this new economy—knowledge economy that we have to be ready for. 

So while we’re thinking about whether and how, and when, and 

why to get more involved, it’s really important that we hear from 

people like yourselves that have been seriously considering these 

issues certainly before today. 

4

Last month the Full Committee heard from both Democratic and 

Republican Governors. Today we’re going to hear from the foundations that have been in the front lines of high school reform. And 

as we move forward, I am hoping that we will have the opportunity 

to hear from school administrators, teachers, parents and certainly 

students about their experiences. There isn’t any doubt in my 

mind, and certainly this Committee’s, that this is a critical issue. 

And we’ll hear today, of course, that of every 100 students who 

enter high school about 70 will graduate, and the numbers are so 

much lower for minority students. Of those 70, about 40 will go on 

to college, and many of them will require remedial help when they 

get to college. And only about 20 of the original hundred will complete college in 6 years or fewer. 

That may have been good enough during the industrial age when 

most workers needed only basic skills and a basic understanding 

of citizenship to get a good job and participate in the political process. But today, that is not good enough, because we have a knowledge economy, and we have to have our children and our students 

ready to participate in it. 

In a recent article, ‘‘It’s a Flat World After All’’, a book authored 

by New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, he explained that America’s historical economic advantages have disappeared now that the 

world is flat, and anyone with smarts, access to Google, and a 

cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray. 

Mr. Friedman and others have remedies that they believe will attract more young women and men to science and engineering. But 

it will be impossible for our country to continue to lead the world 

in innovation if our high school system is not among the best in 

the world. That’s why I’m looking forward to hearing from all of 

you. 

Oh, I should say that Mr. Hendricks—Henriquez. I’m really 

sorry. 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. Henriquez. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Henriquez, thank you—is here from Sir Francis 

Drake—what? Oh, he mentioned Sir Francis Drake High School in 

his remarks, which I really appreciate. That’s a school that we all 

admire in my district. So thank you for being here. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Ms. Woolsey. Thank you Ms. 

Woolsey. I will now yield to the distinguished Ranking Minority 

Member of the Full Committee, Mr. Miller, for the purpose of making an opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE MILLER, RANKING MEMBER, 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and thank you 

so much for this hearing, and Ms. Woolsey for this hearing. And 

I share all of the concerns that you have both echoed about the performance and the future purpose of high school. 

But I’m really here because I am very excited about the partnership between the Governors and the nonprofit sectors, in terms of 

developing true laboratories for consideration on how we might reshape the educational experience of our high school students. How 

we might make it better connected to the workplace, to their educational future, and the idea that we have this kind of public and 

5

private partnership really developing a roadmap for the Congress 

over the next couple of years, I think, is very, very valuable. 

I am working on and hope to be able, at some point, to convince 

the Congress that we should put in some matching money, that we 

should in fact encourage more of this effort. So that when we do 

make a decision about it, and I believe there will be a Federal role 

to play, that it will be an informed role, it will be based upon the 

best evidence available. We can shorten that timeframe in terms of 

our involvement in an effective way and the outcomes that we all 

desire, given the current status of high schools and achievements—

the gaps that remain. 

So I look forward to the testimony. Thank you Mr. Chairman so 

much, for this hearing. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Miller. We have a very distinguished panel of witnesses before us today, and I thank each of you 

for coming today. I’ll go across and introduce each of you and then 

we’ll have your statements. 

Tom Vander Ark is the Executive Director for the Bill and 

Melinda Gates Foundation’s Education Initiatives. He is responsible for the development and administration of the foundation’s 

education grant and scholarship programs. For 5 years prior to 

joining the Gates foundation, Mr. Vander Ark served as a public 

school superintendent, Fedaway Public Schools, one of Washington 

state’s larger districts. He is one of the first superintendents in the 

Nation to be recruited from the private sector to lead a public 

school district. 

Mrs. Deborah Howard serves as a Program Director of School 

Improvement at the Knowledge Works Foundation. As program director she is a designer and day-to-day manager of the Foundation’s $50 million-plus high school improvement efforts, the Ohio 

High School Transformation Initiative and the Early College High 

School Initiative. Prior to her current position, Mrs. Howard established an education consulting firm called Principal Results, Inc. in 

Independence, Ohio. 

Mr. Andres Henriquez serves as Program Officer of the Education Division of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Mr. 

Henriquez works on a wide variety of education issues with a special emphasis on intermediate and adolescent literacy. He is also 

a certified teacher who taught for 5 years in a public elementary 

school in East Harlem. 

We thank all of you very much for being here. You probably 

know the sequence of events. You each have 5 minutes to make 

your presentation. If lights, I think it’s green for four, and yellow 

for one, and thereafter red. And we will go through each of you, 

and then we will take turns in 5-minute exchanges coming from 

the various members up here. 

Mr. Vander Ark, you’re the lead-off hitter. 

STATEMENT OF TOM VANDER ARK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

EDUCATION, THE BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION, 

SEATTLE, WA 

Mr. VANDER ARK. Chairman Castle and Ranking Member Woolsey, members of the Subcommittee, it’s a pleasure to be with you. 

6

It’s an honor to be here with my friends from the Carnegie Foundation and the Knowledge Works Foundation. 

I found the opening remarks quite remarkable. We wouldn’t have 

been having this conversation 5 years ago. It was 5 years ago that 

I went to my high school—my daughter’s high school graduation. 

She went to high school where I was a school superintendent. 

So it was the first time that I sat in the audience for graduation 

rather than sitting up front in one of those robes. As I watched her 

and her colleagues walk in, I thought there’s not enough of them 

there. And I pulled out the program and I counted and there were 

only 400 kids. But I knew that the two junior highs in our district 

had 300 kids each in the ninth grade class. And for the hour and 

a half of my daughter’s graduation I thought we are or the other 

200 kids. What happened to those kids? Kids on my watch as superintendent, that dropped out. 

So what should have been one of the best days in my life was—

was a painful reckoning with the fact that kids in my district, an 

inner ring suburb of both Seattle and Tacoma, we lose a third of 

our kids and almost half of the African-American and Hispanic 

kids. If you let that sink in, and you think about what that means 

for our future, for our economy, for our civil society, it’s a scary statistic. 

What we didn’t know until four or 5 years ago was that that is 

true nationwide. Our friends at the Manhattan Institute and the 

Urban Institute have both confirmed that the statistics that the 

Chairman and the ranking member pointed out at the beginning, 

it’s an appalling problem that we simply haven’t had the data. 

That’s a positive way of putting it. The other way of putting it is 

that we’ve been lying to each other for decades about how many 

kids really leave school and under what conditions. So it’s a difficult problem. 

But we’re working on it because we think it’s the most important 

problem in American education. This not to say that is more important than early literacy. We understand that there’s nothing better 

than, nothing more important than early start. K–8 improvement 

in this country is vitally important, but it is not enough. We have 

to make sure that every student has access to really high-quality 

high schools that prepare them for college and work and citizenship. 

So it’s difficult problem, but like Representative Miller, I’m really 

excited about several developments. I would like to mention a couple. One is that when I visit a school like Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, or the new College Board school in the projects in 

the South Bronx, or when I go to Wilson Prep, it’s outside of Oakland, here’s the statistic that I think about when I’m in those 

schools. 

Kids in those neighborhoods today have a five or 6 percent 

chance of finishing a college degree. You’re from a low income family and you’re a minority, there is a five or 6 percent chance that 

you’re going to finish a college degree. 

When I walk into those schools and see the kids at each of those 

schools, they have a 60 or 70 percent chance of finishing a college 

degree. A powerful school can make a big difference in the lives of 

low income kids. And as many noted authors have pointed out, 

7

there are many challenges outside of school that we also need to 

deal with. But a powerful school can have an extremely—can make 

a big difference in a student’s life. 

So I’m excited about the progress that we’re making in new 

school development. We have helped to fund over 800 new schools 

and 42 states around the country. I am also, as Representative Miller put it, I am very excited about the progress that is being made 

at the state level. I think at least in part because of the National 

Governors Association Summit, and the parallel work done by 

Achieve over the last few years, that over half of the states will 

make significant progress in their policy and data sets toward helping more students graduate from high school, ready for college. 

I’m encouraged, but also challenged, by our work with existing 

high schools. The big lesson learned in 5 years and hundreds of 

millions of dollars, is that it is very, very difficult to turn around 

a large struggling urban high school. I am encouraged, however, by 

the public-private partnerships that are being created with the 

foundations represented here and with cities all over the country. 

I know that you would enjoy the testimony that you’ll hear about 

those partnerships. 

I would like to conclude with five very specific pieces of advice 

about the Federal role toward helping more students in America 

graduate ready for college, work and citizenship. 

The first is to lend your support to the post-Summit activities 

that the National Governors Association is leading. NGA is pleased 

to receive over 30 grant applications this month. That’s an exciting 

response, and indicative of the momentum and the opportunity 

that exists. I very much encourage you to support that effort. 

Second would be to provide continued support for the development of state and local data systems. The state of data systems in 

education today is still pathetic. It is very difficult to know very 

basic information about students. I am very encouraged by the Secretary and Assistant Secretary’s attention to this issue, and know 

that there are very promising opportunities for public-private partnerships in this area. 

The third and related area would be would just to help us pick 

a graduation rate, a definition of a graduation rate. As simple as 

that sounds, it’s a complicated calculation and many states use different rates that inhibit our ability to just track student performance, school performance, and then to compare state to state. And 

there is a Federal role in helping us just define the common rate. 

No. 4 is intervening in struggling schools. I think this will be the 

biggest issue that states would deal with in the next 5 years, as 

the growing number of identify struggling schools continues to 

mount. It’s going to take big public-private partnerships to help 

turn around the struggling schools. 

And finally, I think there’s a role for the Federal Government to 

create public-private partnerships to fund the development of exciting new school options. Math and science schools. The College 

Board is developing its exciting Advanced Placement Schools 

grades six through 12 where all students leave with some college 

credit. Early College High Schools, Debbie will mention, where students have the opportunity to leave high school with an associate 

degree. So there is exciting new school opportunities. 

8

And finally, I just want to say thank you to the Committee leadership. We appreciate the attention that Congress and the Secretary and the White House are paying to this important issue. We 

appreciate the opportunity to testify today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Vander Ark follows:]

Statement of Tom Vander Ark, Executive Director, Education, The Bill and 

Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA 

I. Introduction 

Chairman Castle, Ranking Member Woolsey, and members of the Subcommittee, 

thank you for the opportunity to testify today on this vital issue of redesigning the 

American high school. I am pleased to be here to brief you on the work of the Gates 

Foundation and other non-profit organizations, and to provide some thoughts on 

what further actions are needed at all levels of government. 

II. The Problem: The High Schools of Today are Obsolete 

As Bill Gates recently said to our nation’s governors and business leaders, America’s high schools are obsolete. They were designed for the 20th century’s industrialage economy, when relatively few students needed the kind of higher-order knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in college. Of 100 ninth graders entering high 

school today, fewer than 70 will graduate, approximately 40 will go directly to college, with only just over 30 prepared for college, and fewer than 20 will graduate 

from college within six years. These numbers are even lower for poor and minority 

students. And this underperformance is reflected in international comparisons. One 

recent study, for example, places the United States 24th out of 29 of the most developed (OECD) nations in terms of math literacy among (15-year old) high school students. 

III. The Vision—Redesigning the American High School with a Range of Options and 

College–Ready Expectations 

If the United States is going to continue to lead the world economically, and if 

every child is going to have the opportunity to rise to his or her potential, then we 

must fundamentally redesign our high schools to prepare all students for the 21st 

century. The high school of tomorrow must be build around the new three Rs of 

rigor, relevance, and relationships to focus on the needs of each individual student—

using data and providing a range of options to ensure that every student graduates 

with the knowledge and skills necessary for college, work, and citizenship. 

IV. The Role of the Gates Foundation 

The Gates Foundation was conceived out of a desire to advance equity around the 

world—to help make sure that, no matter where a person is born, he or she has 

the chance to live a healthy, productive life. With the belief that our support should 

spur innovation to find solutions that will continue working long after our grant 

making has ended, we look for places where every dollar invested and each hour 

expended can make the biggest impact. This approach has led us to work in two 

main areas: Around the world, we invest in health, because millions of people in 

developing countries die every year from diseases that have been virtually eliminated in the rich world. And here in the United States, we believe we can do the 

most to promote equity through education. 

The Gates Foundation believes in the importance of improving education at all 

levels—from early childhood education to college and beyond. But our focus is on 

strengthening the American high schools because evidence shows that performance 

in early grades is often not sustained in later grades, because high schools represent 

a vital link between primary education and the demands and opportunities of the 

21st century, and because high schools are often the weakest link in our education 

pipeline rather than a seamless link between K–12 and higher education. 

To date, the Gates Foundation has invested approximately $1 billion over the last 

five years to help spur innovation and focus our nation on the goal of ensuring that 

all students graduate from high school ready for college, work, and citizenship. The 

foundation has supported over 1500 schools in 41 states. Most of our school-level 

grantmaking has focused on new school creation and improvement of existing 

schools. New school creation can provide quality options for underserved communities, replace failing schools, or build on community assets. While many foundationsponsored new schools are still young, the results are promising. Students have 

demonstrated high levels of engagement (high attendance and retention rates), 

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9

tions (emphasis on college preparatory curriculum for all students), and schools 

have achieved good results (relatively strong test scores and graduation rates). A 

handful of these schools have also been able to scale effectively—that is, grow a single high performing school into a network of consistently high performing schools. 

From them we have learned that any new school strategy designed to increase the 

supply of quality options must include a clearly articulated school model and strong 

support systems. Schools that have posted the largest gains in both attainment and 

achievement have benefited from a well-structured reform model paired with strong 

technical assistance. 

IV. Key National Activities and Elements of High School and System Redesign 

I am pleased to say that, over the last year in particular, a strong national consensus has emerged regarding the need to transform America’s high schools. For example, the National Governors Association has made high school reform a top priority, and at the federal level President Bush has made high school reform the centerpiece of his second term education agenda. 

The Gates Foundation was proud to sponsor the NGA–Achieve 2005 National 

Education Summit on High School earlier this year, at which many of our nation’s 

governors along with national leaders from business, education, philanthropy, and 

more came together to discuss and commit to the vital issue of high school redesign. 

Among other things, the Summit included publication of an Action Agenda that outlines many of the broad policy areas that should be the focus of high school redesign 

efforts, including: • Aligning high school standards, curriculum, and assessments with college and 

work expectations; • Providing a range of high school options and interventions that can support the 

needs of individual students; • Preparing teachers and professionals to achieve college-ready expectations; • Promoting meaningful use of data along with valid and reliable models for high 

school accountability; and • Streamlining education governance to create a more seamless education pipeline. 

Following the Summit, NGA has announced a new grant program for states, funded by the Gates Foundation and others, that is designed to help states move strategically through the long-term process of high school redesign. Over the last two 

months, a vast majority of states have brought together multidisciplinary teams of 

leaders, committed to the goal of all students graduating from high school ready for 

college and work, worked through a comprehensive blueprint for developing their 

high school redesign plans, and applied for the NGA grants. And we expect that 

NGA will announce ten or more states as grant recipients next month. 

V. Lessons Learned from High School Redesign 

Though much work remains to be done, there is a lot we have learned from our 

research, evaluation, and experiences regarding what it takes to transform the 

American high school and ensure that all students graduate ready for college, work, 

and citizenship. And we have promising examples of real world results in high 

schools that have undergone fundamental change. 

Among the core lessons we have learned are the following related points: 

• Successful high school redesign requires systemic changes at both the policy 

level and in practice. This requires a careful balance between a consistent, 

across-the-board commitment to college-ready standards, curriculum, and expectations (for example) along with a flexible range of options to focus on what is 

most effective for each student and in different contexts. • Successful high school redesign promotes a focus on individual students, based 

on the new three Rs of rigor, relevance, and relationships. And this kind of effort is often most efficient and effective in the context of new high schools that 

are built from the start with a focus on this purpose and structure. • Successful high school redesign depends on a coordinated, long-term approach 

to fundamentally restructure the high school; add-on programs are not likely to 

be enough. The NGA post–Summit grants, for example, ask states to take immediate action as part of a ten-year plan. 

V. The Federal Role in Promoting Effective High School Redesign 

The moral, economic, and democratic imperative that has called us to action in 

support of high schools and high school students is driven by a groundswell of support among both governmental and non-governmental organizations across the country. And the federal government has become an important partner in education reform, promoting accountability, providing resources, offering technical assistance, 

and more. 

10

I applaud Congress and this Subcommittee for taking the time to examine this 

issue that is vital to the individual futures of so many children and to the future 

security and prosperity of our nation. And I urge you to consider how the federal 

government can support the efforts that are hopefully approaching a tipping point 

across the country. In that regard, let me make three suggestions: 

First, the federal government should support promising state and local efforts 

with regard to high school redesign, such as those being undertaken by states as 

part of the NGA post–Summit grants and the American Diploma Project. 

Second, there are some immediate efforts that Congress should consider in light 

of its pending reauthorizations and as part of implementation of current federal law. 

These include: • providing continued support for the development of state and local data systems 

that can mark student progress P–16 and foster data-driven decision-making; • promoting more valid and reliable accountability for high schools, including 

more accurate definitions of graduation rates; 

• providing assistance to states to build the capacity necessary to improve struggling districts and schools; and • providing increased support for the creation of high school choices that will ensure all students have access to high quality options, including schools of choice, 

charter schools, and new schools, with a particular focus on math and science 

high schools. 

Third, Congress should give ample consideration to the President’s proposed high 

school reform initiatives as part of its examination of this issue, such as the proposed support for individual student learning plans and for the establishment of a 

teacher incentive fund. 

VI. Conclusion 

In conclusion, the Gates Foundation believes there is a unique window of opportunity to redesign the American high school for the 21st century, and it is imperative—for both individual students and our nation—that we seize this opportunity 

and spur change at the local, state, and federal levels. We—national non-profit organizations, concerned community members, policy makers at all levels, parents, educators, and others—cannot afford to let this window of opportunity close without 

drawing upon our common visions, best experiences, and lessons learned to ensure 

that all students have access to high quality high schools. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you Mr. Vander Ark. Ms. Howard. 

STATEMENT OF DEBORAH HOWARD, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, 

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT, KNOWLEDGEWORKS FOUNDATION, 

CINCINNATI, OH 

Ms. HOWARD. Chairman Castle and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you very much for the opportunity. I’m here 

today on behalf of our president, Chad P. Wick, who wanted to be 

with you, but at this moment is receiving an honorary doctorate 

and needed to be there. 

Knowledge Works Foundation is Ohio’s largest education philanthropy. And I wanted to talk to you today about the scope of our 

work and then how we achieve that work. We act as a convener, 

a funder, a facilitator and a technical assistance provider. Our 

focus often offers cover for innovators and reformers on the ground 

to give them time to really achieve their goals. Acting in these 

roles, Knowledge Works strengthens the independent, credible 

voice for education in Ohio. 

Knowledge Works, as Tom mentioned, has one of the largest and 

most aggressive high school reform efforts in the country. We have 

partnership with the Knowledge Works Foundations, the Gates 

Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Ohio Department of Education, the Kellogg Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Together all of these partners are investing more than 50 million dollars in Ohio’s high schools over 5 years. Our work touches 

11

25,000 students in some of the state’s most economically challenged 

urban and rural districts. 

We have two major initiatives. 

The Ohio High School Transformation Initiative, in which we 

help local communities take existing high school facilities and use 

them in new and more effective ways. In fall of 2004, 58 new, separate small high schools opened their doors on what used to be 17 

large low performing urban campuses. Eleven more new small 

schools will open this August. 

The second initiative is Ohio Early College High School Initiative. We are actually forming 10 new Early College High Schools, 

which as Tom pointed out help students earn up to 2 years of college credit or an associate’s degree while they are earning their 

high school diploma. Together we believe these 79 new small 

schools will really help create a tipping point for high school reform 

in Ohio. 

Because our schools are in their first or second year of development we don’t yet have a long track record of student achievement 

data. However, the early results are promising. The Dayton Early 

College Academy is located in the state’s lowest performing urban 

district. Right before I got on the plane to come here yesterday, I 

learned that 90 percent of the first of its classes to take the Ohio 

graduation test this spring passed that test on the first try. That’s 

the lowest performing urban district in the state. 

Seventy percent of the students at that school, and 100 percent 

of the students at the Lorain Early College High School and the 

Youngstown Early College High School are taking and passing college courses in their ninth and 10th grade years. These are not 

cream of the crop, these are students that are believed not to be 

college-going in the traditional setting. 

Initial data covered from the first few months of operation in our 

conversion schools in the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative shows some promising evidence. There is some improvements 

in attendance and discipline, and there’s growing evidence that 

teachers are making real changes in teaching and learning. All of 

the schools are focused on rigorous standards-based curriculum 

that really connects what’s learned in the classroom to what happens in the community. 

Here’s how we work to achieve results. We just don’t give grants 

and walk away. We began by building a coalition of state-level 

leaders that can move policy and resources to achieve the goal. We 

include the Governor’s office, the Ohio Department of Education, 

and the heads of the largest education associations in the state, for 

the teacher’s unions, the administrators and the school boards. Together this group allows us to align and integrate multiple funding 

streams and waive administrative policies that get the way of real 

change. We have leadership development for principals. We fund 

for workshops and embedded coaches on the school sites. We have 

separate grants to community organizations and train them and 

grassroots advocacy to sustain the schools. We provide leadership 

development for students so that their voices are heard not only in 

their local schools, but in the statehouse. 

Finally we have a strong system of evaluation and knowledge 

management that points to what is working on the ground, shows 

12

us the gaps in the design and resources, and then shows the value 

added impact of our work. 

Finally, we also have tough non-negotiable attributes and detailed contract that hold the systems with which we work accountable for achieving a tough set of benchmarks. Either they achieve 

the benchmarks or they risk losing funding. 

At Knowledge Works Foundation we take very seriously our role 

as the state’s largest education philanthropy. As such we seek to 

be a trusted resource and a partner. We help move the work further faster. We provide honest, tough, feedback to schools and we 

work with them in literacy, with their ninth graders and throughout their high school career. We expect results and we are committed to delivering the same. 

Thank you for your attention. I will be happy to provide stories 

and examples from the ground, or to answer any questions that 

you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Howard follows:]

Statement of Deborah Howard, Program Director, School Improvement, 

KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Cincinnati, OH 

Thank you, Chairman Castle and members of the Subcommittee, for this opportunity to share KnowledgeWorks Foundation’s experiences in support of local and 

statewide high school improvement efforts in Ohio. 

Overview of the Foundation 

KnowledgeWorks Foundation is Ohio’s largest education philanthropy. Created in 

1998, KnowledgeWorks is classified as an ‘‘operating foundation.’’ That means we 

both award grants and receive funding that furthers our work. Our Board and staff 

believe that education is the key to the success of individuals and society. We are 

dedicated to removing barriers to education for all individuals. To achieve that goal, 

we work to create partnerships that will produce measurably better educational results throughout the state. The Foundation carefully focuses its limited human and 

financial resources on systemic initiatives in where there is a convergence of statewide attention to the problem and the will to effect real, lasting change. We believe 

that educational barriers can be eliminated by collaborating with those public and 

private entities across the state and the nation who share that goal. 

KnowledgeWorks Foundation acts as a convenor, a facilitator, a funder, and a 

technical assistance provider. Often, our focus on accountability offers ‘‘cover’’ for 

the innovators and reformers to give them time and space to achieve their goals. 

Acting in these roles, the Foundation strengthens the independent, credible voice for 

education in Ohio; convenes education leaders around their priorities; facilitates 

stakeholder discussions with interests similar to ours; and defines and communicates the problem in a way that also advances reasonable solutions. 

Scope of Our High School Improvement Work 

KnowledgeWorks Foundation’s statewide high school initiatives are grounded in 

the belief that learning is ultimately about relationships—about making connections 

between people, places, resources and ideas. Through two primary initiatives, the 

Ohio High School Transformation Initiative and the Ohio Early College Network, 

KnowledgeWorks is focused on creating a tipping point for high school reform statewide. 

Over a five-year period, KnowledgeWorks Foundation and its partners, the Bill & 

Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Ohio Department 

of Education, and the Ford Foundation, will invest more than $50 million in Ohio’s 

high schools with a three-pronged goal: 1. To change forever the way in which our 

high schools are designed and operated, moving them from the assembly line, factory model to the information age; 2. Dramatically improve student achievement at 

the high school level, preparing them to enter college without remediation; and 3. 

Ignite a firestorm of community involvement in the daily lives of the schools that 

both supports them and holds them accountable for achieving results. 

In total, the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative and the Ohio Early College Network impact more than 25,000 students in some of the state’s most economically challenged urban and rural areas. 

13

Schools and districts involved in the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative 

are using existing high school facilities in new and more effective ways. In fall 2004, 

58 separate, small high schools opened their doors on what used to be 17 large, lowperforming urban high school campuses. Eleven more new small schools will open 

in August of this year, adding an 18th urban high school community to the Ohio 

High School Transformation Initiative. 

The Ohio Early College Network is helping to break the artificial barriers between 

high school and higher education by developing 10 new early college high schools 

in urban and rural sites across the state 

Our work involves nearly 3,000 educators annually in more than 20 professional 

development forums. Skills and information learned at these statewide events is 

then followed by intensive, research-based support from 40 seasoned educational 

and leadership coaches embedded at the school sites. 

We’ve created and support a statewide Small School Leaders Network that is 

helping train some 100 administrators and teachers to be effective leaders of these 

newly-designed schools. 

We award separate grants to support 15 local community organizations and train 

them in strategies for community engagement and grassroots advocacy. 

KnowledgeWorks provides leadership training for some 150 students statewide to 

ensure their voices are heard in the design and delivery of their education, both at 

home and in the halls of the statehouse. 

Finally, KnowledgeWorks Foundation invests significant resources in evaluation 

and knowledge management systems that continuously provide information on 

what’s working in the field, points to gaps in design or support, and assesses the 

value-added impact of our work. 

Early Indicators of Success 

Because our schools are in their first or second year of development, we do not 

yet have trends in student achievement data, however, early results are promising. 

The first Early College High School, the Dayton Early College Academy, is located 

in the state’s lowest-performing urban district. We just learned that 90% of its first 

class of students to take the Ohio Graduation Test this spring passed that test on 

the first try. Nearly 70% of the students in the Dayton Early College Academy and 

up to 100% of the students in the Youngstown and Lorain Early College High 

Schools are taking and passing college courses at their partner universities in the 

9th and 10th grades. These are not the ‘‘cream of the Ohio crop’’ of students. These 

are students who traditionally don’t view themselves as college-bound. 

Initial data from the first few months of operation for the new small schools 

formed through the conversion of existing facilities in the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative shows improvements in attendance and discipline. Students tell 

us they believe these changes are happening because the small school settings allow 

teachers to know them well, to expect more from them, and to build an individualized learning instructional plan that meets their targeted needs. In new small 

schools across the state, students tell us stories of how teachers have called their 

mothers, their fathers, their friends and others to track them down when they don’t 

attend school. Teachers and principals, they say, expect you to attend school and 

they do what it takes to make that happen. 

There is growing evidence that teaching and learning are improving in these high 

schools. Through a multitude of partnerships and community-based service learning 

experiences, students and teachers are beginning to make connections between what 

happens in the classroom and life after high school. Just talk to the Cleveland students whose social studies investigation of the neighborhood around their school 

caught the attention of the History Channel and will soon show up as a documentary with connections to archaeology, genealogy, science and mathematics. Or the 

students in East Cleveland whose civics class gets a firsthand knowledge of our justice system by working with local attorneys and judges. Or the students in Dayton 

and Lorain who, with the blessing of their principals, are jointly researching effective instructional strategies with a goal of totally redesigning their high school curriculum. 

We believe these types of relationships set the stage for high levels of student 

achievement in systems that are focused on a rigorous, standards-based curriculum 

that connects what is learned in the classroom with relevant experiences in the community. 

The Role of the Foundation 

I spoke earlier of the Foundation as a convenor, a facilitator, a funder, and a technical assistance provider. Because we are an agile organization, we are able to respond quickly to needs and challenges. Our track record engenders trust and respect 

14

among our partners. The following examples demonstrate how we use those partnerships and resources to move innovations further, faster. 

We begin by building a coalition of state-level leaders that can move policy and 

resources to achieve the goal—the Governor’s office, the Ohio Department of Education, the heads of the major statewide education associations of teachers, administrators and boards. Together, this group allows us to align and integrate multiple 

funding streams and waive administrative policies that get in the way of progress. 

For example, many of the barriers to change identified in our statewide initiatives 

formed the basis for state high school task force recommendations to improve 

achievement. In a matter of months—not years—these changes were reflected in the 

state budget appropriations approved just last week. 

In another area, working with the Ohio Department of Education, we were able 

to leverage Comprehensive School Reform dollars for eligible participants in the 

OHSTI, using common grant application, portfolio development and reporting processes. Potential grantees were not required to go through two different and competing sets of ‘‘red tape’’ to achieve a single set of goals. 

For both the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative and the Ohio Early College Network, schools and districts respond to a request for proposals. They choose 

to work with us to fundamentally redesign the high school experience in their communities. When they choose to be involved with KnowledgeWorks Foundation, they 

also agree to meet our Non–Negotiable terms and high performance standards, or 

risk losing support. And it’s not just a single person choosing to be involved. Detailed contracts, with benchmarks and deliverables are established for each initiative. These contracts must be signed, not only by the school superintendent, but also 

by the Board President, the university president, if applicable, and the President 

of the teachers union at the district and/or union level. And union presidents generally call for a literal vote of support of the membership before signing on to these 

initiatives. So from the beginning labor and management must both agree to remain 

at the table, stay committed to the change process and work out the details to 

achieve targeted goals. On many occasions, state association presidents sat down 

side-by-side with KnowledgeWorks staff , local union presidents and superintendents to work through problems that would have caused a halt to other improvement 

efforts. 

Our direct grants to community-based organizations ensure they have a place at 

the table when key decisions are made. In addition, these grants allow the organization to focus on recruiting community members to stay involved in the daily life of 

the schools, serving on school-based governance teams, connecting students with internships and mentorships, working with teachers to connect the curriculum to real 

world applications, and taking part in performance-based assessment of students. 

When data showed that the majority of students in the schools we’re targeting 

are entering the 9th grade with reading abilities at least 3–4 years below grade 

level, we were able to leverage Foundation funding to contract with Kent State University and the Ohio High School Alliance to conduct baseline diagnostic testing of 

more than 3,000 incoming 9th graders. This data was used to develop statewide 

training for teachers targeted at increasing literacy support in the content areas. 

KnowledgeWorks kicked off the training and assisted ODE in the development and 

piloting of a statewide high school literacy development initiative. 

Conclusion 

At KnowledgeWorks Foundation we take seriously our role as the state’s largest 

education philanthropy. As such, we seek to be a trusted source and partner. We 

help move the reform work further faster. We provide honest, tough feedback. We 

expect results. And we are committed to delivering the same. 

Thank you for your attention. I will be happy to answer any questions or provide 

additional information. 

Foundation Overview 

Founded in 1998, KnowledgeWorks Foundation is Ohio’s largest public education 

philanthropy. Dedicated to removing barriers to higher education for all individuals, 

the Foundation provides funding, technical assistance, and other resources to initiatives that improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Ohio’s public and higher education systems. 

To support this goal, we’ve committed 85 million dollars in grants to researchbased, education reform initiatives since our inception. We strongly believe the reforms we fund show great promise for supporting Ohio’s education, and ultimately 

supporting the children and adults who are the economic future of Ohio. 

15

Topic Overview 

Our work is grounded in four main areas: High Schools and School Improvement; 

Adult Learning; College Access & Success; and Communities & Schools. These areas 

currently support the following initiatives: 

High Schools and School Improvement 

Initiatives within the High Schools and School Improvement area address the 

challenges and shortcomings of Ohio’s public schools, where only 7 in 10 students 

graduate every year. Most of our financial and human resources are invested in 

high schools, although our work also supports pre-kindergarten through post-secondary education. Initiatives include: The Ohio High School Transformation Initiative (OHSTI); Project GRAD Ohio; and Early College. 

Adult Learning 

Initiatives within the Adult Learning area support Ohio’s low-wage workers, estimated at over 1 million, who have limited opportunities for increasing their skills 

and incomes. These initiatives support accessible postsecondary education for all 

low-wage workers, so they can escape poverty through higher-paying jobs. Initiatives include: The Ohio Bridges to Opportunity Initiative and Career Pathways. 

College Access & Success 

Initiatives within the College Access & Success area work to ensure that every 

Ohioan has the option of postsecondary education at all levels-apprenticeship, certificate, associate’s degree, and bachelor’s degree. Our goal is to grant every Ohioan 

access to learning beyond high school and throughout their lives. Initiatives in this 

area include: Early College; The Ohio Bridges to Opportunity Initiative; Ohio College Access Network (OCAN); Achieving the Dream; and Project GRAD Ohio. 

Communities & Schools 

The Communities & Schools area is encouraging school districts and communities 

to utilize state and national funding for school construction to make school facilities 

more conducive to learning, and more accessible to the entire community. We facilitate partnerships between communities and schools, so they can redesign school facilities that reflect the community’s needs and values. Initiatives in this area include: School as Centers of Community and School Facilities. 

Our Approach 

Community Engagement—The Key to Healthier Schools 

All of our Foundation program areas support powerful community engagement 

that encourages community members to influence official decisions, and share ownership of their public schools. Community Engagement 

Public Policy—The Key to Long-term Change 

Our Foundation only supports education reform initiatives that will lead to longterm change in the education system. An important part of ensuring that change 

lasts is for the state, federal, and local governments to enact legislation that supports and nurtures the change. To that end, we identify and advance policy changes 

that support the initiatives we fund. Learn more about our role in public policy 

within High Schools, Adult Learning, College Access & Success, and Communities 

& Schools. 

The KnowledgeWorks Way 

We are unique in our approach to education philanthropy. We describe our method in three simple words: ‘‘Fund, Facilitate, and Do.’’

• By funding initiatives, we are strategically investing resources, including time, 

money, and people, into priority areas. 

• By facilitating initiatives, we are bringing together people who might not traditionally work collaboratively to discuss issues and uncover new solutions. 

• By doing some of the work ourselves, we are able to fill temporary gaps where 

there may not be an individual, team or community to take on a particular challenge. 

Mission 

KnowledgeWorks Foundation will increase the number and diversity of people 

who value and access education, by creating and improving educational opportunity 

at pre-kindergarten through high school and post-high school institutions, and 

through community organizations. 

16

History 

KnowledgeWorks Foundation was created in 1998 as a charitable foundation 

through the reorganization of the Student Loan Funding Corporation. 

Statistics 

Number of employees: 65

Endowment: $200 million 

Total grant commitments since inception: $85 million 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you very much, Ms. Howard. We appreciate your testimony. We will be back to you shortly. Mr. 

Henriquez. 

STATEMENT OF ANDRES HENRIQUEZ, PROGRAM OFFICER, 

EDUCATION DIVISION, CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW 

YORK, NEW YORK, NY 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Castle. It’s good to be here in 

the People’s Court, People’s House, excuse me. 

I’m going to discuss a little bit about the Carnegie Corporation’s 

work in high schools, and some of the work that we noticed that 

we found as we started this high school reform work. 

In 2001, Carnegie Corporation of New York in partnership with 

the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation launched Schools for a New 

Society, a 5-year $60 million urban high school reform effort, 

matched with local funds, aimed at promoting systemic and district-wide reform in seven cities. The reform efforts encourage partnerships and collaborations with community including school officials and teachers, parents and students, and community stakeholders such as teacher organizations, business leaders, elected officials, and higher education leaders. 

Initially the corporation invited 20 schools to submit high school 

reform plans, and after an in-depth review by leading educators 

and scholars, the school districts chosen to participate in the 

Schools for a New Society were Boston, Chattanooga, Houston, 

Providence, Sacramento, San Diego, and Worcester. 

The key objective is to reform policies and practices that help 

shape teaching and learning in the high schools. And through its 

grant making the Corporation provides resources to community organizations with a substantial history of working to improve student achievement and workforce preparedness, and enabling these 

organizations to lead and to manage a school and district renewal 

process. 

Critical components to the reform included first holding all 

schools accountable to help every student to meet high standards 

and to prepare for higher education, as well as the workforce, and 

to confront the challenges and opportunities for 21st-century society. 

Second was to raise graduation requirements to ensure that all 

students take and succeed in rigorous courses. 

The third was to transform these large, impersonal high schools 

into small schools, or really these small learning communities and 

personalize the student learning experience. 

And fourth was to improve teaching through intensive professional development, while enabling teachers time to work in teams. 

And again this is to help all students succeed. 

17

One of the most valuable findings in the very first year of 

Schools for a New Society was the fact that almost half of the students entering the ninth grade were reading several years below 

grade level. It became clear to us that no matter what kinds outcomes we wanted to achieve from this initiative, whether it was 

higher graduation rates, more students going on to college, more 

students taking advanced placement courses, success would be difficult because of these students’ low literacy skills. 

When we looked at data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, our NAEP data, otherwise known as the nation’s 

report card, it became clear to us that adolescent literacy was indeed a national problem. It turns out that 70 percent of our entering ninth graders in the United States can be considered as reading below grade level. And these young people can neither understand nor engage with text, and they represent a substantial proportion of students who are dropping out of high schools. 

According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, 3000 youngsters disappear from our high schools and classrooms every day. At 

the end of this month, at the end of this school year, over 540,000 

students will have dropped out of our high schools, many because 

of poor literacy skills. 

Of those who do manage to get a diploma, half will be unprepared for the demands of higher education in the workforce. And 

according to national data, 53 percent of the freshmen in college 

are receiving remediation to improve their reading and writing. 

In a related finding, employers were recently asked whether high 

schools were giving young people appropriate job related skills, 41 

percent responded somewhat to very dissatisfied, with how young 

people ‘‘read and understood complicated material.’’ In view of this 

dire data, the Carnegie Corporation of New York established a program called the Advancing Literacy Program. This is an initiative 

that focuses intensively on improving the literacy of students in 

grades 4 through 12. 

Over the last 2 years, we’ve come to realize that educators have 

pretty well figured out how young people learn to read, which has 

resulted in a very strong K through 3 early reading policy in our 

country. On the other end of the spectrum, there has been a focus 

on adult literacy programs. And in between these two extremes of 

learning to read as children or developing reading skills as adults, 

is what we call the forgotten middle. And that’s the chasm that includes an estimated 8 million students in grades four through 12 

who have learned to read, but cannot yet read to learn. 

Now it’s important to note that these problems are exacerbated 

by poverty, and they are particularly prevalent in our poorer urban 

districts. However the comprehension problem is also common in 

middle-class suburbs, ex-burbs and rural areas throughout our 

country. 

For example, the fourth grade and eighth grades proficiency 

rates on the 2003 NAEP data, only range from 10 to 43 percent 

across states, and the overall proficiency rate for eighth graders 

was only 32 percent. And clearly there are struggling readers at 

every level of our socioeconomic strata. 

The course of work that the Carnegie Corporation has been able 

to draw on a number of recommendations from experts on literacy 

18

for older children. And although everyone recognizes that we have 

much more to learn, we are convinced that we know enough to 

make a real difference for students in elementary grades, middle 

schools and our high schools. 

For instance, a report that was written to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, ‘‘Reading Next—A Vision For Action Research in 

Middle and High School Literacy’’ lays out 15 elements of effective 

adolescent literacy programs that practitioners can and indeed are 

using to improve student achievement in schools across the nation. And there has been some Federal response to this crisis. The $25 

million appropriated by Congress for the Striving Readers Initiative for this fiscal year was an important first step in helping to 

make effective literacy and prevention programs available to the 

children who are most in need of them. Teachers and parents and 

reading researchers are eagerly awaiting the results of these demonstrations. Given the Corporation’s long history of advancing educational opportunities, we are committed to revitalizing America’s 

high schools by focusing on district reform. 

And we believe that in order to prepare all of today’s high school 

students to succeed in our complex knowledge-based economy, we 

can’t provide them with one or two good high schools but must 

have in place an entire system of excellent high schools. 

I would like to conclude with a quote from Dr. Gregorian, our 

President at Carnegie Corporation, who says: ‘‘We will do what it 

takes to ensure that the spectacle of American students shutting 

down and dropping out of high schools at the appalling rate of 3000 

a day, quickly becomes one of those shameful memories in American history that we are all eager to forget.’’

I thank you for your attention. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Henriquez follows:]

Statement of Andres Henriquez, Program Officer, Education Division, 

Carnegie Corporation of New York, New York, NY 

‘‘Creating high schools for the 21st century is a challenge for education reformers as momentous as building the Panama Canal.’’

Vartan Gregorian, President 

Carnegie Corporation of New York 

Overview 

Carnegie Corporation was one of the first foundations concerned with early childhood development, care and education from prenatal development and care systems 

through preschool health and education and has continued concentrating funding in 

these areas for over 30 years. That history resonates throughout our current work 

in education, though we have tried to sharpen our focus in light of two fundamental 

questions that always bear asking: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Today, 

the Corporation is making fewer grants and larger commitments than in earlier 

years, and ambitious professional evaluation efforts are built into our larger initiatives from the start. Therefore, this overview seeks to provide a context for understanding how we have arrived at the program strategies we will be focusing on in 

the next few years and which we would like to share with the subcommittee. 

It was Carnegie Corporation of New York that helped to create some of the nation’s most innovative preschool care, education and parenting support programs, efforts that included funding for the development and initial production of the PBS 

television series, Sesame Street. The foundation also supported projects aimed at 

demonstrating the effectiveness of early education and care and that assisted in the 

training of professionals for the early childhood work force. The Corporation encouraged a broader look at social policies that affect families with young children, created and sustained the Carnegie Council on Children and provided initial support 

for the Children’s Defense Fund. The Corporation’s work in early childhood education and care has been summarized in What Kids Need: Today’s Best Ideas for 

19

Nurturing, Teaching, and Protecting Young Children A Carnegie Corporation Initiative: A Decade of Progress in Early Education (Rima Shore, Beacon Press: 2002), 

which describes best the successful early childhood programs and implemented practice. 

The Corporation’s work in middle school reform was also influential in setting an 

agenda for restructuring schools with greater attention to students’ developmental 

needs. The focus of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development was adolescent 

health issues and their social-emotional development, but the Council also concluded 

that ‘‘the years from ten through fourteen are a crucial turning point’’ for adolescents and that ‘‘this period represents an optimal time for interventions to foster 

education . . .’’ The Corporation began its work in middle school reform with the 

Middle Grades Schools State Policy Initiative, and, in 1989, published the widely 

influential report, Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century. 

Since our first foray into this work, tens of millions of dollars have been invested 

by a number of other foundations including the Lilly Endowment, Inc. and the Edna 

McConnell Clark and W.K. Kellogg Foundations. In summing up Carnegie Corporation’s work, middle-school reformer M. Hayes Mizell reported, ‘‘We helped to create 

a consciousness and understanding of the need for greater attention to the academic 

dimension of the middle grades.’’ Assisted by the collaborative efforts of other foundations and by evolving state and local public policy, the Corporation’s focus on the 

middle grades moved them front and center into the reform agenda, and the number 

of middle schools soared. Middle school reformers are now beginning to focus heavily 

on issues of literacy. 

Throughout the history of Carnegie Corporation, its presidents have been engaged 

with literacy. Andrew Carnegie’s legacy includes over 2000 free public libraries that 

he saw as a link ‘‘bridging ignorance and education.’’ Access to books and the explicit teaching of reading are two ways in which literacy is fostered. From the 1930’s 

to the 1960’s reading was increasingly taught through methods that concentrated 

on ‘‘whole words’’ (or whole language), using sentences and stories that were closely 

geared to children’s interests. Surprisingly, the teaching of reading became an intensely debated national issue in 1955, when Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t 

Read And What You Can Do about It (Harper) moved onto a national best-seller 

list. Flesch charged that the neglect of phonics instruction had caused a national 

crisis in literacy and that ‘‘whole language’’ was based on a flawed theory that required children to memorize words and guess how to pronounce a word they did not 

know, instead of sounding out the word. The ‘‘look-say’’ or whole-word method had 

swept the textbook market, despite the fact, Flesch alleged, that it had no support 

in research. 

Carnegie Corporation President John Gardner (1955–1967) saw the debate about 

reading as central to the foundation’s interests, writing in a 1959 Annual Report, 

‘‘The question of whether Johnny can or cannot read if so why, if not why not has 

probably given rise to more hue and cry throughout the land than any other single 

educational issue. There are those who claim that today’s youngsters cannot read 

as well as their parents did at their age; others state that the situation is actually 

reversed. Proponents of one or another method of reading argue vociferously for 

their method and heap scorn upon other methods. Wherever the truth lies, it’s not 

yet obvious, and any research which may shed light on this complicated problem 

will be to the good.’’ Following this logic, the Corporation soon funded a key grantee, 

Jeanne Chall of the City College of New York, to help ‘‘settle’’ the reading debate. 

Chall spent three years visiting classrooms, analyzing research studies, examining 

textbooks and interviewing authors, reading specialists and teachers. She found substantial and consistent advantages for programs that included systematic phonics, 

finding that this approach was particularly advantageous for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In 1967, Chall collected her Corporation-supported research and published Learning to Read: the Great Debate (McGraw Hill), which became a classic. Later, after moving to Harvard University, Chall developed a conceptual framework for developmental reading stages that extended from the pre-reading stage of very young children to the highly sophisticated interpretations of educated adults. Chall’s reading stages clearly distinguished ‘‘learning to read’’ from 

‘‘reading to learn;’’ she also identified and named the ‘‘fourth grade slump.’’

Advancing Literacy: Reading to Learn. 

The Corporation’s distinguished history in support of literacy—some of which is 

described above—has recently extended from pivotal initial support for the Emmy 

award-winning PBS series Between the Lions, to the work of the International Development Division in strengthening libraries in sub–Saharan countries in Africa. 

As always, our work in this area includes a concern with access to books, the search 

for better methods of teaching reading, and building a body of knowledge about the 

20

developmental issues associated with early childhood and adolescence. Taking all 

these factors into account, Carnegie Corporation comes to its current focus on literacy with enormous comparative advantage. Indeed, to many people, the name 

Carnegie Corporation is associated with the very foundations of literacy going all 

the way back to the philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie himself and of the Corporation in its early years; both were instrumental in helping to create the nation’s network of free public libraries. 

Building on this work our current program focus, Advancing Literacy: Reading to 

Learn, was developed after an extensive two-year review that included consultations 

with the nation’s leading practitioners and researchers. We learned that the teaching of reading in K–3 is well supported with research, practice and policy, but that 

these are lacking for grades beyond this point. Therefore, we have chosen to focus 

our efforts on intermediate and adolescent literacy, to build research, practice and 

policy for literacy in students in grades 4 through 12, with a particular interest in 

grades 4 through 8. Our decision is informed by our grantmaking, which as helped 

us and the nation learn a great deal about children in their early, middle and adolescent years of development, as well as about teaching and learning and the complexity of school reform. What has become evident is that good school reform and 

knowledge of adolescent development are not mutually exclusive: they go together. 

Urban School Reform. 

During its tenure, the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development issued three 

major reports, each of which informed the development of the Corporation’s urban 

school reform efforts. In 1989, Turning Points proposed making middle schools both 

more developmentally appropriate and intellectually challenging and recommended 

creation of ‘‘communities of learning’’ (now echoed in small learning communities), 

providing opportunities for all students to succeed. In 1992, the Council’s report, A 

Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the NonSchool Hours, introduced the concept of positive youth development, highlighted the need for opportunities for young 

people to have challenging and rewarding experiences in their nonschool hours and 

emphasized the importance of partnerships between schools and community organizations. Building on the Turning Points work, in 1995, Great Transitions, the final 

report of the Council, set forth recommendations of what an appropriate middle 

grades education should include; those recommendations form the premise that 

shaped the Schools for a New Society vision of an excellent high school education. 

Recognizing the comparative advantage provided by the Corporation’s history of 

study and analysis, Vartan Gregorian, the Corporation’s current president, challenged the foundation to address the nation’s lack of success in achieving widespread and sustainable educational reform. In response, we worked closely with 

leading researchers and practitioners and conducted a meticulous review of relevant 

literature. This led to the concept of a program in Urban School Reform, emphasizing the troubled urban high school. 

We repeatedly encountered three intersecting discussions that shaped what became the Corporation’s major high school reform initiatives, Schools for a New Society and New Century High Schools for New York City. The first concern centers on 

deeply entrenched political interests and bureaucratic procedures of school districts 

and how these two factors impede and undermine effective educational reforms. The 

second concern is the extent to which the lack of broad-based community engagement in education leaves schools vulnerable to both entrenched political interests 

and the frequent changes in leadership that commonly occur in urban school districts. The third concern, already growing as part of the national debate around 

standards and accountability, is the need to challenge the underlying assumption 

that not all students could or even should ‘‘succeed’’ in high school. We were especially influenced by It Takes A City: Getting Serious about Urban School Reform 

(Paul T. Hill, et al., Brookings Institution Press: 2000), an important book that addressed all three of our concerns. 

Our focus on high schools was strengthened by an analysis of where the most 

strategic opportunity for change exists and a recognition that the inequities of the 

current system are most pronounced in high schools. School districts often make 

gains at the elementary and middle school level that are eroded at the high school 

level. Given the press of state accountability mechanisms and the growth of high 

school exit exams, we concluded that there would be a positive response to an initiative that calls upon cities to take on the challenge of creating a system of good high 

schools—schools in which all students could be successfully prepared for postsecondary education, employment and democratic citizenship. Thus, building on the 

knowledge base created by Carnegie Corporation grants, especially during the past 

two decades, we began our reform work by inviting twenty urban school districts 

to submit plans for reform. After an in-depth review that involved some the nation’s 

21

most respected scholars and leaders in high school reform, we selected seven school 

districts to participate in Schools for A New Society: Boston, Chattanooga, Houston, 

Providence, Sacramento, San Diego, and Worcester. The school systems were not 

awarded the grants directly. Nonprofit, community-based institutions working with 

the school systems received the grants. 

Advancing Literacy: Reading to Learn 

Effective reading and writing skills are essential to gaining and making use of 

education. At present, large numbers of young adults are deficient in these skills, 

as seen through enrollment in remedial writing courses in postsecondary education 

and massive deficits in performance in reading comprehension among high school 

students. Poor reading skills in high school have roots in a system that provides little systemic support for readers beyond the age of eight. In general, the nation successfully teaches literacy to children in kindergarten through third grade. There is 

no consensus, however, on how to develop reading strategies in the fourth grade and 

beyond. The Corporation is addressing this problem by helping to build the nation’s 

capacity to teach and strengthen reading comprehension skills, with a special focus 

on grades 4 through 12, i.e., ages 9 through 17. Therefore, we refer to this effort 

as intermediate and adolescent literacy. The Corporation begins from a position of 

comparative advantage, having established a knowledge base of theory and effective 

practice in early learning and education systems reform. 

As we begin the 21st century the educational community faces a difficult challenge. What is expected in academic achievement for middle and high school students has substantially increased, yet the way in which students are taught to read, 

comprehend and write about subject matter has not kept pace with the demands 

of schooling. According to a recent international study by the Organisation for Economic Co–Operation and Development (Programme for International Student Assessment), American 15-year-olds barely attain the standards of international literacy for youngsters their age. During the past decade the average reading score 

of fourth graders has changed little. Readers who struggle during the intermediate 

elementary years face increasing difficulty throughout middle school and beyond. 

Poor or limited achievement in literacy negatively affects every aspect of a student’s 

education. Conversely, effective reading to learn is a prerequisite for successful participation in most areas of adult life. In order to become lifelong learners, students 

must learn to engage competently the variety of textual information they will encounter throughout their lives. 

The marketplace for employment is governed by a new knowledge-based economy, 

requiring better educated, highly literate and technologically fluent high school 

graduates. The causes of the weakness in intermediate and adolescent literacy are 

poorly understood, but current research and practice suggest several promising avenues for interventions that include: 

• A shortage of qualified literacy experts who can coach and teach literacy for students and teachers in the middle grades. 

• A lack of capacity, time and will for middle and high school teachers to teach 

literacy within their content areas. 

• A lack of reinforcement of comprehension of ‘‘informational text’’ in early reading. 

• A lack of strategies at the end of the third grade for pupils to deal with a rapid 

shift from narrative text to expository text. 

• A lack of systemic thinking in schools about literacy beyond age eight. 

• Decrease in student motivation to read as children progress from fourth grade 

through twelfth grade. 

• Little awareness by parents and community groups that literacy instruction 

needs to continue after children have learned the basic skills of decoding words 

and following a simple narrative. 

We believe there is strong evidence that schools with a focus on literacy (reading 

and writing) are associated with improved academic performance and successful 

academic outcomes for students. At the Corporation, we are making grants aimed 

at having a profound influence on adolescent literacy by directing national attention 

to the issue, bringing together the best talent in the field to address the issue, and 

supporting needed research and innovative practices. 

Urban School Reform 

After the investment of millions of dollars and the talents of the best and brightest reformers over decades of educational reform, it is now clear that urban schools 

cannot be successfully reformed without substantially changing the way school districts operate. The Corporation considers the redesigning of urban high schools to 

be a daunting challenge but also a promising target of opportunity for accelerating 

22

the pace of school district reform. This requires treating urban schools as a complex 

system rather than an aggregation of individual schools. School districts are embedded within communities that strongly influence their mode of operation. Therefore, 

school districts cannot succeed in addressing the problems of educating all students 

to high standards in isolation and must also employ community and organizational 

resources external to the district. 

In the 21st century economy all students can and should be educated to high 

standards. Wages paid to workers with only a high school education have declined 

steeply, and there has been a correspondingly dramatic increase in the added value 

of a college education. Therefore, our nation can no longer view a high school diploma as a satisfactory terminal degree for a substantial number of citizens. Every 

high school graduate needs to leave high school ready for college or the kind of productive gainful employment providing security, benefits and advancement opportunity. Even well paid employment not requiring postsecondary degrees now depends on advanced levels of literacy that are not common among urban high school 

graduates. Furthermore, given the escalating costs of public higher education and 

the lack of a proportional increase in financial aid, many urban students will need 

to work and continue their education at the same time. 

In addition to high literacy, quantitative skills, an understanding of science and 

comfortable mastery of technology, an excellent high school education must reflect 

our modern multicultural democracy. Students need help in making sense of a world 

in which modern media engulf the citizen with competing sources of information 

and complex global issues influence domestic policy and vice versa. High school 

graduates should be well prepared to assume roles as engaged and informed citizens 

in a diverse and vibrant democracy. 

Urban high schools face formidable challenges in educating all students to high 

standards. The students in these schools are more likely than their suburban and 

rural counterparts to come from low-income families and from homes where English 

is not the first language and also to move from school to school as their parents’ 

economic circumstances change. These urban students are more frequently educated 

by teachers who do not stay very long in any one teaching situation and in schools 

burdened by overcrowding, inadequate fiscal and human resources, bureaucratic rigidity and political interference. 

Many urban school systems have succeeded in improving student achievement in 

the elementary and middle school setting, but these gains are not sustained and, 

sometimes, are even offset by losses at the high school level. In most urban high 

schools, as many as half the students drop out before completing their studies. Even 

many graduates do not show adequate levels of academic achievement, with up to 

one-third of high school graduates requiring remedial coursework at the post-secondary level. These problems are compounded by the fact that groups of students 

with varying family incomes and different ethnic backgrounds are separated by wide 

gaps in academic achievement. 

Fortunately, the knowledge base exists in both theory and practice to permit the 

creation of successful high schools, and almost every urban system of education has 

at least one or two successful high schools. Through the creativity of exemplary 

practitioners, these high schools have been established in urban districts, raising 

standards and expectations and challenging students to levels appropriate to today’s 

economy and democracy. These schools are the existence proofs that urban high 

schools can work. Yet, throughout the country, these high schools stand as exceptions to the dominant, large, comprehensive high school, and no urban district has 

created an entire system of successful high schools. 

Most urban high schools suffer from the twin problems of inequality of expectation and a misplaced emphasis on economies of scale. The American high school, as 

we now know it, was created when it was acceptable to expect that, at most, about 

one-third of the students would go on to postsecondary education. Accordingly, the 

high schools reserved the smallest classes and most experienced teachers for the 

brightest students. Less experienced teachers taught less able students, usually in 

larger classes, and both schools and society then blamed the students for their inferior performance. 

The large size of most urban high schools can be a barrier to student achievement, making it difficult for teachers to know their students well enough to understand their individual learning capacities and needs. Large urban high schools also 

increase the isolation of teachers and undermine the development of a collective 

sense of internal accountability for student success. 

The typical operation of school districts exacerbates the problems facing high 

schools, since the procedures of school districts are built around assumptions of unequal outcomes and large size. School resources are distributed in ways that provide 

the best teachers and more congenial learning settings to the students who are the 

23

most able. Effective political pressure from affluent parents tends to reinforce these 

dysfunctional practices. 

The shortcomings of urban high schools are a current problem and at the same 

time a likely generator of future inequality. The Corporation is addressing this challenge by stimulating improvement in the administration of school districts to rearrange the allocation of resources on behalf of instruction and by treating the problems of urban schools in their complexity as a system, inclusive of community and 

organizational resources external to the district. The particular focus of the Corporation in effecting these changes is the urban high school, which are a target of opportunity because they are far more difficult to reform on an individual basis than elementary and middle schools and thus provide an entry point into the reform of 

urban education as a whole. 

To prepare students for their adult lives in the 21st century, urban high schools 

need to become learning communities with cultures that support high expectations, 

inquiry, effort, persistence and achievement by all—teachers, students and staff. In 

short, these schools must become communities of teaching, learning, purpose and 

contribution, a process that involves far more than incremental change in the high 

school as we know it. The current model for the American high school, which is obsolete, was not designed to educate all students to high levels of achievement, but 

rather to manage students by sifting and sorting them, with only a minority of students prepared for higher education. 

Urban high schools also need new leadership. Federal and state accountability requirements and greater autonomy and flexibility in personnel, budgetary and curricular decision making have made the job of school leadership far more demanding 

than in the past. Most current preparation for principals is weak and does not reflect recent research findings about effective educational leadership. Candidates who 

aspire to become principals follow an individual course of study, selecting a mix of 

required and elective courses to qualify for state certification. The focus of the curriculum is on management rather than instruction. Internships are rarely required 

and poorly supervised. High school principals and elementary school principals are 

prepared in basically the same way, even though the differences in their school environments are dramatic. There is a need to rethink seriously how we prepare principals if we expect to have them succeed, and we should encourage the district to 

play a constructive role in shaping that preparation. 

Building communities of effective high schools from schools that are islands of innovation and excellence requires reforming urban districts. Our vision for a system 

of high schools in which there is room for every student to thrive will be difficult 

to achieve without strategically aligning all the diverse resources of the district and 

community into a coherent plan for action. This involves changing the cultures of 

districts, challenging political interests and financial inequities and finding solutions to professional and technical problems of curriculum, teaching and learning, 

recruitment and supervision, school design and management and assessment and 

accountability practices. 

Schools for a New Society and New Century High Schools for New York City both 

incorporate the strategic assumptions of redesigning urban high schools, reforming 

urban districts and building effective leadership for districts and schools. Both initiatives seek to build existence proofs about the viability of wide-scale urban high 

school reform and knowledge about strategies, tools, challenges and resources that 

can be applied in other settings. The Corporation is joined in its pursuit of reinventing the urban high school by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and, in New 

York City, by the Open Society Institute. 

Schools for a New Society and New Century High Schools for New York City are 

not models, but broad strategies for reform. The overarching goal of the program 

in Urban School Reform is to increase significantly student achievement in targeted 

urban centers while reducing gaps in achievement among groups of students. 

Conclusion 

Staying focused while reaching new heights is long tradition for Carnegie Corporation of New York. It has its roots in Andrew Carnegie’s belief that, ‘‘Only in 

popular education can man erect the structure of an enduring civilization.’’ This belief has guided the Corporation as it has moved from helping to establish public libraries, to laying the groundwork for what we know as Head Start, to its 

groundbreaking efforts to improve middle schools. And, now, the challenge is improving high schools and the districts that serve them through Schools for a New 

Society and New Century High Schools for New York City. This is perhaps the 

hardest challenge of all along the lines of ‘‘building the Panama Canal,’’ in the 

words of Vartan Gregorian. The Corporation is realistic that there may be setbacks 

along the way that may ultimately lead to greater understanding of the obstacles. 

24

But the results to date higher test scores, increasing attendance rates, and a stronger sense that students are engaging in true, meaningful learning—show that, just 

as the Canal broke new ground at the beginning of the 20th century, Schools for 

A New Society and New Century High Schools for New York City can do the same 

in this new era.

[An attachment to Mr. Henriquez’s statement ‘‘2001 Carnegie 

Challenge Paper: Creating a New Vision of the Urban High School’’ 

is available at http://www.carnegie.org/pdf/urbschl.pdf.] 

Chairman CASTLE. Well, thank you, Mr. Henriquez. And let me 

thank each of you. I will yield to myself to start the discussion 

process. 

We rarely have these hearings where I agree with everything 

that everybody is saying. I agree with what you’re saying. That 

doesn’t solve our problem necessarily, but you’ve helped identify 

the problem, you’ve helped identify the start to solutions to some 

of the problems. I think that we all understand we have to do a 

lot more. The things we are not going to get into today, I worry 

about the cultural side of this, the whole societal issues of how people value education out there and various issues like that, but 

we’re more focused right on the high schools. 

And let me just say right up front, Mr. Vander Ark, I couldn’t 

agree with you more with your statement about the graduation 

rates. That is something that I have wrestled with for years. And 

I am told that we’re dealing with that a little bit in our regulations 

on No Child Left Behind, but at some point there should be an absolute measurable device so that everybody can use it. And I think 

it is absurd that it does not exist today. 

My question, though, goes along a different line. You represent 

three magnificent, nonprofit entities that are doing some very positive things. I don’t know—I have no criticisms of anything you’re 

doing. But when we have—in spite of your substantial assets in 

some cases, there is no way you can reach out to every single high 

school in the country, it just can’t be done. I mean, you’re dealing 

in Ohio in one case, and a variety of schools around the country 

in other cases. And with all due respect to Mr. Gates and the Gates 

Foundation, even they can’t go touch every school. 

And I worry about how all of this translates into our other 

schools. In other words, I think that it is great that the National 

Governor’s Association had their summit. I think that helps because that gets them engaged and they truly are or should be at 

least, engaged with their schools and their high schools. I think it’s 

great that you’re looking at various devices to try to help in these 

various schools. 

But my problem is that getting that to every single high school 

in America. I worry about the Federal role in this. I worry about 

the state role in that, even with the Governors engaged, I still 

worry about it. And how we actually make that connection. Because frankly just holding out exemplary programs doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody who’s been doing it the same way for 

20 years or 30 years and not a particularly successful way, is not 

going to necessarily buy in to that. 

So I would be interested, and I know this is a very general statement, but I would be interested, briefly, because I like to have all 

three of you comment on this, any of your thoughts concerning how 

25

we can engage high schools holistically in America. And what I 

think we all, at least up here probably and there, agree are reform 

efforts which are needed. 

In any particular order. Does anybody want to start? 

Mr. VANDER ARK. I’ll make two comments. It’s an insightful 

question that we struggle with frequently. We will soon have spent $1 billion just on this problem, and we 

will soon touch about 10 percent of the high schools in America. So 

it does look to me like just the high school problem is probably a 

$20 billion issue. So we’re—the family’s contributions though substantial, are the small portion of what it will actually take to create 

the high schools that we need in this country. 

So my first comment is that our efforts and at least how I think 

about our efforts with these foundations are to create proof points, 

school and city-wide proof points of what’s possible, what to do, 

how to do it, how much money it takes, what kind of outside assistance you need, what order to do things in. So we’re trying to focus 

as much of our work as we can and work deeply in a set of cities 

where we are trying to lift achievement levels and graduation rates 

citywide. And frankly, we have a lot more to learn about how to 

do that well. So strategy No. 1 is to try and create proof points. 

No. 2, as Debbie alluded to at the end when she talked about 

knowledge management, it’s culling out of that work while it’s ongoing, lessons learned and trying to share those. An example of 

that, Debbie can talk about some of their publications, they do a 

great job. But an example would be that the National Association 

of Secondary School Principals, they wrote ‘‘Breaking Ranks’’ 10 

years ago and they just updated it, and we helped ship that to 

every high school principal in America. So it’s a pretty good guide 

to improving your high school. 

So there are some efforts underway and we have more to learn. 

But there’s no question that every state needs to play a stronger 

role in creating a vision. First of all for its graduates, and second 

of all for its secondary schools, and then third for creating the 

intervention capacity to improve struggling schools. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you. Ms. Howard. 

Ms. HOWARD. As Tom talked about, part of our strategy is really 

to have a very deep knowledge management system that collects 

the information, and then helps us move that information out, and 

to share it with our counterparts across the country. And I think 

as we talk to each other, just in this room this morning, there are 

several organizations in here who talk to each other all the time, 

who work together across the country, we share ideas, we share information and we’re using similar strategies nationwide. 

Chairman CASTLE. Before you go on, how about sharing with the 

schools, the ones who are not your counterparts. 

Ms. HOWARD. Right. 

Chairman CASTLE. I assume your counterparts are other organizations like yours. 

Ms. HOWARD. Yes. 

Chairman CASTLE. But my concern is, of course, is getting it to 

the other schools that are not involved with those counterparts. 

Ms. HOWARD. That’s the whole strategy behind our design for 

Ohio. We chose specifically districts that are throughout the state, 

26

that are the most troubled districts, knowing that if we can move 

them far enough fast enough, we can impact other districts. And 

that is already showing to be true. We’re already having other districts in suburban and rural areas ask us for the information. 

I said we have coaches embedded on the ground. Those coaches 

come from across the country. They have actually helped design 

work now in schools across Ohio and several other states. 

Chairman CASTLE. Yes. Mr. Henriquez. 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. Yes, I would just like to add and dovetail to 

many of the comments that have already been made. I think that 

foundations can best be incubators of ideas, and we see the Schools 

for a New Society and the work that we’re doing in the urban 

schools as truly proof of concept. 

And we hope that these could become sort of effective models 

that provide a roadmap for replication, much like the work that 

Carnegie has done in early childhood education, where we worked 

for 30 years, and provided at least a lot of valuable tools. And 

through dissemination of knowledge and information that we hope 

that those schools that are not getting those resources are at least 

getting the kinds of information that will help them at the ground 

level at various levels. 

Chairman CASTLE. Let me thank you for all of your answers and 

I think you do wonderful work. But I have this horrible vision in 

my mind, and it is this: That I see Carnegie doing this wonderful 

glossy brochure that lays it out, lays out the facts, the data and everything else. I’m just using that as an example, whatever, and it 

is distributed. But there are those who simply don’t want necessarily the change. They have sort of been doing it their own way, 

they are 3 years from retirement, and they aren’t really ready for 

new challenges or whatever it may be. And that could be administrators, it can be teachers, it can even be parents. It’s a lot of people. 

I just worry that they don’t have the same enthusiasm for the 

change and the improvements that we need that you all have. 

So I would just encourage all of you to always be thinking that 

way. How can we reach beyond what we are doing to make sure 

that we’re touching on everybody else. Because frankly, it’s the 

ones that you’re not touching on who probably need the most help. 

Probably when you go forward and try to find schools, you know, 

it’s the ones who raise their hands. So it’s like kids in class, the 

ones who raise their hand to say we want to be involved with you, 

you’re most likely, you know to choose. And it’s those others who 

just don’t want to be called on, who sort of stay away. So I just 

think it’s a continuous problem in education. Not to be overly harsh 

about education, but I think it’s something with which we have to 

deal. 

But let me turn to Ms. Woolsey for comment. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to welcome Representative Chaka Fattah from Philadelphia, who is just 

up here listening and learning with us. Thank you, thank you for 

being here. 

OK, that is the answer. You know—you asked the question and 

then the answer is why isn’t the government, our government, Federal and state, ensuring that all of our children have the education 

27

they need for the future of our country. Not just their future but 

our nation’s future. 

I’m so thankful that you exist. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

But I am so embarrassed that in a country when public education 

is supposed to be the very core and center of who we are and why 

we are such a good, productive nation, is going down, while the demands are coming up. So I see you as models, as examples. 

The school, Sir Francis Drake, that Mr. Henriquez talked about 

is in one of the best school districts in the country, and one of the 

most affluent districts in the country, one of the most progressive 

districts in the country. They know how to get help, they know how 

to look forward. We need to talk about schools—not that I don’t 

want my schools to get what they’re after, but I want all schools 

to have these same privileges. If it means we have to do more to 

help them get interested then that’s our job, to help them do that. 

It’s not totally private foundations. But what you’re doing, I admire 

so much. 

OK, I’m going to go. Just a couple of things. Ms. Howard, both 

of the gentlemen on each side of you talked about school size and 

teacher quality. Would you talk about that too, about how important it is, both of those issues are, to providing a good education 

for our high school kids. 

Ms. HOWARD. Yes. Thank you very much. Definitely. All of our 

schools are formed with 400 students or less. We believe that that’s 

the size in which teachers and students can really form relationships, and in which teachers can take students deep into the work, 

not just touch the surface of the work. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. How about class size? 

Ms. HOWARD. Class sizes range anywhere from 15 to 25. We’re 

still working on finding new ways to impact class size by changing 

the schedules of the day, using teachers differently, using time differently to try to get down to smaller class sizes. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Teacher quality? 

Ms. HOWARD. We’ve worked a great deal in teacher professional 

development. We think that’s critical. The districts in which we 

work sometimes have some of the least experienced teachers, and 

so we provide a lot of training at the state level. We then follow 

that up with deep embedded coaches in the schools and in the 

classroom to help. 

We also have had strong experiences working with the teachers’ 

unions. And the teachers’ unions in the districts in which we work 

have become real champions for change, and they’re the ones who 

are encouraging all of their teachers, not just their first year teachers and second-year teachers, but their seasoned teachers to change 

and to take advantage of the opportunities that are offered. The 

unions are a main force behind the change in our schools. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Which is very important. Mr. Vander Ark, of 

course, with the Gates Foundation and Microsoft, you know being 

hooked together, there is, I am sure, the express need for highquality, high-tech kids coming out of school and their education. 

How are you supporting the idea in your programs for girls becoming more proficient in science, math and technology with the idea 

that they are over 50 percent of our workforce. 

28

Mr. VANDER ARK. Let me give you two answers to that interesting question. First of all, in math and science we have helped 

to sponsor three exciting networks of schools in California. HighTech High, and New Tech High, and Envision in the Bay Area, 

three really high-quality examples of math science and technology 

schools. 

We believe there are similar opportunities in other states. We’re 

in conversation in Texas right now about an opportunity to expand 

the number of math science and technology schools. And in New 

York City we have funded a number of math science and technology schools. So that’s one opportunity. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Are you finding some women interested in them. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. Absolutely. In all of those schools are about 

50–50. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Mm-hmm. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. Let me give you the flip side of the issue 

though. We have a boy problem in America, especially a minority 

boy problem. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Mm-hmm. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. The families also funded a scholarship program called the Gates Millennium Scholars, which provides 1000 

scholarships a year to high achieving, low-income students of color. 

It is now over 60 percent girls. And if you go to institutions of higher education, you will find that many of them are now 55 to 65 percent female. 

So we need to pay a lot of attention to this emerging problem. 

It’s one that I don’t admit to fully understand. It is a cultural as 

well as an educational issue that we need to pay attention to. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. But before high school. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. Absolutely. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Thank you. My time is up. 

Chairman CASTLE. Let me just personally thank you, Mr. Vander 

Ark. Ms. Woolsey is always telling me about girl power here, so I’m 

glad to hear someone defend the boys for a change. 

Mr. Osborne, the Vice Chairman of the Committee is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. OSBORNE. Thank you and I would like to thank those of you 

on the panel for being here this morning. 

Just a couple of thoughts. We talked about some of the problems 

with young men just now, and in my previous profession I think 

I sometimes I ran into—maybe a part of the problem is that with 

some young men in certain areas it’s not the thing to do to be a 

good student, and matter of fact that’s sort of social taboo, particularly early on. 

I wondered if any of you have done anything to address some of 

the social issues, because certainly poverty is a difficult thing. But 

if you’re from an area where there is a lot of violence, drugs and 

alcohol enters into the thing. And I wondered if, you know it’s very 

easy to maybe have a school that’s fairly select, people want to 

come there, but you’re also maybe dealing with a little bit of a select population. 

So I wondered if in your endeavors, you have in any way attempted to address some of the social problems and cultural problems that we see affecting kids today that maybe weren’t quite as 

29

prevalent 30, 40 years ago. And that’s a question for any of you, 

if you’d like to. 

And then let me just throw one other question at you, if you 

don’t want to answer that one, and that is it seems that most of 

your efforts are focused at the urban level. But you know we have 

a lot of poverty in rural areas, and we have a lot of kids who are 

struggling because of a lack of IT, you know their course offerings 

are pretty limited, and I wondered if you have done anything at the 

rural level. So those two questions, anybody answer any way you 

want. Thank you. 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. I just wanted to say, thank you for raising the 

question, Mr. Osborne. I think that the—as Tom pointed out, the 

boy issue is a very severe issue, and we are beginning to look at 

that. In fact, this summer we just had a conference recently at the 

foundations around lost boys. And if we think that 70 percent of 

incoming ninth graders are bad, if we just disaggregated that data 

and we disaggregated the data on drop outs, what we see is mostly 

black and Latino males. 

One of the first schools that was taken over in New York City 

to be a small school was Julia Richman High School, the school 

that I graduated from in 1978. And I don’t see many of my friends 

on the Delta shuttle. I don’t see many of my friends here at the 

Rayburn House that I graduated with. I was one of the fortunate 

ones. 

But with that said, I think that one of the issues that we’re trying to get at, certainly through literacy, is both the issue of how 

do we address the number of boys that are continually failing. And 

if you see that population also in incarceration figures, sir, you will 

see that not only are there high numbers of those students who are 

dropping out and going sometimes directly into jail, but the literacy 

rates for those students are also a very sad figure. 

The rural area as I mentioned in my testimony are also areas 

that are not without their problems. And even though these problems are exacerbated in the urban areas, they are just as likely to 

exist in rural areas as they are in suburban areas. And so it is 

something that we are trying to focus on, sir. 

Ms. HOWARD. Mr. Osborne, I would like to talk very briefly to 

build on what Andres has said about the literacy and the reading 

issues. What we have found as we have worked in high school is 

that predominantly with—even with males in the ninth grade, 

there is an acceptable academic structure. It is OK for them to not 

pass science and it’s OK for them not to pass mathematics. It is 

not OK, even among their peer group, for them to not pass the 

state reading test, so even among themselves they know that that’s 

the gatekeeper. That’s one of the reasons why we work so hard in 

the area of literacy, because literacy opens the doors. 

The work that we’ve done on the ground in literacy, actually if 

you can get young men excited about reading, they will carry paperbacks in their back pocket, they will talk to each other at lunchtime, they’ll choose authors that they like to read. We’ve even had 

some inner-city young men get so excited about mysteries that 

they’ll read a Nancy Drew if there is no other mystery available on 

the shelf. That really does seem to be the gatekeeper. And it is the 

same in rural areas. 

30

I grew up in rural Nebraska and so I understand very much 

what you’re talking about. What we’re trying to do now with our 

early college initiative is to try to find a way for those rural schools 

to come together to be able to share services and offer those things 

that are more readily available in the suburban and the urban 

areas. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. I’ll add a couple of quick thoughts. We have 

grants to 2000 schools, and 15 or 16 percent of them are rural. One 

exciting story about a little town in eastern Washington called 

Mapton, had a terrible high school. And after the last 4 years of 

work just had a hundred percent graduation rate and a hundred 

percent college attendance rate. So it is possible, when a community rallies around its high school and dramatically changes its expectations, that great things can happen. Now that’s a school of almost a hundred percent kids in or near poverty, and over 70 percent Latino. 

But you point to a cultural problem that’s a big and complicated 

issue. We’ve made, we’ve stumbled forward on a couple of different 

fronts. We recently created a partnership with MTV to try to use 

the media to, as Debbie said, to make it cool to be smart. We see, 

as Debbie pointed out, especially in new schools that you can quickly change the culture where it’s cool to be smart in a new school. 

It’s a more difficult challenge to get it—to uproot and change the 

culture in a large struggling school. 

We’ve just begun some work in Los Angeles enlisting student 

voice, student leaders in their school to be on campus encouraging 

other kids to participate in college preparatory curriculum. So I 

think there’s a lot of opportunity there to engage kids in helping 

to turn this around. 

I was encouraged by Hugh Price’s leadership at The National 

Urban League. This was really an area of focus for him when he 

launched the Achievement Counts campaign. So I think that 

there’s work that we all need to do to turn this culture around. 

Here’s the bottom line. We need American kids to work harder. 

That’s really what it comes down to, we need most of them to work 

harder. There’s 10 percent that are working pretty hard today, but 

most of them are just flat. They need to work harder. So part of 

that is schools that are more challenging, interesting and supportive. But it’s also the adult expectations for them and for their 

future. 

Mr. OSBORNE. Thank you. And I yield back. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Osborne. Mr. Miller is recognized for 5 minutes. 

He yields to Mr. Scott, who is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Vander Ark, you 

mentioned proof points, and I assume that means you’ve just 

shown that it can be done. You mentioned a terrible school going 

to a hundred percent. We have at least one school in my district 

that they focused on that has eliminated the traditional racial gap. 

How long have you been working at the Gates Foundation? 

Ms. HOWARD. Actually I am working with Knowledge Works 

Foundation. We’ve had our partnership with Gates since the fall of 

2002. And we’ve actually spent 3 years working to prepare the 

teachers for the change, and letting teachers help design their 

31

schools. Now there have been really 1 year of operation in our conversion high schools, and 1 year for most of our early college high 

schools. 

Mr. SCOTT. OK. Mr. Vander Ark mentioned a powerful school 

where everybody is graduating, and other schools where few students are graduating. And I like the calculation where you look at 

how many people are in middle school and compare it to the high 

school, because whatever happens in the summer and all of that 

you just lose them. But that is a calculation that I think you ought 

to be using. 

But there is a difference. You can see the difference between one 

school and another. Now, we’ve talked about class size, is that an 

element of a powerful school, the lower class sizes? 

Ms. HOWARD. Class size is definitely an element. But so is instructional strategies, the way in which teachers help bring students to the information and the way in which students will learn. 

We’re finding that the traditional stand and deliver way in which 

curriculum was delivered back when I went to high school is not 

the most effective way for today’s kids. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, how do we make sure that they use the up-todate methods? Is up-to-date methods common, is that an element 

in the better schools? 

Ms. HOWARD. It is definitely an element in the better schools. 

Mr. SCOTT. OK. We’re talking about teachers. We have a Head 

Start bill that we’re considering, and there’s an amendment that 

we’re going to consider that will allow discrimination based on religion and hiring. Would that help? 

I mean some of us think that’s an outrage, just to say that we 

don’t hire people of different religions. Would that be helpful to 

education, to teach kids that you can be selected based on religion. 

Would that be a good head start or a bad head start to subject people, kids to that kind of—their parents being discriminated against 

can’t participate in the Head Start Program. Is that something, in 

terms of improving schools, is it something that you’re proposing 

that we allow discrimination? 

Ms. HOWARD. No sir, we’re not. That is not an area in which 

we’ve worked. We’ve really worked on instructional strategies and 

because we do not—we don’t actually hire the teachers. We work 

with——

Mr. SCOTT. But do you think that you’re going to improve the 

schools without the schools starting to discriminate for the first 

time in decades? 

Ms. HOWARD. We’re hoping that we can. 

Mr. SCOTT. OK. If kids fall behind a little bit, remedial education, is that an element making sure you catch them when they 

fall behind a little bit before they fall behind a lot? 

Ms. HOWARD. Remedial work is definitely a piece of it. What we 

like to do though, and an area where we’ve been focusing resources 

is on actually using diagnostic tests for students when they come 

in, so that every teacher knows where those students’ strengths 

and weaknesses are the minute that they get in their classroom. 

Then they design an individual instructional plan for that student. 

Mr. SCOTT. For each student? 

Ms. HOWARD. Yes sir. We believe that’s critical. 

32

Mr. SCOTT. I guess, what about parental involvement? 

Ms. HOWARD. Parental involvement is important. In our early 

college high schools, parents must sign a contract that they will 

allow their student to stay late for remediation, to come on Saturdays, to really be involved, and the parents and students together 

are involved in teacher-parent contracts and in conferences. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now funding all of this, sometimes it costs more to 

educate the lower income students, because they come with deficits, and we have the expert on school funding here, who has joined 

us. Is the funding mechanism based on real estate counterproductive, because the lower income areas end up with less resources? 

Ms. HOWARD. Sir, I’m not a school funding expert. I will turn it 

over to one of my colleagues who might know more. I’m a curriculum and instruction person. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, you have to pay for it. 

Ms. HOWARD. Yes. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is that counterproductive? Is funding things based on 

a local real estate taxes, where the lowest income areas get the 

lowest resources, is that a good idea or a bad idea? I mean, you’ve 

got two other people. 

Well, some of us think that it is a bad idea. Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. HOWARD. I would say sir, that part of the research that we 

are doing in our publications like Dollars and Cents that we’re 

partnering with the Gates Foundation, is we’re trying to look at 

schools to say how can you use the resources that you have differently and more effectively. We know that our money is only like 

a vitamin B shot, it can only jumpstart the change. The schools are 

going to have to sustain that over time, and so we want to help 

them figure out the best way to make the best use of what they 

do have. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Mr. Miller is recognized. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to just sort 

of follow on with what Chairman Castle talked about. And that is, 

you know, we are always looking for the manner—I guess today 

the term is tipping point, but at what point do we get to where replication is really feasible. 

And we know that you’re working with institutions that are highly personal. I’ve been involved in schools that look like they were 

soaring and the principal had a heart attack and the programs fell 

apart. I looked at other schools where in another case the principal 

was mugged and decided that they were leaving just as we were 

starting to see turnaround in very difficult schools and very difficult environments. 

I just want to, what is the interplay here between some of the, 

you know exciting environments that you’re creating and successful 

environments that you’re creating, and we get to the idea that this 

is fundamental change. 

In your paper, Mr. Henriquez, you point out that many of these 

schools need new leadership. You know, too often what we’ve seen 

is that—the idea of change has been adopting a different reading 

program and then just sort of laying that down on top of all the 

teachers and saying, OK now this is the way we’re going to teach 

33

literacy or this is the way that we’re going to teach reading, and 

that somehow is equated with—, and it appears that it doesn’t 

work because 4 years later they’re buying another program because 

that one didn’t work. 

How do we build the capacity so that we can then extend beyond 

those successful environments that you’ve created in these partnerships, and we can really seriously think at the Federal—you know, 

if we are going to invest what may be $20, $30 or $40 billion, if 

Mr. Vander Ark’s numbers are right, and we really want to do this 

in a first-class fashion, how do you know that you have a business 

plan out there for that kind of success? Because I think you have 

created some very exciting environments, that again are also successful environments. I think excitement and success kind of go together with young people and change the manner in which they are 

asked to learn and engaged to learn. 

Let me stop there and just ask you this question of replication 

and building that internal capacity for expansion. 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. I’ll just say a couple of words about the issue 

of—we understand that the very fragile infrastructure of school 

leadership is indeed exactly that, fragile. And one of the things 

that we’ve seen especially around literacy is that we want to build 

distributive leadership so that the responsibility and onus of leadership is not built on one individual, but a team of people within 

a school building, that if for some reason if something happens to 

that principal, that there is an infrastructure that he or she can 

depend on that will then know the knowledge and the necessary 

information and strategies that are going to be useful to implementing the work in terms of the vision that individual and team 

have laid out. 

One of the things that we’re working with is the National Association for Secondary School Principals, along with the Bill and 

Melinda Gates Foundation to really figure out exactly how do you 

build this distributive leadership, particularly when it comes to 

issues around literacy. So that you’re not doing this issue of changing formats and reading programs every four or 5 years, but that 

you have a vision, a long-term vision, for how this is going to be 

implemented over the long term. 

I’m sure Tom has other words of advice. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. You’ve addressed two big, related issues. I’m 

going to try to make comments on each one. One is on the tipping 

point issue and the other is the capacity to create and sustain the 

change. 

My great hope is that a generation from now that more than 80 

percent of American kids graduate, and that a generation from now 

African-American and Hispanic kids graduate at rates that are 

comparable to their white counterparts. 

The change that I think about that needs to take place in the 

next 10 years to make that possible is at three levels. One is, I 

think we need several thousand great schools spread all over the 

United States that show what’s possible, newly created schools and 

dramatically improved schools, but thousands of proof points of 

what’s possible and what good secondary schools look like. 

34

Second, I think we need several dozen, probably three dozen districts that have made dramatic improvement in the percentage of 

students that graduate from high school ready for college. 

And third, we need at least half a dozen states, preferably big 

ones, that have really moved the needle, that have both created a 

good policy set and an intervention capacity and have seen significant increase in the number of kids graduating and the percentage 

of those children ready for college work and citizenship. 

So that’s my theory of action. Those are three things that I hope 

to help this country accomplish 10 years from now. As I think 

about the capacity necessary to reach that, we’ve begun to understand that school developers and school model providers need to 

have—need to be very prescriptive about what the school model 

looks like and they need to provide a high level of support. My 

early grants didn’t reflect that. They were pretty loosey-goosey and 

we now make grants that are quite prescriptive in terms of school 

design and support. 

Second, the states are going to have to build much more capacity. 

We are going to need much stronger state education associations 

than we have today, or education administrations that have clear 

standards and really strong data systems, and intervention capacity to help improve struggling schools and districts. 

Ms. HOWARD. I would like to build on that for just a minute. One 

of the things that we have begun doing this past year to really 

build the statewide capacity is to start training the school improvement coaches that employ by the Ohio Department of Education 

right alongside our coaches. So they’re learning all of our strategies, they’re learning the design of these schools, and then those 

school improvement coaches go out to districts far beyond the ones 

that we’re working with and they help design that work. 

The other thing that we’ve really focused on since day one is 

building the knowledge of what education has to look like in the 

communities in which we work. And we’re now focusing pretty 

heavily on building—on helping communities learn how to advocate 

for what they want and what should be in their schools. And parents talk to parents. I don’t care if you’re in an inner-city, or a suburb, or a rural area, parents are our greatest advocates for what 

should happen. And if we can get them to understand the new design of schools and if we can get them to stand up and fight for 

that, then schools will change rapidly. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Mr. Ehlers is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for 

being here. I apologize for being late, but I was in another Committee meeting trying to improve the security of this place. It’s terrible that we have to spend so much time worrying about terrorism, but it has to be done. 

Mr. Vander Ark, it is good to see you again. I enjoyed visiting 

you some years ago at your foundation. It’s good to see you’re still 

there doing good work. 

As some of you know, and as my colleagues know because I’ve 

bombarded them ad infinitum on this, I’m very strongly in favor of 

improving our math and science education throughout our nation. 

And high schools are not doing well, I am sure you’re aware of the 

35

Thames study, the more recent pieces of study and so forth. We’re 

not even doing well in the K–8 system. But at least we’re near the 

average of the developed countries. But it seems to drop steadily 

after the fourth grade, and by eighth grade, we’re well below average. High schools, we’re very near the bottom. 

I have really been pressing this issue for some time and we’ve 

done some things. As you know the Federal Government can’t solve 

all of the problems, but we have developed math science partnerships which will train teachers, and I think that is one of the keys. 

It becomes increasingly important—30 years ago when I was 

teaching at Berkeley, they did a survey and discovered that if you 

did not take advanced math in high school, it is impossible for you 

to complete, in 4 years, 95 percent of the majors at Berkeley. Now, 

Berkeley is Berkeley. But I think that’s probably true of most higher education institutions at this point. And so kids, by their decisions whether or not to take math and science in high school are 

directly affecting their academic careers in college and their professional careers after that. 

I would like your ideas on what we can do. Part of the problem, 

much of the problem may be schools where students are underperforming, maybe the school is underperforming. But even in highquality schools that would meet the standards that Mr. Vander Ark 

outlined for these exceptional schools you need, we have some of 

those in this country, most of them in the suburbs. Rural schools 

have problems, urban schools have problems. 

But I’m interested in your suggestions, and in particular a reaction to something that has been floating around here, and I see it 

in the literature too, that we should do the same thing we did after 

Sputnik, that is have another national defense education act or 

something like that. Do you think that is a good approach? What 

other ideas do you have of things that the Congress can do which 

will really spur this? I would appreciate any comments from anyone of you. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. We have lots of school choice in America. 

There’s lots of choices in high school, it is just all the wrong kinds 

of choices. We let 15 year-old kids with no adult guidance stitch together a curriculum of their own creation. And we give them a 

phone book-sized catalog of courses that vary by degree of difficulty, and we actually provide the subtle encouragement to lowincome and minority kids to take easier courses. And then we wonder why two thirds of our American kids don’t get what they need 

or deserve from the school system. It’s time for us to lead. We have 

to stand up, and the adults in educational systems need to prescribe a curriculum that will prepare students for college and work 

in citizenship. 

That’s what good schools do they make choices about the curriculum. They don’t let kids who don’t know any better decide what 

courses to take. 

So as the American Diploma Project of Achieve, Incorporated is 

encouraging, and as the State Scholars Program, the Federal Government has helped to support, both of those programs are advocating, kids ought to be in a course of study that prepares them 

for college work and citizenship. And it clearly should include 4 

years of math and science. 

36

So there’s an opportunity here for the Federal Government to 

continue to lead. States need to do more. There are only two states 

in the country now that require Algebra II, which is required to 

pass a community college placement exam in just about every state 

in the country. There are only two states that require that for graduation. So there is clearly an opportunity to lead on this front. 

What I mentioned earlier, what I’m quite excited about is the development of networks of math and science high schools. An opportunity for us to work together would be to make a commitment 

that every city in America have at least one great math science 

technology secondary school. We can do that together and we could 

get it done in 5 years, and make sure that every city in this country had a great secondary school six through 12, or 6 through 14, 

where kids left with at least a year of college credit. There is no 

reason we couldn’t do that in very short order, and then use that 

as a lever to help inform the improvement in all high schools in 

America. 

Mr. EHLERS. Let me just react to that a moment, because I don’t 

disagree with you. But the point is, that solves a shortage of engineers, scientists and so forth. But the jobs of the future at every 

level are going to demand good skills in math and science. And I 

am not talking about going into science or engineering. Perhaps 

technical jobs, but almost every job in the future is going to require 

a fairly substantial skill set in math and science. So how do we 

reach the masses? 

Mr. VANDER ARK. We reach the masses by lifting our expectations. My home state requires 2 years of math, and they don’t tell 

you what it is, so most kids take consumer math instead of Algebra 

II. So, this is one of the important things that is coming out of the 

National Governor’s Association summit. I think half the states in 

this country are going to take serious steps toward lifting their 

standards, setting a default curriculum, lifting their graduation requirements, so that at least over the next 5 years we move toward 

higher expectations in math and science. I think that’s the way 

that you reach all high schools in this country, and then we create 

examples of what is possible and how that can be done well, in an 

exciting and applied learning environment. 

Ms. HOWARD. I think, in addition to narrowing the curriculum—

and I think that that’s a really good start—one of the high schools 

with whom we are working, started out with 193 courses in their 

course catalog. And that just doesn’t work. So I think narrowing 

the curriculum is a good start. 

But the other thing that is really important is making that link 

between what they are learning in the classroom and what they 

are going to need it for later in life. And we need to find a really 

effective way to connect what students learn in the classroom. I go 

in to schools every day, and there are kids who say, ‘‘why do I have 

to learn math, or why do I have to learn science? How am I ever 

going to use that in the future’’. We have to show them how they’re 

going to use that in the future, and that’s going to require a strong 

partnership among not just the schools, but government and corporations as well to bring that relevance to the classroom learning. 

It also means that we have to think differently about how we 

award credit in high schools. You know right now, it is—you have 

37

to get a waiver for a student to earn credit for having an internship 

in a hospital where they are actually helping the medical professionals in that hospital. And it’s learning math and science skills 

at the same time. So it’s narrowing the curriculum, it is making 

relevant what they’re learning and it is also looking at the ways 

in which we use time and award credit. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you. 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. I agree with my colleagues. I think one of the 

things that we’ve seen through our research is as soon as our 

youngsters enter science and mathematics classrooms, that it’s not 

that they don’t think the content is fun; students love math and 

students love science. It’s particular—particularly when it’s innovative and it’s hands-on. But we see them disengage because they 

don’t really understand the content of the text. The ways in which 

the text or the ways in which the content is instructed, and the 

ways in which teachers design that curriculum is absolutely important in the children really understanding and engaging with that 

content. 

We’re seeing that students, particularly with science and even 

history textbooks, just can’t engage at that level. One of the ways 

in which we engage students, and more importantly how do we balance both the need to help the students improve their literacy rates 

and also balance the fact that they also need science and mathematics daily. How do we do that? Because I don’t think it’s an either/or. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you very much. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Ehlers. Mrs. Davis is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all of 

you. As a former school board member from San Diego, I’ve been 

sitting here listening to you and high-tech high obviously is a very 

good example there. But what I’m struggling with in many ways 

is what our role is. You know, what can we do here on the Committee, in Congress nationally, that makes a difference in how 

teachers teach, how young people come to school, how communities 

respond to students. And you said a number of things, and I think 

there are some wonderful examples that have been cited. 

Part of the difficulty that I see is often, you know, it’s that conundrum in a way from having something that comes top-down 

versus bottom-up. You talked about being more prescriptive with 

the support that’s there in communities and I appreciate that, 

that’s important. And yet I sometimes see a lot of resistance as a 

result of that. 

And again, I am struggling between having on a school board 

hat, which is more, you know—it’s all local versus our role here 

and what we can do. I’ve wondered as well, you know do we need 

a major initiative, No Child Left Behind obviously has its pluses, 

but it’s got some negatives as well, because it makes people shift 

gears, you know, even if they’re doing something that’s positive. I’m 

struggling with it a little bit. 

You’ve obviously seen some of the resistance, I’m sure in the 

schools. What would you consider to be the key elements that, from 

our point of view, from where we sit here today, we can promote 

that makes a difference in terms of that interaction between a 

38

teacher and a student, because I think that’s where it’s at. When 

you look at European programs, there is a lot more going on in the 

classroom. 

I’m going to lose my time here, but just anecdotally, I know as 

a school board member I used to go around to classes, and I don’t 

think this has changed that much, and I used to sit with the teacher throughout the course of the day and observe that same teacher 

teaching gifted students and non-gifted students, which we would 

call non-gifted classrooms, and there is a difference. There’s a difference in body language, a lot of things that are happening, because discipline becomes a bigger issue than what kids are getting 

in the classroom sometimes. I suspect that’s still probably a little 

bit true. 

So can you help me, what from our point of view, really promotes 

that special interaction between a student and the teacher. I’m 

very familiar with the National Board for Professional Teaching 

Standards. I don’t think we do much with that. I think we could 

and we should. I think businesses could support teachers as they 

go through that process. Is there anything else that you can add 

to that? 

I apologize Mr. Chairman, I have a question, but I’m really more 

interested in what is it that we can do? 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. Well, certainly I think the building of public will 

is absolutely critical to this effort. And what we’re seeing in terms 

of the work that we are doing in schools for a new society is that 

teachers are spending a lot more time collaborating with students 

and getting to know individual students. This is probably something that couldn’t have happened before this initiative started. 

And we’re seeing that growth. 

We’re also looking at the ways in which professionals—how do 

we train teachers as well as leaders who are coming into the system to ensure that they know how to work within these small 

school environments? 

Mrs. DAVIS. I think——

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. So it is not just the teachers who were there. 

Mrs. DAVIS. I think you would probably include instructional 

leaders, principals as well as—that really have——

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. Absolutely. How do we include that pipeline of 

people who are coming into the workforce and turns of education 

to insure that they know how to engage with the students within 

this context of small schools? 

Mrs. DAVIS. Mm-hmm. 

Ms. HOWARD. Having clearly anything that you can do to encourage the type of instruction that is prevalent and those who are National Board Certified Teachers, anything that you can do to encourage that would be very very helpful. 

If you look at the way in which most of our teachers learn to 

teach in today’s higher education, they don’t learn to teach in a 

way that National Board Certified Teachers do. They are more 

taught to deliver information and to have students come and tell 

them back what they have already given them. And that’s not the 

way. So anything that you can do to promote that. 

Also I think that it’s very important for us to look at ways to 

break the barriers between high school and higher education. 

39

There are some artificial walls that have been built between those 

systems. And as was alluded to earlier sometimes in the last couple 

of years of high school, students really could be doing more and 

pushing further. But there are some barriers to that built into the 

system, so it would be helpful. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. I’ll reiterate, four recommendations—to help 

sponsor new schools, and help provide aid to failing schools, and 

support the National Governors Association policy efforts, and support data systems. I think it’s critical that we provide teachers with 

good data about their kids, and that that data be able to follow the 

kids. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. So that the next group of teachers knows about 

the needs and gifts of each student. 

Mrs. DAVIS. I appreciate that. And also your comments earlier 

about knowing what it really takes to educate a student today. It’s 

very important, and often we don’t take all the considerations that 

we have to. We may not be able to do all of that, but we should 

know what it takes. Thank you. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Mrs. Davis. Mr. Hinojosa is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the 

participants on this important hearing that we are having. I think 

it’s been very interesting and surely educational for me. 

I, too, have served on the local school board and on the Texas 

State Board of Education, and now here on this Education Committee for 8 years. So I agree with you that it’s no secret that we 

are losing our competitive edge in producing experts in math, 

science and engineering. 

If we do not engage and provide both quality and challenging 

educational opportunities for African American and for Hispanic 

American children I think are just going to permanently cede the 

leadership in this area. 

So listening to some of the ideas that each of the foundations you 

represent have used to create what has in some cases resulted in 

some of the 100 best high schools in our nation—I know I’ve seen 

the list in 2004, and I saw the latest one in 2005—I am pleased 

to tell you that I come from South Texas, a very small area compared to San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, but it is 

very rural. And we have one of those top 100 high schools. It was 

eighth best in the country last year, and is in the top 40 now. 

Forty percent of the children in this math and science Academy 

in South Texas Independent School District are on the free lunch 

program. There is a lot of difference in that school versus the one 

in Highland Park in Dallas where there are no children on a free 

lunch program. And if you take a look at differences, the makeup 

of the children—of those schools, ours has 80 percent Hispanic children, Highlands may have one or 2 percent Hispanics, mostly nonHispanics. 

So there are big differences, but there’s definitely some similarity, and that is they have a lot of teachers with Master’s degrees 

who are able to really get involved with the children, with the students, and turn them around from the idea that you can only take 

40

the very minimal courses. Instead they’re going one and a half 

hours longer than the normal programs that we have. And these 

are public schools that I am referring to in Mercedes, Texas, South 

Texas ISD, Math and Science Academy. 

They are bused from as far as Brownsville to Mercedes, and as 

far as San Isidro and Edinburg to Mercedes. It seems to me that 

those programs have some other components that each of the three 

of you have mentioned. Very good teachers, challenging programs, 

longer hours than the normal, and higher expectations. 

So look at the model I know in Mercedes, and look at who was 

feeding into that program, into the math and science colleges, and 

it’s the students in the Gear-Up program. Gear-Up is working for 

both the African American and for the Hispanic children. It’s funded at about, a little—slightly over $300 million and has a lots of 

success stories. 

Why couldn’t each of your foundations and others match the government and give us more of the programs that take a whole cohort of students, a whole classroom, rich, middle income and poor, 

and do what that program is doing. 

Look at creating these regional schools. I call them regional because the one in South Texas ISD is considered to be regional because there are 28 school districts feeding into it, and do a six 

state—or as many states as you want to. But you see, it’s not just 

for the urban, it’s also for the rural like we have. And it puts to 

bed the myth that children of United Farm workers and migrants 

cannot learn. It’s that they’re given the tools, the computers, the 

teachers, the challenging, and they learn about team learning that 

we use. 

It seems to me that there is hope, and we need to look at what’s 

making those top 100 high schools work, and put it to use here in 

Washington. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman CASTLE. Representative Hinojosa, I was just at South 

Texans a couple of weeks ago, not two, a quick story about it. A 

school in Donna, called Idea, it’s a K–12 international baccalaureate school. And like school that you mentioned, it is proving 

that with a rigorous curriculum that is well taught, and a supportive environment, that low income kids can and should be doing 

serious intellectual work when they’re 17 and 18. 

We hope to help create a dozen more of schools like Idea, and its sister school, Uplift, in Dallas. We’ve committed over $50 million 

creating great high schools in Texas and plan to make additional 

investments. We look forward to working with you, this Committee 

and others in that work. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. Let me make a comment about Gear-Up. GearUp provides great services to kids, but it is a set of services that 

ought to be central, not ancillary to high schools. It’s an add-on, 

when in fact those college preparatory, guidance and academic 

services ought to be the core, the mission core of high schools that 

we design around, not add-on for some kids. 

So we would be happy to match an effort to try to take those 

services and to help schools implement them. I mean, that’s really 

the essence of our Texas State Project with the community foundaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:46 Nov 16, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\21648 NNIXON
41

tion of Texas, to help schools take that college ready goal and rigorous curriculum, and a set of guidance services that provide individualized support for kids, and to make those services and activities central to the high school mission and not an add-on. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. But Tom, what’s important though in the GearUp programs is that it’s not for the middle and upper income children. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. We only work with low income kids and low 

income schools. So I share——

Mr. HINOJOSA. Well, I just feel that Gear Up has a way of including a lot of African Americans and Hispanic children, and that’s 

what I like about that. 

And second, I like the fact that they have been successfully putting them on to the path of math, science and engineering. And the 

schools that have Gear-Up in Texas that I am familiar with. So 

that answers the problem that we are all concerned about, that we 

don’t have the students feeding into that pipeline to go to the community college or to the university and study engineering, math 

and science and information technology. 

I wish we could talk more. 

Chairman CASTLE. You can certainly talk more, perhaps after 

this hearing is over. Maybe you want to offer to take them to lunch 

or something of that nature. 

At this time, we would like to welcome Mr. Fattah back to the 

Committee. He was previously on the Committee, he just can’t 

seem to stay away. And I offer him the opportunity to have a discussion with the witnesses for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FATTAH. Thank you. This is actually a pleasure for me, because my fondest days here in the Congress were as a Member of 

this Committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the ranking 

member. 

And to follow onto this whole dialog about Gear-Up, which is 

what I guess—as the architect for the Gear-Up program, and I remember the day we passed it in this Committee—there was support on both sides of the aisle. I am happy to report this morning 

that my new Committee, the Appropriations Committee, has just 

marked up the education bill, and notwithstanding other recommendations, they have decided to fully fund Gear-Up. And this 

Committee has moved out legislation to re-authorize it. 

And I want to use that as the basis for my comment, which is 

that one of the things that I’m suggesting in re-authorization of 

Gear-Up is that we allow for early college opportunities, which is 

you know something is happening now with many of the Gear-Up 

programs, but I think that we can do even more. 

I know, Tom, that you have been interested in this whole issue 

for a while, and there’s important research on it. We’ve done a lot 

in Philadelphia in this regard. I think it is critically important that 

we in the Gear-Up reauthorization look at early college in a way 

in which it is built on to some of the other things that we’re doing. 

I do want to ask a question, because I know that you’ve looked 

at a lot of this around the country, and as I look at it, I just want 

to make sure that I am not missing something. Have you found 

states where in low-achieving schools versus high-achieving 

schools, that children are given the same quality teachers, the 

42

same access to computers, or similar class sizes? Or is it true that 

in every instance that we see a very significant difference between 

the resource allocations between high-achievement and lowachievement schools? 

And if that is so, I guess my point Tom is, is it as important as 

creating—moving through your kind of work schedule that you 

have laid out, which is ambitious, but to also point out to the country that part of the difficulty is that states seem to have some selective amnesia when it comes to how to make schools work. 

They seem to figure out how to make them work in wealthy suburban areas, and somehow can’t seem to provide the same level of 

resources in rural and urban areas in terms of the quality of teachers, the access to educational material, and this has been a matter 

that has been litigated across the country, and some 49 states. I 

know that the foundations are doing great work, but I mean if you 

want to get the systematic change across the board, at some level 

we have to deal with the structure of how public education deals 

low income children in rural and urban areas comment by some behind the eight-ball. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. It’s a difficult issue. It’s a great question. Our 

sense is that there are four big policy levers, and that we advocate 

for college-ready standards, for strong accountability, for equitable 

school choice, and for adequate and flexible funding. 

That means funding that represents or recognizes the need of the 

children that attend a particular school. And you’re right, there are 

big differences within states of the distribution of human resources. 

There are even bigger differences within districts. 

Mr. FATTAH. Right. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. Paul Hill and Marguerite Rosa’s recent work 

illustrated that while there are big differences between districts 

within states, it is even more significant within districts when you 

look at high poverty and low poverty schools, and the total staff 

budget that is allocated to those places. 

Mr. FATTAH. Either in district or in states, shouldn’t we be talking about a more fair level? 

Mr. VANDER ARK. Absolutely. 

Mr. FATTAH. This is my point, one the things that may be useful 

for either Carnegie or Gates or someone who’s got some national 

scope and some credibility, is maybe do a costing out study to say 

what it would cost——

Mr. VANDER ARK. Right. 

Mr. FATTAH [continuing]. To provide an adequate education for 

a child in Philadelphia, Mississippi, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 

or New York City. I mean to kind of get past the rhetorical discussion, and to really think about how to lay out so that state policymakers or Federal policymakers, or even as these matters are 

being litigated——

Mr. VANDER ARK. Right. 

Mr. FATTAH [continuing]. There will be some bases to think 

about what the actual costs might be, because in Texas you can go 

from districts where they spend $4000 per pupil to where they are 

spending $24,000 per pupil. I don’t know how you’re going to end 

up with a comparable result with that wide a disparity. 

43

Mr. VANDER ARK. We launched what I think is the largest school 

finance project ever assembled. It is called the School Finance Redesign Project. It’s centered at the University of Washington. It’s 

a series of 10 linked studies that we hope will develop our understanding of how education finance can work more efficiently and effectively, and I hope it will begin to address this issue of adequate 

and effective distribution. 

Mr. FATTAH. Well, I think it is critically important. You’ve been 

doing great work and this teacher quality is at the top of the list. 

That’s the very essence of it. If you are a poor kid in this country, 

and Carnegie, you financed the research that showed that if you 

get effective teachers, then all other things to the contrary—I 

mean, nothing else matters. I mean, the kid will do well. The least 

likely kid to see a qualified teacher in our country is an African 

American or Latino youngster. They can go to high school in any 

of our states, and go through their whole high school year and 

never have a math or science teacher who majored or minored in 

the subject that they’re teaching. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. Let me go back to your issue of distribution 

of human resources, which is closely tied to quality. 

Mr. FATTAH. It is also tied to money. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. It is. 

Mr. FATTAH. Yes. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. So this weekend I will be with the Aspen 

urban superintendents and that group of 10 of the leading superintendents will have at the top of their list the distribution of all 

of the human resources. So what you pointed out is at the top of 

the list for urban superintendents. 

I just want to point out that it’s a difficult, complicated problem 

that is a function of state budgets, of local budgets, of state policy 

and of local employment agreements. It’s going to take tough work, 

state-by-state, to help untangle this so that we can actually get, for 

the least advantaged kids in our society, access to the highest quality teachers in great schools. 

Mr. FATTAH. Well, I’m a guest here of the Committee. So I won’t 

belabor the point. I do thank you for your work that you’re doing, 

and I encourage you as you as you go forward. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Fattah, you’re a welcomed 

guest. We’re not going to have a formal second round of questions, 

but Ms. Woolsey did have a couple of things that she wanted to 

state, maybe a question or two, and I want to provide her that 

time. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you Chaka 

for coming, and if you loved us here so much, why did you leave 

us? 

[Laughter.] 

Ms. WOOLSEY. But thank you for what you’re doing on the Appropriations Committee. I mean we authorize and if the appropriators don’t deliver, we’re in trouble. And you deliver. Thank you 

very much. 

You know, I have to tell you, when we talk about adult expectations and parental involvement—I raised four kids. My baby’s 38 

and she has three older brothers, so you know I’m through raising 

44

them in that way. But I have one son that I am always using as 

an example, and someday he’s going to realize that and tell me to 

cool it because I talk about him up here a lot. 

First of all, when he was in high school, he was an All-American—well no, he was a really good football player. When he was 

in college, he was an All-American in his junior and senior year. 

So he’s a big, good kid. He was always the captain of the team. 

He’s a leader. All right. 

He graduated in 1985. A couple of years before that, I think he 

was a junior and we were downtown trying to find clothes for him. 

He’s a big man, so it’s hard to find clothes for them. And I found 

a shirt and I said, ‘‘Honey’’—because I always call my kids those 

things—‘‘Honey, look at this, look at this.’’ ‘‘Oh. mother, are you 

kidding? That looks like a smart kid’s shirt.’’ But I said, ‘‘But 

you’re smart.’’ ‘‘I don’t want it—no, no, I’m sorry.’’ So now he’s a 

college graduate, and he’s a very successful young man, a father 

and he provides very well for his children. That was my kid, when 

it wasn’t cool to be smart. 

We have such a job ahead of us to make being smart what it is 

supposed to be. Believe me, I get it. But it’s parents that have to 

get it. And when we talk about Gear-Up, and we talk about—when 

I talk about girls in science and math, I’ve got legislation called GoGirl, and what it is about is getting parents involved at the very 

early ages, instead of thinking that isn’t where their kid should go, 

and being part of the program. That’s what Gear-Up does. 

So how do you—because you’re doing it right. Are your programs 

set up so that these parents are already engaged so that the child 

can’t be part of it? Or are you bringing the parents along with the 

student? Could you help us with that? How about you? 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. Yes. I think, as you know from your experience 

with your children that as soon as they are old enough to outgrow 

sitting on your lap, there is a huge disconnect between how engaged you can be. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. And you can imagine how quickly that big 

guy——

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. Especially if you have big kids. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. But he still sits on my lap, right——

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. This is a problem that we have been looking at. 

I mean, one of the core principles was in the schools and society 

to really try and engage parents into, and to engage communities 

at large but to ensure that their parents are a critical piece of the 

reform effort. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Then, how do you do it with parents who aren’t 

already educated, I mean? 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. That’s exactly right. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. I was wondering that. 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. One of the things they were working with is 

groups like the National Urban League, who have a number of affiliates around the country, and who have tentacles out to parent 

communities to help them understand the work they need to do 

with their older students, that it’s not just enough to ensure that 

you’re being a good early childhood parent, but that you need to be 

a parent over and over and over again, right through 12th grade, 

45

and right through college. And even when you go out shopping for 

shirts. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Mm-hmm. 

Mr. HENRIQUEZ. And even when you go out shopping for shirts. 

But it’s something that we’re trying to figure out in terms of what 

are the key critical ways in which you can have conversations with 

your students around academic work. 

One of the ways in which—and I have a 15-year-old daughter, 

and I barely see her work. It is not because I’m not interested, it’s 

because it’s just that age in which students really want to be very 

independent and independent learners. And so one of the strategies 

that we can use as parents and how can we use them with students, we’re looking at the work at Johns Hopkins that Joyce Epstein has done for a number of years in terms of looking at how 

parents and students work together and ways that we can support 

that, not just in early grades, but how do we build on that and how 

do we build on this continuum? 

So we hope to have some critical strategies very soon. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you. Anybody else? Actually, I believe it’s 

because your 15 year-old is a teenager. And I swear that I became 

humble enough to become a Member of Congress after raising four 

teenagers. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. All of the new schools that we fund that have 

advisories, it’s a system of distributed counseling where there is 

one adult at school that takes responsibility for a group of students, usually between 15 and 20 of them. They know how they’re 

doing in every class. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Mm-hmm. 

Mr. VANDER ARK. They help to provide some of the counseling at 

the school. They inform students when it’s time to start thinking 

about taking the PSAT and then the SAT. And they do some of the 

college awareness. 

It works a little bit different at every school, but it does provide 

an important conduit for parents so that they are—like in elementary school, there’s one person you can call that knows your son or 

daughter well, and is up-to-date on how they’re doing in every subject. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. One adult? 

Ms. HOWARD. Another thing that we have found is that we are 

working with parents who may not have been successful in high 

school themselves. And a lot of them don’t have a picture of what 

it takes for their student to be successful. So we’ve tried to start 

in the areas of literacy and we’ve found that if you can sit down 

with a parent and a student and change the way the conversations 

happen at schools, rather than the parent-teacher meeting by the 

teacher sitting in the front of the room and 40 parents come in and 

they say hello, and then you walk out and go to the next room. 

We actually, as part of the advisory system, started building with 

these students and parents a clear plan, so that we can sit down 

and the student can say to the parent, ‘‘Mom, this is how I am 

doing in reading now. I am at this reading level.’’ And the teacher 

says, ‘‘And this is where the student needs to be, and this is our 

plan for getting them there.’’ Then we have something specific to 

46

talk to those parents about. Not a nebulous high school experience, 

but a very specific roadmap for getting from point A to point B. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. And it could possibly mean that that parent would 

put less pressure on the child for doing extracurricular things so 

that they can study. 

Ms. HOWARD. Right. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. OK. I’ve taken up way more than my time. Thank 

you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman CASTLE. Thank you, Ms. Woolsey. We’ll bring the 

hearing to a close. 

I would just like to thank each of you for your perspective on 

what I would consider to be a significant problem, for your own 

personal involvement and engagement, and also for the organizations that you represent, which have been very generous in terms 

of what they have done to try to help with this problem. 

I, like you, really feel that we’re coming to grips with this, and 

I appreciate what NGA has done, I appreciate what you’re doing, 

and I feel that we are beginning to make moves in the right direction. Hearings like this are important. 

Just so that you know, we are having a series of these hearings 

to try to get our arms around the subject. We don’t have any legislation prepared. We may never prepare legislation on this. But we 

are vitally interested in what we can do to try to push the envelope, as they say. 

So we thank you so much for taking the time to be here and for 

your insight into the problems, and helping all of us understanding 

it better as well. 

And with that, we stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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