[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE BUDGET AND POLICY PROPOSALS OF
THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 9, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-9
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce
Available via the World Wide Web:
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Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin George Miller, California,
Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Senior Democratic Member
California Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Judy Biggert, Illinois Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Virginia
Duncan Hunter, California Lynn C. Woolsey, California
David P. Roe, Tennessee Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Tim Walberg, Michigan John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
Richard L. Hanna, New York David Wu, Oregon
Todd Rokita, Indiana Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Larry Bucshon, Indiana Susan A. Davis, California
Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Timothy H. Bishop, New York
Kristi L. Noem, South Dakota David Loebsack, Iowa
Martha Roby, Alabama Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada
Dennis A. Ross, Florida
Mike Kelly, Pennsylvania
[Vacant]
Barrett Karr, Staff Director
Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 9, 2011.................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Foxx, Hon. Virginia, a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina, questions submitted for the record 59
Hanna, Hon. Richard L., a Representative in Congress from the
State of New York, questions submitted for the record...... 60
Kline, Hon. John, Chairman, Committee on Education and the
Workforce.................................................. 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Questions submitted for the record....................... 56
McCarthy, Hon. Carolyn, a Representative in Congress from the
State of New York, questions submitted for the record...... 61
Miller, Hon. George, senior Democratic member, Committee on
Education and the Workforce................................ 4
Prepared statement of.................................... 6
Noem, Hon. Kristi L., a Representative in Congress from the
State of South Dakota, questions submitted for the record.. 60
Payne, Hon. Donald M., a Representative in Congress from the
State of New Jersey, submission for the record:
Towns, Hon. Edolphus, a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York, prepared statement of........... 7
Petri, Hon. Thomas E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Wisconsin, questions submitted for the record..... 58
Rokita, Hon. Todd, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, questions submitted for the record....... 60
Scott, Hon. Robert C. ``Bobby,'' a Representative in Congress
from the State of Virginia, questions submitted for the
record..................................................... 60
Statement of Witnesses:
Duncan, Hon. Arne, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education... 8
Prepared statement of.................................... 12
Responses to questions submitted......................... 63
THE BUDGET AND POLICY PROPOSALS OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
----------
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Washington, DC
----------
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:39 p.m., in room
2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Kline [chairman
of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Kline, Petri, McKeon, Biggert,
Platts, Foxx, Hunter, Roe, Thompson, Walberg, DesJarlais,
Hanna, Bucshon, Gowdy, Barletta, Noem, Roby, Heck, Kelly,
Miller, Kildee, Payne, Andrews, Scott, Woolsey, Hinojosa,
Tierney, Kucinich, Wu, Holt, Davis, Grijalva, Bishop, Loebsack,
and Hirono.
Staff Present: Katherine Bathgate, Press Assistant; James
Bergeron, Director of Education and Human Services Policy;
Colette Beyer, Press Secretary--Education; Kirk Boyle, General
Counsel; Casey Buboltz, Coalitions and Member Services
Coordinator; Heather Couri, Deputy Director of Education and
Human Services Policy; Daniela Garcia, Professional Staff
Member; Ed Gilroy, Director of Workforce Policy; Jimmy Hopper,
Legislative Assistant; Amy Raaf Jones, Education Policy Counsel
and Senior Advisor; Barrett Karr, Staff Director; Brian Melnyk,
Legislative Assistant; Brian Newell, Press Secretary-Labor;
Mandy Schaumburg, Education and Human Services Oversight
Counsel; Alex Sollberger, Communications Director; Linda
Stevens, Chief Clerk/Assistant to the General Counsel; Alissa
Strawcutter, Deputy Clerk; Tylease Alli, Minority Hearing
Clerk; Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director; John English,
Minority Presidential Fellow; Jamie Fasteau, Minority Deputy
Director of Education Policy; Ruth Friedman, Minority Director
of Education Policy; Brian Levin, Minority New Media Press
Assistant; Kara Marchione, Minority Senior Education Policy
Advisor; Megan O'Reilly, Minority General Counsel; Julie
Peller, Minority Deputy Staff Director; Helen Pajcic, Minority
Education Policy Advisor; Alexandria Ruiz, Minority
Administrative Assistant to Director of Education Policy;
Melissa Salmanowitz, Minority Press Secretary; and Laura
Schifter, Minority Senior Education and Disability Advisor.
Chairman Kline. A quorum being present the committee will
come to order.
Well, good afternoon to our guests, and welcome back,
Secretary Duncan, to the Education and the Workforce Committee.
It is nice to have you back. We realize your time is valuable
and we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today
regarding the President's budget proposal and the current state
of education in the Nation.
Our country is facing a historic fiscal crisis. After years
of neglect and mismanagement, our national debt has exceeded
$14 trillion and continues to climb at a rapid pace. Despite
this year's projected budget deficit of $1.6 trillion, the
administration has put forward a plan for the next decade that
includes $8.7 trillion in new spending, $1.5 trillion in new
taxes, and $13 trillion in new debt. Proposing a budget that
once again spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too
much is not the kind of leadership that America deserves.
I am disappointed to see this lack of leadership in the
administration's budget proposal for the Department of
Education which includes a request for $48.8 billion in so-
called ``non-Pell discretionary spending.'' This is a new term
of phrase for Washington, and it attempts to conceal the true
costs associated with the proposal. Behind this gimmick lies an
additional request for $28.6 billion in discretionary spending
for the Pell Grant program as well as $12.6 billion in
mandatory costs, a total request of $41.2 billion for the
program.
Here is the bottom line. The Department is asking to spend
nearly $90 billion during the next fiscal year, a 31 percent
increase in the Department's budget from the time the President
took office. I shouldn't have to tell anyone here that this
kind of spending is unsustainable and keeps Pell Grants on the
path to bankruptcy.
We have to make tough choices now to ensure this important
program remains available for the students who need it most.
Winning in the future is a goal we all share but it can't be
won through record spending and record debt. It is time we
change the status quo not only in how we approach our fiscal
future but also in the way we support our Nation's education
system.
It is no secret our current education system is failing. We
all know the statistics of high school and college dropouts and
test scores that leave students unprepared to tackle the
challenges they will confront both in the classroom and in the
workplace.
Secretary Duncan, I want to reiterate my appreciation for
your ongoing efforts to reach across the aisle and across town
for the betterment of the Nation's classrooms. Although we may
not see eye to eye on all things, you and I share a belief that
the current system is broken and is in desperate need of
repair.
As we continue working on reforms that focus on what is
best for students, parents, teachers, and communities, we must
first answer a fundamental question: What is the proper role of
the Federal Government in education?
Despite the near tripling of overall per-pupil funding
since 1965, national academic performance has not improved.
Math and reading scores have largely gone flat, graduation
rates have stagnated, and researchers have found serious
shortcomings with many Federal education programs.
Additionally, the volume of rules and reporting
requirements associated with Federal spending has skyrocketed.
During a recent hearing in this committee, we learned from
school officials and local leaders that the regulatory burden
created by Federal spending often outweighs any potential
benefits. The Race to the Top, while well intended, has
exacerbated this tension, leaving schools and States even more
frustrated with Federal intervention.
The Department's activism in higher education is also
troubling. As you know, Mr. Secretary, a bipartisan coalition
of Members believes that gainful employment regulations that
the Department is working on are the wrong approach to
encouraging accountability and transparency in higher
education. I strongly urge you, especially in light of last
month's overwhelming bipartisan vote, to withdraw this job-
destroying proposal.
The time has come to chart a different course. As we work
to answer the question about the appropriate role for the
Federal Government in education, one thing is for sure, it must
be less costly and less intrusive. Across the Nation, Americans
have demanded Washington make tough choices and real sacrifices
to get our budget in order and put our Nation back on the path
to long-term prosperity. The day of reckoning is here, and the
time to demonstrate the leadership our country desperately
needs is now.
I look forward to your testimony, Mr. Secretary, and to
working with you in the days ahead. I would now like to
recognize the distinguished senior Democrat on the committee,
Mr. Miller, for his opening remarks.
[The statement of Chairman Kline follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. John Kline, Chairman,
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Good afternoon to our guests and welcome back, Secretary Duncan, to
the Education and the Workforce Committee. We realize your time is
valuable and we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today
regarding the president's budget proposal and the current state of
education in the nation.
Our country is facing a historic fiscal crisis. After years of
neglect and mismanagement, our national debt has exceeded $14 trillion
and continues to climb at a rapid pace.
Despite this year's projected budget deficit of $1.6 trillion, the
administration has put forward a plan for the next decade that includes
$8.7 trillion in new spending, $1.6 trillion in new taxes, and $13
trillion in new debt. Proposing a budget that once again spends too
much, taxes too much, and borrows too much is not the kind of
leadership America deserves.
I am disappointed to see this lack of leadership in the
administration's budget proposal for the Department of Education, which
includes a request for $48.8 billion in so-called ``non-Pell
discretionary spending.'' This is a new turn of phrase for Washington
that attempts to conceal the true costs associated with this proposal.
Behind this gimmick lies an additional request for $28.6 billion in
discretionary spending for the Pell Grant program, as well as $12.6
billion in mandatory costs--a total request of $41.2 billion for the
program. Here is the bottom line: the department is asking to spend
nearly $90 billion during the next fiscal year--a 31 percent increase
in the department's budget from the time the president took office.
I shouldn't have to tell you that this kind of spending is
unsustainable and keeps Pell Grants on the path to bankruptcy. We have
to make tough choices now to ensure this important program remains
available for the students who need it most.
Winning the future is a goal we all share, but it can't be won
through record spending and record debt. It is time we changed the
status quo, not only in how we approach our fiscal future, but also in
the way we support our nation's education system.
It is no secret our current education system is failing. We all
know the statistics of high school and college dropouts and test scores
that leave students unprepared to tackle the challenges they will
confront both in the classroom and in the workplace.
Secretary Duncan, I want to reiterate my appreciation of your
ongoing efforts to reach across the aisle for the betterment of the
nation's classrooms. Although we may not always see eye to eye, you and
I share a belief that the current system is broken and in desperate
need of repair. As we continue to work on reforms that focus on what's
best for students, parents, teachers, and communities, we must first
answer a fundamental question: What is the proper role of the federal
government in education?
Despite the near tripling of overall per pupil funding since 1965,
national academic performance has not improved. Math and reading scores
have largely gone flat, graduation rates have stagnated, and
researchers have found serious shortcomings with many federal education
programs.
Additionally, the volume of rules and reporting requirements
associated with federal spending has skyrocketed. During a recent
hearing in this Committee, we learned from school officials and local
leaders that the regulatory burden created by federal spending often
outweighs any potential benefits. Race to the Top, while well intended,
has exacerbated this tension, leaving schools and states even more
frustrated with federal intervention in our classrooms.
The department's activism in higher education is also troubling. As
you know, Mr. Secretary, a bipartisan coalition of members believes the
gainful employment regulations are the wrong approach to encouraging
accountability and transparency in higher education. I strongly urge
you, especially in light of last month's overwhelmingly bipartisan
vote, to withdraw this job-destroying proposal.
The time has come to chart a different course. As we work to answer
the question about the appropriate role for the federal government in
education, one thing is for sure: it must be less costly and less
intrusive.
Across the nation, Americans have demanded Washington make tough
choices and real sacrifices to get our budget in order and put our
nation back on the path to long-term prosperity. The day of reckoning
is here, and the time to demonstrate the leadership our country
desperately needs is now.
I look forward to your testimony, Secretary Duncan, and to working
with you in the days ahead. I would now like to recognize the
distinguished senior Democratic member, George Miller, for his opening
remarks.
______
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome back, Mr.
Secretary. This is the fourth time we have had the privilege of
having you before this committee since you were named Secretary
of Education. Each time you have told us about the work that
the Obama administration is doing to help our students succeed
and our country prosper. You and President Obama have already
shown us that you are ready to lead, ready to set the bar high,
and ready to demand the best. This means starting with our
youngest learners and helping at every step along the way.
The President's most recent budget makes it clear that
quality education has to start well before our children enter
the doors of elementary school. It makes important investments
in early childhood education because investing in our youngest
learners is one of the smartest investments we can make.
Programs like Head Start ensure that children are on the right
pathway, with a solid foundation for success.
In addition, the proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund
would increase the number of low-income children arriving at
kindergarten with the skills they need to succeed by spurring
better standards and quality in early learning settings.
The President has also outlined an ambitious goal to have
the world's highest college graduation rate by the year 2020.
To meet that goal, it is imperative that we continue to invest
in our Nation's college students through Pell Grants and other
forms of student aid, and we need to encourage colleges and
States to partner in initiatives to ensure that students not
only enter but that they graduate from 2-year and 4-year
institutions. Especially in this economy, we have to keep the
commitment to students. We used to lead the world in college
graduates. Now we are shamefully ranking below other
competitive countries. This can change and it should.
But before we even begin to have the conversation about
college, we need to ensure that our students are learning in
the elementary schools, succeeding in middle school, and
graduating from high school.
Secretary Duncan, Chairman Kline and I have been part of
several of the bipartisan meetings between the House and the
Senate to discuss the future of the reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. These meetings have
been productive. They have been engaging. And most importantly,
they have been encouraging that we will be able to work in a
bipartisan fashion to rewrite No Child Left Behind in this
session.
Mr. Secretary, I don't need to remind you of the importance
of that reauthorization in this year. In fact, I bet you will
probably be telling us about the importance of the
reauthorization this year. I think it is critical. I think as
we have listened to the hearings that the chairman and the
committee have put together over the last several weeks, it is
becoming clearer and clearer that this law is no longer
sufficient to fully engage local communities, students, and
families in the future of their education; that it is too
burdensome and it is outdated in a number of ways.
Every witness we have had has been committed to making sure
that poor minority children are given the full opportunity of a
first-class education. But many of the ways that we measure
that today do not reflect what is going on in many of the
communities across the country. And we all know the statistics.
We rank 25th in math, 14th in reading, and 17th in science
among the industrialized nations.
The most recent NAEP scores found that only 21 percent of
our high school seniors performed at or above proficient
levels. That is why we need the authorization. We have got to
change those outcomes. We also know that employers are
demanding a more qualified workforce than is currently
available. Our children deserve more, and our country deserves
more. Inaction is one of the biggest threats to the future of
this country, to our economic stability, and to our global
competitiveness. We can't be sitting on our hands. It is time
for the kind of change that you and the President have
outlined.
The U.S. has not fallen in international rankings because
we have gotten worse. We have fallen behind because we have
stagnated while other countries have accelerated. Our top 10
percent of students are able to compete internationally, while
poor or minority students have been allowed to fall flat. If we
don't hold our schools accountable for all of these children in
our classrooms, we will fail in those rankings and as a
society. There is no excuse for letting this continue in a
country as great as ours.
It is time that we decide that, as a Nation, we can no
longer afford to stay just average. We can't afford to lose a
generation of children because our best intentions don't work
as well as they should have. We need a change, and our Federal
education policy isn't a mystery to most people. We have to
update the law and respond to the student and national needs
through college- and career-ready standards. We need to
modernize teaching and the learning workforce and recognize the
teachers and leaders as the professionals that they are. We
need to reevaluate the Federal role in education, as we
discussed last week. We need to maintain accountability, but we
must provide States and local districts more flexibility in how
they appropriately address those needs and achieve those
outcomes.
I know that we can get this right. Our students can't
afford to wait any longer, and I look forward to hearing you.
And thank you for taking your time to come and brief the
committee.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman.
[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Senior Democratic Member,
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And welcome back, Mr. Secretary.
This is the fourth time we've had the privilege of having you
before this Committee since you were named Secretary of Education.
Each time, you've told us about the work the Obama administration
is doing to help our students succeed and our country prosper.
You and President Obama have already shown us you are ready to
lead, ready to set the bar high and ready to demand the best.
This means starting with our youngest learners and helping at every
step along the way.
The President's most recent budget makes it very clear that quality
education has to start well before our children enter the doors of
elementary school.
It makes important investments in early childhood education because
investing in our youngest learners is one of the smartest investments
we can make.
Programs like Head Start ensure our children are on the right
pathway with a solid foundation for success.
In addition, the proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund would
increase the number of low-income children arriving at kindergarten
with the skills they need to succeed by spurring better standards and
quality in early learning settings.
The President has also outlined an ambitious goal to have the
world's highest college graduation rate by the year 2020.
To meet this goal, it is imperative that we continue to invest in
our nation's college students through Pell grants and other forms of
student aid.
And we need to encourage colleges and states to partner in
initiatives to ensure that students not only enter, but graduate from
college.
Especially in this economy, we have to keep this commitment to
students. We used to lead the world in college graduates, now we're
shamefully ranking below other competitive countries.
This can change and it should.
But before we can even begin to have a conversation about college,
we have to ensure our students are learning in elementary school,
succeeding in middle school and graduating high school.
Secretary Duncan, Chairman Kline and I have all been part of
several Big 8 meetings with our colleagues from the Senate about the
future of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act.
These meetings have been productive. They've been engaging. And
most importantly, they've been encouraging that we will be able to work
in a bipartisan way to rewrite the education law in this country.
Mr. Secretary, I don't need to remind you how important it is that
we get to the ESEA reauthorization this year. In fact, I bet you'll be
telling us about that very soon.
We all know the statistics by now.
We rank 25th in math, 14th in reading and 17th in science among
other industrialized countries.
The most recent NAEP results found only 21 percent of high school
seniors performed at or above the proficient level.
We also know that employers are demanding a more qualified
workforce than is available.
Our children deserve more. Our country deserves more.
Inaction here is one of the biggest threats to the future of this
country, to our economic stability and our global competitiveness. We
can't be sitting on our hands.
It is time for real change.
The U.S. has not fallen in international rankings because we have
gotten worse--we've fallen behind because we have stagnated while other
countries have accelerated.
Our top 10 percent of students are able to compete internationally
while poor and minority students have been allowed to fall flat.
If we don't hold our schools accountable for ALL the children in
their classrooms, we fail.
There are no excuses for letting this continue in a country as
great as ours.
It is time we decide as a nation that we can no longer afford to
stay just average.
We can't afford to lose a generation of children because our best
intentions didn't work as well as they should have.
What needs to change in our federal education policy isn't a
mystery.
We have to update the law to respond to student and national needs
through college and career-ready standards.
We need to modernize the teaching and learning workforce and
recognize teachers and leaders as the professionals they are.
And we need to reevaluate the federal role in education, as we
discussed last week, we must maintain accountability, but provide
states and districts more flexibility where appropriate.
I know we can get this right. Our students can't afford for us to
wait any longer.
I look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Secretary, about how we can
get this country back on track and what we can do to help students
succeed.
I yield back.
______
Chairman Kline. Pursuant to committee rule 7(c), all
committee members will be permitted to submit written
statements to be included in the permanent hearing record.
Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 14
days to allow statements, questions for the record, and other
extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be
submitted in the official hearing record.
[The statement of Mr. Towns, submitted by Mr. Payne,
follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Edolphus Towns, a Representative in Congress
From the State of New York
Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member Miller, thank you for convening
today's hearing on the President's Proposed FY12 Budget for the
Department of Education. Secretary Duncan, thank you so much for
testifying before the committee today.
I would like to start by expressing my support for the
Administration's Education budget request. The President's proposed
budget reflects the need to address the serious deficit facing our
country without completely gutting vital programs that provide for the
instruction of our children. In addition to programs designed to ensure
quality education for all young students, the proposed FY12 budget
would expand the Pell Grant program over the next 10 years, giving
qualified undergraduate and graduate students financial help to seek a
degree. The FY 12 budget would improve the way we approach education in
a number of other ways. An additional $1.35 billion is set aside for
Race to the Top awards for deserving state and local school districts.
The proposed budget ensures $900 million is provided for the important
task of helping States and local education agencies turn around their
5,000 lowest-performing schools over the next 5 years through the
School Turnaround Grants program. The Head Start program would receive
$8.1 billion, which is an $866 million increase over last year's
budget. This would allow programs across the country to continue to
provide services that will allow for 967,000 low-income children to
reach their full potential in their education.
However, I am deeply discouraged to see that despite the
improvement in funding for the Pell Grant program, the cuts proposed to
the year-round Pell program drastically change the educational
experience for our nation's students. The budget proposes an increase
of $43.9 billion in new mandatory grant funding over the next ten
years, however, year-round Pell grants are proposed to be eliminated to
pay for this increase. This will result in Pell students not having the
option to take summer courses. In addition, the grant would be paid for
by eliminating the Stafford loan subsidy for graduate students. Under
current law, the government pays the interest on Stafford loans while
graduate students are pursuing their education. We should be promoting
policies that encourage students to pursue higher learning, rather than
penalizing them for doing so.
Rather than propose cuts that would add financial burden to already
needy students, we should be working together to ensure that those who
seek a higher education can feel secure in knowing that we are going to
make college more affordable and attainable for all.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield the balance of my time.
______
Chairman Kline. Before I introduce very briefly somebody
who to this committee really needs no introduction, I just want
to make an administrative announcement. The Secretary has a
hard stop time at 5 o'clock, so I would encourage my colleagues
to abide by the 5-minute rule as we go through. We will, of
course, be affording the Secretary as much time as he needs to
give his testimony and then try to keep it moving so all
members have a chance to ask the Secretary questions.
The Honorable Arne Duncan is the current U.S. Secretary of
Education, having been confirmed by the U.S. Senate in January
of 2009. Prior to his appointment as Secretary of Education Mr.
Duncan served as the chief executive officer of the Chicago
Public Schools from June 2001 through December 2008, becoming
the longest-serving big-city education superintendent in the
country. And congratulations to you, sir.
As CEO, Mr. Duncan was widely credited for pursuing an
aggressive educational reform agenda that included opening more
than 100 new schools, expanding after-school and summer
learning programs, and closing down underperforming schools.
And your biography goes on and on. But I think every member of
this committee knows this. So just let me say, Mr. Secretary,
you are now recognized and welcome again.
STATEMENT OF HON. ARNE DUNCAN, SECRETARY,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Secretary Duncan. Thank you so much, Chairman Kline,
Ranking Member Miller, and members of the committee. Thank you
so much for this opportunity to come before you again and talk
about President Obama's education agenda.
Last week I spoke before the Senate Budget Committee and
emphasized our administration's dual commitments to reduce
spending and to be more efficient, while investing in education
to secure our future. These investments spanned every grade
from early learning to Pell Grants and they are reflected in my
written statement. I expect they will be vigorously debated and
discussed in the coming months as Congress works to pass a
budget. I am happy to discuss those issues here today.
Before I do, however, I want to speak to the policy changes
we must make in order to strengthen American K-12 education. A
year ago, we released a 41-page blueprint for rewriting the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Most of you may be
familiar with the core elements of our proposal, so I will be
brief and then open it up to our conversation.
Our goal is to create a law that is defined by three simple
words: fair, flexible, and focused. We say ``fair,'' we mean a
system of accountability based on individual student growth,
one that recognizes and rewards success and holds all of us
accountable for the quality of education we provide to every
single student in the Nation. This is a sea change from the
current law which simply allows every State to set an arbitrary
bar for proficiency, and measures only whether students are
above or below that bar. We don't know how much students learn
each year. We don't know what they need to do to get over that
bar. And we can't recognize and reward the great teachers and
principals that are beating the odds every single day.
Current law also sets annual targets for proficiency and
mandates that every student meet those goals by 2014. Today
almost 40 percent of America's schools are not meeting those
goals. And as we approach the 2014 deadline, that number will
rise steeply.
In fact, we did an analysis which shows that next year,
based upon this year's results, the tests the students are
taking over the next couple of months, next year, the number of
schools not meeting their goals under NCLB could double to 80
percent, even if we assume that all schools will gain as much
as the top quartile of schools in their respective States.
Let me say that one more time. Four out of five schools in
America would not meet their goals under NCLB by next year.
This is why we have to fix the law now. No one can support
inaction and maintain status quo. I do not think that all of
these schools are failing by any means. They have challenges;
big challenges, small challenges. And they need to meet them
because every single child counts. But current law simply does
not distinguish between them. And we have to do that. We need
to distinguish that if we are going to address the real
problems.
The consequences under the current law are very clear.
States and districts all across America will have to intervene
in more and more schools each year, implementing the exact same
interventions regardless of those schools' or those students'
individual needs. If that happens, the schools with the widest
gaps and the lowest achievement won't get the help and
attention they need. And that worries me deeply because the
whole point of the law is to make sure that the schools and
students most at risk are served.
We have to be thoughtful in our approach. NCLB's
requirement to disaggregate student achievement data for low-
income students, minority students, English language learners,
and students with disabilities completely changed the national
conversation. And we can no longer look the other way as some
groups of students languish while others thrive.
The law reflects our fundamental aspiration that every
single child is expected to learn, to achieve, and to succeed.
However, we give NCLB less credit for actually helping to close
achievement gaps. By mandating and prescribing one-size-fits-
all solutions, NCLB took away the ability of local and State
educators to tailor solutions to the unique needs of their
students, and that is fundamentally flawed.
This law is fundamentally broken and we need to fix it, and
we need to fix it this year. It has created dozens of ways for
schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed. We want
to get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and
create a new law that is fair, flexible, and focused on the
schools and the students most at risk. We need a commonsense
law that strikes the right balance between accountability and
flexibility. And the basic problem is that NCLB got that
backwards. Instead of being tight on goals and loose on means
of achieving them, the law is loose on goals but tight on
means. From a management standpoint, that simply doesn't make
sense.
We need to flip that, and States are already leading us in
the right direction. First of all, many States are developing
robust data systems so they can measure student growth. Second
and more important, 41 States plus D.C. have voluntarily
adopted college- and career-ready standards, so the bar has
been raised.
States appreciate the flexibility and the support we are
providing in other ways as well. At their request, last week we
gave all Governors a document explaining how they can shift
around Federal funds to better meet their local needs. We also
gave them a second document, showing how they can be more
productive and efficient as they work to balance their budgets
in these very tough economic times. We all need to be sharing
good ideas and best practices to do more with less. But they
are also begging us for more flexibility in getting their
students over the bar set by NCLB, which is why we need to fix
the law.
Under our proposal, when schools and districts and States
make gains, we will reward them with resources and flexibility.
But if schools boost overall proficiency while leaving one
subgroup behind, that is simply not good enough. Every school,
every single school must ensure that every child is being
served. Schools must serve annual targets for improvement for
all students and subgroups. And if achievement gaps are not
closing each year, districts and States must intervene. We will
challenge them not only around achievement gaps but also on
their use of Title I dollars. And we will further challenge
them on the distribution of effective teachers and
comparability in funding. Finally, if schools persistently
underperform, we will target them for much more serious
interventions.
And that gets to the third word I mentioned at the
beginning, which is ``focus.'' We don't have unlimited
resources. We must focus on the schools, communities, and the
students most at risk.
Congress has been generous with us in recent years. And by
providing $4 billion for school improvement grants, that money
will help fix thousands of our Nation's lowest performing
schools, those dropout factories that we cannot just sit idly
by and watch.
President Obama and I visited one of these schools last
month in Miami, accompanied by former Florida Governor Jeb
Bush. The school has new leadership, some new staff, a new
curriculum, more time for learning, and best of all, a new
climate of energy, hope, and determination that is already
generating measurable progress in the classroom. I can't tell
you how inspiring this visit was. Both teachers and students
were so thankful for the opportunity to gather to create a much
better learning environment. And today across the country,
nearly 1,000 schools are undergoing similar transformations.
And each year we will add more.
This is tough work, controversial work, tough medicine. But
when schools are not making progress, we have a moral
obligation to demand dramatic change. Children cannot wait for
an education. They can't take a year or two off while
administrators tinker around the edges.
Now, nothing about our proposal for reauthorization alters
our historic commitment to serve populations that need extra
support or hold schools accountable for the academic success of
these students. That includes low-income children, students
with disabilities, English language learners, rural students,
and others.
Our commitment to help the children who need the most
support is stronger than ever. As our proposed 2012 budget
shows, 84 percent of our funding is for formula programs like
Title I and IDEA. In fact, we want to increase funding for both
of these programs. But formula funding alone won't move the
needle fast enough. We also need to provide some incentives to
States and districts and local communities to embrace new bold
reforms.
As you know, Congress gave us a unique opportunity to
develop a State-level grant competition called Race to the Top.
This program accounts for less than 1 percent of annual
spending on K-12 education in America but it has helped unleash
more creativity, more change, more collaboration, more positive
and productive activity at the State and the local level than
any other program in history, and has done so by avoiding one-
size-fits-all mandates and providing flexible funding that
gives State and local leaders the opportunity to develop
comprehensive solutions on their own.
And I want to work with you and with local leaders to
design the next round of this program, a district-level
competition that includes a carve-out for rural school
districts. Rural districts are absolutely willing to compete
but they need a level playing field. And it is unfair to ask
small districts, where school administrators are often doing
double and even triple duty as coaches and bus drivers, to
compete directly with large districts who might have full-time
grant writers.
I fully understand that competitive programs serve only a
share of the student population, but the real measure of
competitive programs like Race to the Top is not the direct
impact they have on students but rather the indirect impact
they have on the entire system. A dozen States received funding
from us, but 41 States raised standards. And that is a game-
changing victory for the country and long term for our
country's economy.
Our education system was designed more than a century ago
and it has simply not changed with the times. It must change to
prepare our students for the new century. We must try new
approaches of teaching, new ways of using technology, and
better systems of monitoring progress. The only way to get
better results is by replacing what doesn't work with what
does. Competition can help drive innovation and take the best
ideas from around the country to scale. And we must also have
the will to change right here in Washington. I have said
repeatedly, our Department must continue to support and
encourage innovation, not force compliance.
And we must continue to work together in a bipartisan way
to rewrite the law. This requires real courage to move beyond
our differences and to find common ground around basic
principles of fairness and flexibility.
We are more than halfway through another school year. Let's
challenge ourselves to give States and districts and
communities the support and the flexibility they need before
the start of the next school year, and let's do it with
everyone at the table. Reform is most effective and sustainable
when developed collaboratively with our teachers and the
leaders. Race to the Top proved it.
Our Denver conference last month was another step forward,
and rewriting ESEA can further strengthen the relationship
between policymakers and practitioners in our Nation's
classrooms. At the end of the day, the best way to make a
difference in the classroom is with effective, well-supported
teachers. The best way to achieve that is with stronger
recruiting and training programs linked to rigorous teacher and
principal evaluation systems. That work is underway all across
America. And if we do our part by fixing the law, we can
accelerate that progress.
The urgency for change has never been greater. The plain
fact is that America is stagnating while the rest of the world
moves ahead of us. The plain fact is that to lead in a new
century, we have no choice in this matter but to invest in
education. No other issue is more critical to our economy, to
our future, and to our way of life.
And so I look forward to working with you in the coming
months to meet this challenge and to renew our commitment to
our children and their future by building the education system
they desperately need and deserve. Thank you so much. I am now
happy to take your questions.
Chairman Kline. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Thanks
again for being with us, as the ranking member said, for the
fourth time. Thanks again for your willingness to work with us
in a bipartisan way. And thanks for your testimony.
[The statement of Secretary Duncan follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Arne Duncan, Secretary,
U.S. Department of Education
Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and Members of the
Committee: Thank you for this opportunity to appear before this
Committee to discuss President Obama's education policy proposals and
the fiscal year 2012 education budget.
Our policies, including those embodied in the President's budget,
reflect our Administration's dual commitments to reducing spending and
becoming more efficient while investing to secure our future--and
education is at the very top of the list of investments we must make.
Education is the foundation of a free and democratic society. It is
the blanket of security for the middle class and the path out of
poverty for millions of Americans who continue to struggle because of
the changing economy.
Education gives immigrants and their children the chance to be
productive citizens and contribute to our collective wealth.
Education prepares students with disabilities to be full
participants in our economy and our communities.
Education enables us--as a country--to compete in a global economy
with other countries that are heavily investing in the preparation of
the next generation of innovators and leaders in business.
Education is not just an economic security issue--it's a national
security issue--which is why retired General Colin Powell, for example,
devotes so much of his energy to education. Last year, military leaders
stood with me and called for more education funding because only one in
four young high school graduates today is educationally and physically
equipped to serve their country.
Today, all across America, people are meeting the challenge of
improving education in many different ways--from creating high-quality
early learning programs, to raising standards, improving teacher
quality, and aggressively closing achievement gaps and increasing high
school and college completion.
While the federal government contributes less than 10 percent of K-
12 funding nationally, our dollars play a critical role in promoting
excellence and equity, protecting children at risk, and, more recently,
supporting significant educational reform at the state and local
levels.
In terms of reform, the last Administration focused on, among other
areas, charter schools and performance pay--two programs that
benefitted my school system when I was CEO of the Chicago Public
Schools.
Our Administration has used competitive dollars to incentivize
state and local educators to think and act differently. Our
Administration's Race to the Top program has prompted governors and
educators to jointly embrace bold systematic reforms.
For example, 41 states and the District of Columbia have adopted
higher standards and several states have passed new laws and policies
on teacher evaluation. Several states have altered their charter school
laws and policies to foster the creation of new learning models, all
for the purpose of increasing student achievement.
Race to the Top also prompted us to rethink the federal role. As I
said, the department was established to promote excellence and equity
in education and protect students most at risk. To that end, we have
steadily boosted our commitment to formula programs like Title I and
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.
The federal government also has a long history of supporting higher
education--from the land-grant colleges in the 19th century to the GI
Bill and the Pell Grant program in the 20th. This budget would further
increase our investments in higher education with further innovation,
incentive and performance-funding for both student lending programs and
incentives designed to foster reforms and innovations necessary to
increase college completion.
Today, our most critical role in pre-K through 12 education is in
supporting reform at the state and local level by providing flexibility
and incentives--while holding states and districts accountable in a
fair, honest, and transparent way. In fulfilling this role, we must
strike the right balance--providing as much freedom as possible to
schools while ensuring that all children receive the services and
supports they need to leave school prepared for college and career.
Last week, at the request of Governor and National Governors
Association Chair Christine Gregoire, we shared a series of documents
with our nation's governors outlining ways they can save costs, cut
spending, and use existing flexibilities under federal law in ways that
will best serve our students. We're doing what we can to get out of the
way of governors and local leaders who know what's best for their
students, but to truly make an impact, we need to fix the No Child Left
Behind Act (NCLB).
I have spent two years traveling the country, visiting many of your
states and districts and talking with teachers and parents. As you all
know, there is a lot of dissatisfaction with NCLB. Many people believe
that the law goes too far with sanctions--mislabeling schools and
issuing one-size-fits-all mandates tied to a chain of punitive
sanctions that haven't been working.
NCLB was right to shine a bright light on achievement gaps and set
a clear expectation that all students must learn to the same standards.
This has led to great progress in schools focusing more on the needs of
English learners and students with disabilities and other at-risk
students. But we need to raise the bar by ensuring that every student
graduates from high school ready for college and a career. We need to
move away from punitive measures based on a single test on a single
day, and toward recognizing and rewarding schools and teachers based on
growth and progress. And we need to give states and districts much more
flexibility, while focusing interventions where they are most needed.
To ensure an excellent education for every child, our focus must
change from labeling and punishing schools to preparing and supporting
effective teachers and school leaders. We need rigorous state and local
definitions of teacher effectiveness that consider student growth in
significant part as well as other measures of instructional practice
and better teacher evaluation systems that inform professional
development and practice. And we need to reorient decision-making in
our schools around the simple question of how we ensure that every
student has an effective, well-supported teacher.
That's why we are asking Congress to fix NCLB--and I look forward
to working with you in the months ahead to do that. We're now halfway
through another school year, and we have an obligation to ensure that
when the next school year begins, we've done our job to give states and
communities the flexibility they need.
Despite these concerns, as I travel the country I also hear a deep
appreciation for the federal commitment to children and learning.
Parents and educators are grateful for our support of science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (collectively known as STEM)
subjects. Americans know that--even in challenging fiscal times like
these--we must prepare our young people to compete in tomorrow's
economy.
They know that--even as states face greater financial pressure than
at any time in recent history--we cannot put our children at risk--so
our budget reflects these aspirations and commitments.
Overall, we are seeking a $2 billion increase in non-Pell spending.
That includes increases in formula programs like Title I and the IDEA
while maintaining programs for English Learners and other at-risk
populations such as rural, migrant, and homeless students.
We are calling for a new round of Race to the Top funds, with which
we would make grants directly to school districts rather than states,
and include a carve-out for rural communities. We want to work with
State and local leaders, including leaders of rural communities, and
with the members of this committee as we design this program, as well
as the Investing in Innovation fund, or i3, in a way that reflects
local needs.
At their core, Race to the Top and i3 are about spurring reform by
rewarding success and giving flexible funding to implement good ideas.
Especially in a time of tight budgets, we need to make the most
effective use of federal funds. Formula funds alone won't drive the
kind of transformational reform our education system needs--we need to
combine a strong foundation of formula funding with targeted use of
competitive grant funds.
We want to continue to invest in innovation and research. We want
to support a well-rounded education that includes the arts and foreign
languages, literacy, STEM, and physical education.
We want to strengthen the teaching profession in a number of ways
and work harder to attract top students to pursue teaching careers. We
want to attract effective teachers into high-poverty schools and hard-
to-staff subject areas and fill shortage areas by supporting teachers
in obtaining dual certification in special education or English
language acquisition. Also, we want to help states strengthen their
early learning systems.
And we are challenging states to boost college completion. Today,
more than half of our young people who go to college fail to earn a
degree. As a nation, we cannot sustain that any longer.
In the 2010 budget enacted by Congress, we eliminated four programs
saving $360 million. In our proposed 2012 budget, we propose
eliminating 13 more programs in order to save another $147 million.
Together these savings would total more than $500 million annually--
which is helping fund our other priorities.
Mindful of the paperwork burdens we place on local school
districts, we are proposing to consolidate 38 separate elementary and
secondary education programs into 11 funding streams. These common-
sense reforms will make it easier for school districts to focus on
educating children, rather than bureaucratic compliance. And, as I
mentioned, we are supporting governors in taking similar steps at the
state level by providing guidance on how to spend federal funds
flexibly and cut costs in a way that protects all students.
We are also proposing to reduce our investment in career and
technical education (CTE)--not because we don't believe in CTE--but
because we feel the current program is not getting the results we need.
We are still seeking a billion dollars for CTE and we are committed to
working with states to reform these programs to better prepare students
to meet the needs of the new economy. We look forward to working with
Congress to strengthen the program and improve its alignment with the
education reform efforts at the core of our Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization proposal, so that the Perkins Act
is a stronger vehicle for supporting the President's 2020 college
completion goal and the Department's secondary school agenda.
This year, we have also identified efficiencies in the student aid
programs that, coupled with a change in Pell Grant policy, will help
close a $20 billion shortfall in the Pell Grant program and save $100
billion over the next decade. Those savings mean that we can protect
the $5,550 maximum Pell award and help millions of students and their
families meet rising tuition costs.
Those savings also mean that we can meet the skyrocketing demand
for Pell Grants which has risen from less than 4 million grants in the
year 2000 to a projected 9.6 million grants next year. In the last two
years alone, an additional 3 million students received Pell grants.
In my view, this is a good problem to have. We need more young
people and workers displaced by the recession going to college, and in
this economy they desperately need our help. But we must do more to
make sure that they finish college and earn their degrees and
certificates.
So, we share with you the responsibility for being efficient and
smart in how we invest. But we share an even greater responsibility,
which is to prepare the next generation to lead.
We share responsibility for the 20 million disadvantaged students
served by Title I, the nearly 7 million students served by the IDEA,
the 5 million English language learners, and the 16 million college
students who benefit from student aid programs.
In his State of the Union address, the President talked about
winning the future. To emphasize the point, he announced his budget at
an elementary school in Baltimore. He believes, as I do, that winning
the future starts in the classroom.
He also believes that government spends too much, and he has
outlined more than a trillion dollars in deficit reduction over the
next decade. This is an important national conversation that will take
a great deal of time, energy, and thought.
It will also take courage--real courage on the part of Congress and
the Administration. We have to be truthful with each other and truthful
with the American people about what is and isn't working. We have to
take the heat together for the cuts we are making.
To win the future while cutting spending, we must be absolutely
vigilant about how we invest and how we support reform at the state and
local levels. We must be responsible in what we say and do, and we need
to show results.
Responsibility, reform, and results are the hallmarks of our budget
and our Administration and the guiding principles as we move forward.
I want to close by thanking Congress for your support of education
over the last two years. Because of you, we protected millions of
children in classrooms all across America from the greatest economic
crisis since the depression.
Because of you, we helped states and districts all across America
advance their reform agendas, raise standards, and challenge the status
quo. Because of you, a thousand underperforming schools have launched
dramatic restructuring plans to improve the lives of children--and many
more are in the process.
Because of you, there is a greater determination than ever before
to ensure that all of our children can compete in the global economy.
And because of you, we face a brighter future and a greater prospect
that the world we leave behind will be better than the one we
inherited.
So on behalf of 80 million students of all ages, their parents and
our hard-working teachers, principals, and administrators--and all of
the people of America who value education and recognize its
importance--I thank you for your leadership.
And now, I would be happy to take your questions.
______
Chairman Kline. I was pleased to see in your budget an
elimination of some 13 programs. That is sort of a baby step in
the right direction, I might say, because last week the GAO
released a report that found there was widespread duplication,
including around 80 Federal programs focused on improving
teacher quality. So even though your budget request
consolidates some of this, my question is: Why didn't you do
more? Is it something you are still exploring? It just seems to
me that one of the easiest things that we ought to be able to
do, you in the administration, us here, is to eliminate much of
this duplication.
Secretary Duncan. It is a great point, and we have to
continue to work across the administration on getting--many of
these programs aren't actually in our Department--but in others
we need to work better together. We are absolutely committed to
doing that. We consolidated 38 programs to 11, which is a
pretty significant step in the right direction. As you said, we
eliminated about 13 programs and we need to continue to do this
hard work every single year.
Chairman Kline. I look forward to continuing to work with
you. I can assure you that we are looking at that here and we
will continue to do so. It is very important that you provide
the leadership and the first step in administration in doing
that. We will do our part but I appreciate that you made the
first step. I was always hoping for a bigger step, and I hope
that we will get to one of those.
I have got a question for the record. I don't expect you to
answer it here now. But I am concerned that there has been some
information that has come to light, lately been reported much
in the news about the gainful employment rules and some short-
sellers and some contact with the Department. I am not going to
put you on the spot here now, but we will be looking for an
answer for the record. We will reach you later.
Chairman Kline. One of my favorite subjects, and that is
funding for individuals with disabilities, Special Education.
You may recall that last year, the Department came forward with
a $250 million increase that was labeled by one of my
colleagues as ``budget dust,'' a view that I hardly concurred
in. And this year, you have asked for $200 million, even less.
And I will freely admit that this is a bipartisan problem where
we say, Republicans and Democrats, that we need to do something
to come closer to or to meet the Federal Government's--what I
think is obligation of providing 40 percent of that extra
funding. We are at about 17 percent now. So believe me, I know
that fiscal times are hard, but you were able to find $900
million more for Race to the Top and $350 million more for the
Investing in Innovation Fund.
And it just seems to me that our priorities aren't right.
We had an amendment on the floor during the continuing
resolution to restore money to Special Ed which I thought was
mistakenly taken out. We didn't all agree for the pay-for, so I
know that that is hard. But it is where my priority is. And
again, I appeal to the administration in your budget, in your
setting priorities, to make that a higher priority. What are
you thinking about that?
Secretary Duncan. Yes. You and I first met discussing this.
Chairman Kline. Very personal.
Secretary Duncan. And I absolutely appreciate your passion
on it. Again, it is one I acutely felt in Chicago with an
unfunded liability there. So we are asking for significant
increases. There is an additional $50 million on IDEA part C,
for instance. We would love to do more.
As you know these are very tough budget times. What I would
argue to you or ask you to consider is that when we have States
across the country raising standards and really raising the
bar, every single child benefits, particularly those children
where, historically, standards have been dummied down and those
are students with disabilities. When we are asking to have
every single high school graduate be college- and career-ready,
the greatest beneficiaries are those students that historically
haven't had those kinds of opportunities, students with
disabilities.
So both through direct and indirect funding and by changing
behavior at the State and local level, I am convinced we have a
much better chance to help every single child fulfill their
potential regardless of ability or disability.
Chairman Kline. And I applaud your passion and your
determination. And it is worthwhile for us to continue the
discussion. I just know and everybody in this room knows that
every school would benefit by Special Education funding. Some
of these other things are controversial, not agreed to by
everybody. Some benefit, some don't benefit. But schools in
this country are shifting money to meet the requirements of
IDEA and increasing tensions among parents and other students.
And I just would again encourage the Department and the
administration to take a look again at those priorities. And of
course we will be doing that as we go forward.
Secretary Duncan. Thank you.
I have one more point. This is an important one. The
conversation is an important one. We are also challenging
folks, so there are clearly unmet needs, significant unmet
needs. We recognize that. We realize that.
On the flip side, we are also challenging folks to think
very creatively in this area. Let me give you a couple of
examples. Many students who enter Special Education enter
because they are labeled learning disabled, LD. Many students
get labeled that because they weren't taught how to read before
third grade. So we are pushing folks very, very hard. And these
often are minority boys, our black and brown boys. We are
really pushing districts to embrace early literacy, to work
hard with students who are having those difficulties. And if we
teach them how to read to keep them out of Special Education--
what is amazing to me, Mr. Chairman, is once a student enters
Special Education they almost never exit. It stays with them
for life. If we can do a much better job of preventing students
from having that label early on--if they have significant
needs, let's do it.
The other thing that we are looking at is transportation.
We have children who are on a bus by themselves at about
$35,000 a year. It would be much cheaper to buy that family
three or four cars than to put them on one school bus every
single year. So we need to increase funding, but we also need
to really be thoughtful in are we being efficient in the use of
scarce IDEA dollars.
Chairman Kline. I am sure in many cases we are not. I
concur there. But we are so far off. We are really, really far
off in the funding. I am just asking that you will agree with
that in terms of priority.
I am way past my time. I yield back. Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just on the last
point, I think when I look around California at what some
school districts are doing in the early screening programs--I
think it is part C programs, really simple dynamics--we are
taking children that otherwise, almost out of default, would
end up in Special Education are not. Some of it is the question
of visual aids, glasses, what have you, some muscle
coordination. The L.A. school district is showing a huge amount
of promise in helping us reduce that.
Mr. Secretary, as I said in my opening statement, and I
think you confirmed it in your statement, we really have got to
get to the reauthorization. When I listened to the last two
panels in the two hearings that we had in this committee, we
are now seeing a level of sort of dynamic movement in States
and in districts, be they rural or be they large urban
districts across this country, with the use of data that now
not only allows them to tell the districts and the public how
the children in those districts are doing, but also now to
delineate how their teachers are doing, which classes need
additional assistance, which individuals could use additional
professional development. And we are really starting to make
moves now on driving performance-based outcomes that we really
didn't have the capability to. We speculated about it, and a
lot of people said that is what they were doing, and it kind of
turned out that wasn't. But now with robust data systems, we
really see the level of cooperation between principals and
superintendents and classroom teachers on a real-time basis and
being able to get the children in need on a real-time basis as
opposed to waiting for October of the next year, you know, when
kids have selected classes and moved to different schools and
you start all over again.
It seems to me that we have the ability to move away from
this. As you said, one test on one day to judge a whole school
system on that is really not an accurate reflection. Under the
terms of No Child Left Behind, you really can't reward the work
of people who made remarkable improvements but will not reach
AYP the way it has been set up by their State--it may have
nothing to do with the school, but by the State to do that.
I would hope that one of the things that comes out of this
hearing is that we have to move. And I think we now have an
ability to create a system of data that is transparent and,
more importantly, understandable to parents and to students and
to teachers and to the community, that really then calls into
question what is our role in monitoring and sort of the lever-
pulling that we have done over the last 30 years to really be
able to back out of some of that; because I think if the data
is properly collected, if it is properly published, communities
will stand in on our behalf.
You know, the best economic driver in the community is a
good school system. The Real Estate Association will tell you
what the first question is families ask: What district is this
home in?
So I think we have a chance to provide some substitution
for what has been, you know, a tough Federal role for good
reason. There were a lot of kids who were invisible. They are
no longer invisible and they are not going to go back to being
invisible. So I would just hope that we could figure out how we
get the train on the tracks here, because I think there are
very substantial improvements that could be made and really
allow the dynamics that we are now seeing taking place in a lot
of mixed districts across the country on behalf of students and
their performance and their outcomes.
Secretary Duncan. I couldn't agree more. And I am hopeful.
I obviously have extraordinary respect for your long-term
commitment to this. I have a great working relationship with
the chairman. The Senate is working very, very hard on this.
And I think for all the silliness we sometimes see here in
Washington, this can be the one issue that we come together
behind and do the right thing for children and for the economy.
So I am very, very hopeful. Again, I feel the urgency. I want
to go into the school year with a much, much better law, with
this law fixed.
Mr. Miller. Thank you.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Petri.
Mr. Petri. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have
several narrow questions I would like permission to submit to
the Secretary for a written response rather than using up my
time.
Chairman Kline. Without objection.
Mr. Petri. First of all, in my part of the world, a lot of
citizens are quite surprised to find what a small fraction of
local K-12 education budgets actually come from the Federal
Government. It is in the middle single digits in most of the
districts.
Secretary Duncan. It is 8 to 10 percent, usually.
Mr. Petri. Yes. Even a little lower in some of the
districts. In our State and district, as is all over the
country, we have our share of poverty, but we have joint school
districts. And as a result, that kind of moves things towards
the average, and the money doesn't follow the student. So we
have a lot of poor kids who aren't getting help from programs
that are designed normally to help poor students. And the
districts, as a result, have an extra burden placed on them
that they don't have the resources to meet.
Do you have any ideas, or are there things that we could do
to try to better fund--direct funding better toward the
students who in fact are poverty students and who have need,
rather than to the districts in which they may happen to
reside?
Secretary Duncan. Well, I think when you have scarce
resources, as we do, and every district around the country will
tell you these are the toughest budget times we have had in a
long time, we have to make sure we are getting a great bang for
our buck, that we are getting great results. So whether it is
following the money down to the child, whether it is looking at
how those investments are being made, we have to ask those
questions. And whether it is Title I dollars that you are
referring to, whether it is IDEA dollars that the chairman is
speaking about, we have to make sure that every single scarce
taxpayer dollar is having an impact on children.
Tough budget times are not things you welcome, but it is
also a time to reevaluate your priorities. And if districts are
doing things that aren't having an impact, you have to make
tough cuts. You have to make tough calls to stop doing those
and put those scarce dollars where they are making a
difference. So if that money is getting lost in the bureaucracy
or not really helping poor students be successful academically
and break cycles of poverty because they are getting a great
education, we have to challenge that status quo.
Mr. Petri. Our problem is that the district doesn't qualify
because it may have 20 percent of kids who are in poverty, but
it is not getting funding because it doesn't have 70 percent or
80 percent or the whole district doesn't fit within the
quality. I think it would be much more equitable to count the
number of people who qualify, as we do with the school lunch
program, for example, or things like that and let the money go
to--not follow the student individually, necessarily--there are
some problems with that--but go to the district in which they
reside rather than disqualifying the district if it doesn't
reach a certain threshold.
Secretary Duncan. I understand the point. I have got it.
Thank you.
Mr. Petri. The other complaint we have is, as you can
imagine, with a relatively small percentage of dollars coming
from the Federal Government, in the single digits, the
stovepiping or siloing of all these different programs really
means either you can't really effectively utilize many of the
smaller ones or you lack any flexibility in tailoring the
dollars to local needs by consolidating them in a way you could
actually get something done.
Is there anything we can do to provide low funding
districts with a little more flexibility? Or somehow allow
people to manage the resources to actually do a better job?
Secretary Duncan. Absolutely. And I encourage you to please
keep pushing us very hard on this. So we talked about
consolidating 38 programs down to 11. That means a lot less
stovepiping. It means much more accessible pools of funds,
funds to districts.
We met with all the Governors in the past week. We actually
handed out a document which we can give to you that talks about
existing flexibility that isn't always used, and then,
obviously, our whole goal in reauthorizing ESEA is to provide
much more flexibility than what exists today. So there are a
number of steps we have taken, are taking in the right
direction.
I had great conversations with Governors and local
superintendents on this. And I think if we can reauthorize
together, we can take another very dramatic step in that
direction. And again, for me, the huge trade-off in all of this
is where we are raising standards. We have seen where we have a
high bar--I want to hold folks accountable to that bar, but
give them a lot more room to get there, get out of their
micromanagement.
And I think that is the trade-off that you are seeing
around the country that is the right thing for children and the
right thing for education. And continue to push us hard to find
ways to be more flexible, to be more innovative, to be less
stovepipey. And if folks can spend less time dealing with us in
the bureaucracy and more time teaching children to read, that
would be a really good thing.
Mr. Petri. We have met the enemy and it is us, because we
have a lot of groups who naturally are concerned that some
money is set aside for this need or that need, and it has been
impossible to resist here.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman's time
has expired. Mr. Kildee.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, it is a pleasure to have you here. Currently
we measure school performance based upon student achievement on
required State reading and mathematic assessments. What other
indicators could be used to expand accountability and measure
student growth? We talk about growth models. Could attendance
be one of the factors we could measure? Graduation? Aside from
the number of students involved in attendance and graduation,
that may have a cumulative effect upon the attitude within that
school. Could there be other measures in which we can determine
the progress of a school?
Secretary Duncan. Absolutely. So I think at the end of the
day, graduation rates are hugely important. I think all of you
know now we have about a 25 percent dropout rate in this
country. That is economically unsustainable and it is morally
unacceptable. High school dropouts today have no chance, none,
to get a good paying job to support their family. So we have to
look at graduation rates.
Longer term, we have to look at what happens after
graduation. Are folks going to 2-year community colleges, 4-
year universities, trade, technical vocational training? Are
they persevering? Were they really ready? I keep saying we have
to get higher education out of the remediation business. In
many communities, 30, 40, 50 percent of students who actually
graduate from high school are taking remedial classes in
college because they weren't really ready. We were lying to
them. So looking at perseverance beyond high school is very
important.
Attendance rates are what I call a huge leading indicator
of what is going to happen. If you want to identify high school
dropouts, look at kindergarten attendance rates. And where you
have students missing--you know, 90 percent on a test sounds
good; 90 percent attendance means that student is missing 18
days on a 180-school-day year. That is a month of school they
are missing. So if you want to increase the outcomes, you have
to look at attendance rates.
We want to put out there, we should ask teachers and ask
students how they feel about the school. Do they feel
supported? Is there an adult they can talk to? I think those
kinds of climate surveys can be a great indicator. There has
been pretty significant research that where there is a climate
of trust in schools, you see innovation and creativity. When
there is a significant distrust amongst administrators and
staff, students' needs aren't being met. So I think there are
multiple indicators and we should be looking at them both as
leading and lagging indicators to better ascertain how schools
are moving.
Mr. Kildee. Can we write that into a law so the States will
have that guidance and be assured that somehow we will let them
measure those things?
Secretary Duncan. Well I think we have the flexibility now,
and I am not sure they should be held accountable for every
single one of these, but schools that are really smart in terms
of driving student achievement are looking at discipline
issues, are looking at truancy, or are looking at those things.
So we can have a discussion of how it fits into it.
Just to give one more anecdote, the school we were at
Friday, Miami Central High School, in its first year of a
turnaround, so no test scores yet, no new graduating classes,
but in 1 year discipline problems have gone down 60 percent.
That is a pretty good leading indicator that that school is
going in the right direction. There are still huge challenges,
still a long way to go. But when you have a 60 percent
reduction in discipline challenges, it makes me very, very
hopeful about where that school is going.
Mr. Kildee. Could we assign a certain percentage of how we
would evaluate that attendance or the graduation, certain
percentage of their total score to give them some incentive to
work on that? Because some schools don't do a good job.
Secretary Duncan. There is a huge variation in these
things. I am not sure if we should assign a percentage or not.
But again, getting schools focused on what I call these leading
indicators--attendance, truancy, discipline issues, trust,
collaboration--those leading indicators are hugely predictive
of where schools are going and getting much better focus.
Again, my point, sharing best practices when folks are doing
creative things to reduce truancy, to reduce dropouts and keep
students more engaged, we need to replicate and build upon
those best practices and reward that. We don't provide any
rewards now in the current law. That has to change.
Mr. Kildee. Let me ask you this. Can we address the fact
that a subgroup may keep a school from achieving AYP without
neglecting our responsibilities for those students who are in
the subgroup?
Secretary Duncan. We can address that. Again, to me, it is
so important that we take care of every single child. But if
you have, sometimes literally, one or two children in one
subgroup who are struggling, let's get them the help they need,
let's give them the support they need, let's really look at
what is going on during school, after school, at home. What can
we do to help those students be successful?
But with the current law, you have to provide tutoring for
the whole school. Like in a 1,500 children school, 1,498 might
be doing pretty well. Let's target those scarce resources on
the handful of children who need the help. So we can be much
more thoughtful, have just much greater commonsense sense if we
fix this law working together.
Mr. Kildee. I appreciate the answer very much. Thanks a
lot, Mr. Secretary.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired. Mrs.
Biggert.
Mrs. Biggert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome,
Secretary Duncan. It is nice to see you again.
I hope I can make my question short. You have the Race to
the Top program, and I think that came in where really the
members of this committee did not really have much to do with
it. It was kind of started and then presented to us. And I
think that has bothered some of us. And then the competition
that a lot of the States went through, and two were chosen and
then ten were chosen. But it seems to be--and I didn't realize
that there are so many States that are also adopting a lot of
those reforms and moving ahead with them, even though they were
not awarded any funding for it. And particularly, one of them
was Illinois. And I didn't realize how much in depth that they
had gone into it and how they were working with it.
How is that program going to work with the K-12
reauthorization? Is there going to be kind of a melding? Are we
going to use the practices, the reforms for Race to the Top?
Secretary Duncan. So what we are seeing, again, it is so
important I emphasize that we have heard repeatedly that
Federal spending is 8 to 10 percent. And for less than 1
percent of what we spend on K-12, we had 41 States adopt
college- and career-ready standards. For the first time in this
country, a child in Massachusetts and a child in Illinois and a
child in Mississippi are going to be held to the same standard.
And I can't overemphasize how important that is long term for
our children and for our country.
We have 44 States working together in two different
consortiums on the next generation of assessments. We had about
3 dozen States remove barriers to innovative schools. We had
some States--I learned this coming to Washington; I didn't know
it before. We had some States that had laws on the books that
make it illegal, that prohibited the linking of student
achievement and teacher effectiveness. All those laws are gone.
So the benefits went way beyond the dozen or so States that
receive money.
Moving forward, if we are fortunate to receive another
round of Race to the Top funding, we want to focus on the
district level. We are seeing dramatic breakthroughs at the
State level. We want to continue to have districts move in the
right direction. And that is just one set of resources.
The Investing in Innovations fund is all about scaling up
best practices at the local level. We were able to fund about
49 of those. We had 1,700 applicants from around the country,
this huge outpouring of creativity. We want to replicate
Geoffrey Canada's work and the Harlem Children's Zone, the
community-level Promise Neighborhoods Initiative. So playing at
the community level, at the district level, and the State
level, we think we can continue to get these kinds of
transformational breakthroughs that frankly we haven't seen for
far too long in this country.
Mrs. Biggert. Do you think that all the K-12--and the
reauthorization will involve a lot of that, and I know there
are also concerns about national standards. Now, you talk about
coalitions of States. So you are not going to become the
superintendent of public education, and we are not going to be
the school board?
Secretary Duncan. Absolutely not. Zero interest in that.
And it would be a step in the wrong direction. This is all
about States voluntarily working together. This has all been
driven by courageous Governors, Republican, Democratic,
courageous State school chief officers saying, we are tired of
lying to children. We are tired of dumbing-down standards.
And not to take one more second, but this one,
Congresswoman Biggert, is so important to me personally,
because you and I come from one of those States that dummies-
down standards. The standards got reduced not because it is
good for children or good for education, but because it is good
for politicians. And I am so thankful that Illinois is amongst
those States that have raised standards and we are going to get
out of the business of lying to children. We are going to tell
them the truth in third grade and fifth grade and eighth grade
and 11th grade. Are they truly college- and career-ready? And
when I ran the Chicago Public Schools, we frankly stopped
paying attention to a lot of what the State was doing, because
we thought it was standing in the way of where we needed to go
for our children.
Mrs. Biggert. And just one more quick question and that is
on the homeless children, which you know I have worked a lot
on. And I think the definition of ``homeless'' in the education
agency is so important. And HUD has not quite gotten all of the
same standards, so that we are seeing so many young, you know,
from first to sixth, so many of the children are in these
homeless shelters and are not really getting the education that
they need.
Secretary Duncan. You have been a passionate advocate on
this issue. I appreciate it so much. And as you know,
unfortunately, the number of homeless students and homeless
families is rising pretty significantly. I have a tremendous
working relationship with Secretary Donovan at HUD. He has been
a great, great partner in a whole host of areas and is doing
some really creative things. I absolutely promise you to
continue to work with him on this specific issue.
Mrs. Biggert. I appreciate it. I yield back.
Chairman Kline. Thank you very much. Mr. Andrews, you are
recognized.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Mr. Secretary. Welcome back. And thank you for
your continuing accessibility and openness to ideas. It is very
much appreciated.
I share Chairman Kline's opinion that there is a better way
for us to get to our common goal on gainful employment of
assuring taxpayers and students that we are getting value for
the dollar, and urge you to continue working with us, as you
have. And I am appreciative for that.
I want to ask you about some questions on No Child Left
Behind and what I hope is an equally collaborative effort to
improve that law. Are you in favor of instituting a growth
model for measuring AYP?
Secretary Duncan. Absolutely. We have to focus on growth
and gain. And I am happy to go into some depth about why that
is important. But that is critically important to moving the
country in the right direction.
Mr. Andrews. Okay. I think that is something there is an
awful lot of common ground on.
Secondly, on No Child Left Behind, your Department has been
extremely helpful in calling together leading educators in
distance learning and online learning, for which we are
appreciative. I wonder what your thoughts were about including
on the menu of school improvement options high-quality, duly
accredited, online learning as one of the options that schools
could look at when they are in the needs improvement category.
Secretary Duncan. It is a conversation we can absolutely
have. It is just interesting; this morning I met with a number
of the leading tech executives from around the country. And you
know this as well as I do, that it is so interesting to me that
this is another area, frankly, where education has lagged.
Technology has transformed how we do business, it has
transformed how we interact socially, it is leading to
democracy around the world. And education, it is touched but is
not profoundly changed. And I think technology, distance
learning, engaging students not 6 hours a day, 5 days a week,
but 24/7.
The school we were at yesterday with the President and
Melinda Gates, they are sending home assignments on cell
phones.
Mr. Andrews. Actually, the one thing that may get our kids
to stop looking at their phones all the time. It is a pretty
good idea.
Secretary Duncan. So I think we have been far too slow in
education to learn and get the benefits of engaging students in
different ways. And I think technology can play a huge role,
particularly in tough economic times, of getting much better
results.
Mr. Andrews. Many of the districts that aren't making AYP
aren't making it because of deficiencies in Special Education.
And there are two takes on why that is. The first is the
schools aren't doing a good enough job in raising the
achievement of classified kids. The second is the standards are
really inappropriate for those children. Where would you like
to see us go on treating Special Education under No Child Left
Behind?
Secretary Duncan. Well, let me just say and repeat what I
said in my statement, is I give the current NCLB law great
credit for shining a spotlight on English language learners, on
homeless students, on students with special needs. I think
those are students who far too often got swept under the rug.
And this idea of disaggregating data and looking at achievement
gaps I am laser-like focused on, and we will absolutely
continue. The bar, historically, far too often was lowered for
students with special needs. I am all about raising the bar. I
am all about raising expectations and holding schools,
districts, States, accountable for much better outcomes for
young people.
At the end of the day, it is not about this test score or
that test score. If you look at unemployment rates for students
who have special needs, once they leave, they are devastatingly
high. And this is about having every single child, again
regardless of ability or disability, have a chance to fulfill
their potential.
Mr. Andrews. One of things I worry about is that it can
actually add to the stigma of a special needs child if a child
is held to an unrealistic set of expectations. And again, I am
with you. I want that child to absolutely reach every ounce of
potential he or she has. But if schools begin to feel like they
are not hitting AYP because of unrealistic standards on Special
Ed, I think it actually adds to the stigma for those children,
which I don't think we want to do.
Secretary Duncan. Another reason to fix the law.
Mr. Andrews. Yes. Finally, just very quickly, the chairman
made reference to the increase in education spending since you
took over. If you had to guess--and if you want to do it for
the record, go ahead--what percentage of that increase has gone
into college scholarships, teachers of reading and math, direct
services to children and students, and what percentage has been
overhead?
Secretary Duncan. I don't have hard numbers. I would just
say that my general principle is we have to continue to reduce
overhead at our level, at the State level, at the local level.
We have to get scarce resources to classrooms. We have to get
scarce resources to the children in the communities who need
the most help.
I think other countries--I have spent a lot of time
studying the data of higher performing countries, and it is
fascinating to look at the lessons learned. One of the things
many of the high-performing countries have done is they have
done an infinitely better job of closing the achievement gaps,
of working with disadvantaged and poor children.
Mr. Andrews. I would just also note that they have done a
better job at investing more in education than we have in some
cases. And I thank the chairman and yield back.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Dr. Foxx.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here
today, Mr. Duncan. We appreciate it. I want to ask you a
question also about expenditures. But before I ask the
question, I want to say that I hope you will answer the
question without implying something, as you did a little while
ago.
You answered Mrs. Biggert's question, I think, by saying
you have reduced 38 programs to 11 in the Department. However,
you failed to mention that you have not cut any spending as a
result of doing that. You have no savings in reducing those
departments. You are continuing to spend the same amount of
money, or even more. So I have related questions.
Number one, we have spent about $2 trillion in the
Department of Education I believe since Title I was
implemented, and yet we have seen reading scores go down. We
have seen all kinds of scores go down. You can see it on the
chart there. You see how spending has gone up, and yet we have
achieved nothing. Do you have a single program in the
Department of Education that you can point to measurable
results as a result of spending from the Federal Government?
Can you prove anything has come out of one dollar of spending
from the Federal Government?
Secretary Duncan. Well, I don't think I can prove one
dollar of spending did this. I can tell the outcomes for
students with special needs have improved significantly.
Outcomes for students who are English language learners have
improved significantly. We are an investor. We are a co-
investor at the State and local level. Again, only 8 to 10
percent of the money comes from us. Still huge gaps there.
Still unacceptable gaps. But those have gone in the right
direction.
So I think we have to continue to invest--your initial
point is absolutely right. At a time when the President is
asking to flat line domestic spending at a very tough budget
time, he is asking for a $2 billion increase in education
spending. And he fundamentally believes, and I absolutely share
the belief, that we have to invest, we have to educate our way
to a better economy and better early childhood education, K-12
reform, more access to Pell grants.
Ms. Foxx. Let me stop you, though. Tell me where you have
had success that justifies that--other than in special needs.
You have pointed that out, but can you point to Federal dollars
creating the success? That is what I am asking.
Secretary Duncan. Again, we don't just fund any one program
ourselves. We co-invest with States and local districts. But
there are lots of places--not just special needs, but Title I
schools where you are seeing remarkable results. I can point
you to hundreds and hundreds of schools that are 99 percent
poor, 99 percent minority, where 95 percent of young people are
graduating and going to college, preparing to be successful.
And our resources are helping to create those opportunities.
Absolutely.
Ms. Foxx. I will wait to get some specific information from
you. Thank you.
Chairman Kline. The gentlelady yields back. Ms. Woolsey,
you are recognized.
Ms. Woolsey. Mr. Secretary, can you give us a little bit
more. I have two subjects I am going to try--2-1/2 and 2-1/2
minutes on each. Is there more detail you can provide us
regarding rewriting of ESEA and how we are going to fund
through State and local education agencies the proposed
effective teaching and learning for a well-rounded education
program? I am specifically interested in core subjects like
music and arts and worried that they will be grouped with other
non-tested subjects and hoping that each subject will get their
own share of Federal funds so that schools will actually have
an incentive to educate the whole child.
Secretary Duncan. Great question. And it is arguably the
biggest complaint I have heard as I have traveled the country
from students themselves and parents and teachers, is a
narrowing of the curriculum under NCLB. And I have heard it
urban, rural, suburban, you name it. So we actually want to
invest about a billion dollars behind what we call a well-
rounded education. And I think reading and math are
fundamental, are foundational. But science, social studies,
history, foreign language, environmental literacy, financial
literacy, dance, drama, art, music, physical education, art
students desperately need and deserve a well-rounded
curriculum, well-rounded education and we want to put a billion
dollars behind that.
And let me just say one more thing. To me it is so
important that it not happen just in high school, but it
happens as first and second and third graders. So our students
start to develop their sense of self esteem, they start to
figure out what their passions are. And, if we are serious
about reducing dropout rates and having many more students be
successful and be engaged and closing the achievement gap, we
have to do it through a well-rounded education.
Ms. Woolsey. That is good to hear. Second subject. I would
like to talk about--and I am really pleased that in the
President's budget request, he has asked for $150 million for
Promise Neighborhoods. This is an issue that is very important
to me and has been for a long time because so many of our kids
go to school not ready to learn. And we know they go to school
hungry, they need medical care. They don't have help with their
homework. So tell me how is this program going and how are we
encouraging more schools and communities to come together so
that they actually can provide these community services and
have them located at the school site or someplace convenient?
Secretary Duncan. So like Race to the Top, like Investing
in Innovation Fund, I am just absolutely convinced that Promise
Neighborhoods has unleashed this huge amount of creativity. We
funded this past year about 20 communities for planning grants.
We had over 300 communities apply. So you have folks coming
together, nonprofits, social service agencies, faith-based
institutions, K-12 districts, higher education, coming together
saying our children deserve so much better. I desperately wish
we could have funded 200 of those 300. We had money to do 20.
So the $150 million we are requesting from Congress will help
us move from planning towards implementation. We will open that
up to the country. And I promise you we are going to have
hundreds and hundreds of applicants. We only want to work in
our Nation's most distressed communities and to give those
children a chance to get a great education, to rally the entire
community behind that effort. And again, just like Race to the
Top, obviously the vast majority of communities we were
unfortunately unable to fund in planning. Many of them are
moving forward without our dollars. Brought them to the table,
brought them outside their comfort zone, they are working
together. And that, in and of itself, has been absolutely
invaluable.
Ms. Woolsey. And I am sure you are able to track how much
is saved in the long run by providing these services close at
home. So I think I have time for one more subject and that is
STEM education for girls and minorities, Mr. Secretary. And we
know young girls and minorities are losing interest in science
and math at a much too young an age. They are not choosing to
pursue more advanced classes in high school or careers in these
fields. How do you plan and how do you propose effective
teaching and learning for science technology, engineering and
mathematics programs? How are we going to increase this
interest? Because that is the future of our country.
Secretary Duncan. Yesterday the President and I and Melinda
Gates were at TechBoston, which is an amazing high school in
Boston. The vast majority of children live below the poverty
line, come from very tough communities. 95 percent--huge
graduation rates. The vast majority of graduates are going on
to college. An amazing STEM focus. So there is a $206 million
budget for effective teaching and learning to support the STEM
area. We have $80 million specifically to help prepare and
retain STEM teachers. There is a $185 million request for new
presidential teaching fellowship program that would help
talented students who attend top tier teacher preparation
programs to go into a high needs field like STEM. We have a
huge focus on STEM through the Investing in Innovation Fund.
And we want to put many more resources into R&D to continue to
learn in this area.
But at the end of the day, the President has given us a
simple challenge. He wants us to recruit, attract and retain
100,000 new STEM teachers as we move forward. We have this baby
boomer generation retiring. The only way we do a better job of
reaching women and girls is making sure we have many more
teachers--again, not just in high school, but in those primary
grades who have a passion and a love for STEM education,
working through traditional pathways to increase that number. I
am also a big fan of alternative certification. I want more
folks who know chemistry, who know biology, who know physics
coming in to do this work. And we want to fund places that are
going to be innovative in bringing in that next generation.
Ms. Woolsey. Well, we look forward to working with you on
that.
Chairman Kline. The gentlelady's time has expired. I am
always so excited when I hear you talk about alternative
certification. Dr. Roe is recognized.
Mr. Roe. Thank you. And I want to thank the Secretary for
being here. This is the fourth time and I have seen you, more
than any of the other Secretaries and I appreciate your passion
for what you do--I truly mean that--and what you try to do and
did some great things in Chicago.
I have a son that lives there. He speaks very highly of
you. So thank you for that. You have probably one of the
hardest jobs in America, I think. One of the things that I have
done when I have gone to rural East Tennessee where I live is
go see my teachers. I thought doctors were frustrated. You are
go get 40 or 50 teachers together and you are going to get your
ears pinned back. Part of the reason is because in all of the
bureaucracy that we have created, that--the hoops they have to
jump. And remember I am in a Race to the Top State, Tennessee.
We were 1 of the 2 States that were selected. And we are in the
process--I had the teachers explain to me, what does this Race
to the Top mean to you and how is it helping you when you are
teaching in the first grade, when you are teaching in the
second and third grade.
I really couldn't get a good explanation from the teacher
who was actually being observed. And this is the graph that I
think that concerns me the most. We are going to have an 11
percent increase in spending as proposed in this budget. And I
was a mayor of Johnson City, Tennessee before I came here. And
you are absolutely correct, there were days if I could have
written the Federal Government a check for the money they sent
and put into the 1 percent we got in our community because the
city, the county and the State put the money in--it was a very
small amount. But the teachers spend an inordinate amount of
time qualifying. This is the graph that bothers me. Right here
is the increase in Federal spending and yet the outcomes--we
are not getting anything for our money. So I think the
accountability--and right here when you see more and more and
more spending, but we are not getting any results for it.
Secretary Duncan. So, a couple of thoughts. First of all, I
think Tennessee has a chance to not just transform education in
the State, but to help lead the country where we need to go. I
have tremendous confidence in your new governor. He is
passionate on this issue. He just, in the past couple of days,
appointed a new State superintendent who is a nontraditional
candidate, Kevin Huffman, who I have tremendous respect for and
actually met with him earlier. I think he is going to do a
great job. So I am very, very hopeful about where the State can
go and where the State can help to lead the country.
On your historical point sort of for the country, does more
dollars absolutely equate to better outcomes? Of course not. So
to me what we try to drive from day one is this combination of
investment, but investment not in the status quo, investment in
reform. And whether that is at the early childhood level,
whether it is at K-12 reform, whether it is trying to increase
access and completion rates at the higher end, it can't be
investment in the status quo with a 25 percent dropout rate.
Mr. Roe. I think Congresswoman Woolsey may have mentioned
it. But I think if a child can't read by the third or fourth
grade--I mean, all the teachers that were patients of mine
through the years could predict who was going to drop out by
the 4th grade. And if we can do that, then that is where we
ought to emphasize instead of worrying about all these other
things. Because if you are never going to graduate, you know
that by the time you are 10 years old, that is where you need
to invest the money.
The other frustration I had in hearing something was we
have 96,000 schools in America. I think I heard this testimony
last year or the year before last. And 2,000 of those account
for 50 percent of our dropouts.
Secretary Duncan. So a couple of thoughts. Your basic point
on early investment I couldn't agree with more. If we can have
our babies, our 3- and 4-year-olds enter kindergarten ready to
read and ready to learn with their socialization skills intact
gives us a great opportunity. Also, we have to invest early and
try and level playing fields. I just urge you not to give up on
those children who are behind. I spent a lot of time in Chicago
working in a tough community with teenagers who started way
behind and just hadn't had the opportunity and caught up pretty
quickly when challenged and with real support. It is much
tougher work. I would love to get us all out of the catch-up
business. And we have to do much better at the early side. But
where students don't have those opportunities, we still need to
provide a chance for them to get better.
Mr. Roe. I totally agree. I think one of the other things
that I have with this frustration is that so many teachers--
half of our teachers who graduate from college don't teach in 5
years. And there is a reason for that. And I think part of the
reason is--well, there are many reasons I am sure. But all the
paperwork that really doesn't add anything to the classroom, I
am very frustrated about that.
Secretary Duncan. Again, I just urge you to hold us
accountable and push us. Everywhere I go, I ask teachers,
principals, superintendents, State superintendents, tell us
what we are doing to get in your way, tell us what
requirements--there is a series of reporting requirements that
were duplicative that we have already changed. We are trying to
get better here. But if you think about the teacher, they are
hit at the local level, the district, they are hit at the
State, they are hit by us. It is too much. And we are trying to
lead by example. And again, the more you can challenge us to
get rid of duplicative or nonhelpful paperwork, we have to do
that. We have to do that.
Mr. Roe. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Hinojosa.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Duncan, it
is always a pleasure to have you testify before our committee.
I commend you and the President for the tremendous work that
you all are doing investing in education these couple of years
that you have been heading the Department of Education. I want
to ask my question that is easy and doesn't cost much money,
and that is, that there are some school districts in the Great
State of Texas that start school early August, not after Labor
Day. And you spoke about increasing school average days of
attendance above 90 percent, maybe 95, 97, which is being done
today in some of my school districts in my congressional
district. So I know it is doable. But if we could give the flu
shots to the students in early August as well as the teachers
and maybe even the staff that serve them in the cafeteria and
drive the bus, I think that we have fewer children getting sick
and more being able to attend. That should be easy and the same
cost that we do it in August versus doing in October. Is that
something you can support?
Secretary Duncan. Absolutely. And I have worked very, very
closely with Secretary Sebelius on a number of health-related
issues and H1N1. I thought she did a remarkable job. And if we
can get students' immunizations earlier, it makes all the sense
in the world.
Mr. Hinojosa. I will send you a memo to this effect because
we need it in Texas. I also want to say that I believe that our
Nation must do more to expand accessibility and affordability
to be able to access higher education. What is your vision for
HSIs, HBCUs, TCUs and other MSIs? What types of outcomes do you
expect for the next 10 years? And what is your time line for
the upcoming STEM grant competition?
Secretary Duncan. So our HSIs, our HBCUs can't simply
survive. We have to help them thrive. And so we continue to
invest very significantly in them. Obviously the Pell grant
increases are very significant to those populations. We direct
fund HSIs and HBCUs and have increased that funding over time.
We want to put in place the Hawkins Scholarship Program, about
$40 million, to get great teachers coming out of the HSIs.
And so many of our teachers of color come through HSIs and
HBCUs and I desperately want a much more diverse teacher
workforce than we have today. Our teachers, our administrators
don't reflect the amazing diversity of our Nation's students.
We are to work on that. So we are going to continue to invest
very significantly in HSIs and HBCUs. And I see them as real
partners in driving where we need to go. The final thing I will
say is I have visited a number of them and continue to go out
to recruit more teachers of color to come into education
because I think frankly, many traditional schools of education
haven't shown much creativity or leadership in this area.
And obviously HSIs and HBCUs are a natural phenomenal
pipeline of great teacher talent for our Nation's classrooms.
Mr. Hinojosa. I commend you what you have done in this last
2 years in increasing that funding because it definitely
exceeds what we did in 1946 with the GI bill. So I commend you.
But now we need a timeline to be able to get into the
competition and get to that money and recruit students into
colleges. The last question, if I still have time, would be
that I reintroduced H.R. 778, the Graduation Promise Act
because I believe that we must invest and transform our
Nation's dropout factories. The question is, how do you propose
to build the capacity of our Nation's lowest performing high
schools and middle schools?
Secretary Duncan. This is where the school improvement
grants are so important. We stated earlier for this horrendous
dropout rate that the country faces, it is actually--we have
about 100,000 schools. Only about 2,000, 2 percent of our
schools produce half our Nation's dropouts and 75 percent of
our dropouts from the minority communities are African
American, Latino young boys and girls. So with a massive
investment, not in the status quo, but this idea of reform, we
have about 1,000 schools for the first time in this country, we
have about 1,000 schools that are being turned around as we
speak. And we have to continue to challenge the status quo. We
have to continue to invest. And unfortunately, as you know all
too well, Congressman, in many communities, these schools have
been dropout factories for years, 2 years or 5 years. It has
often been for decades. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And this has
not gotten a lot of media attention because it has been a lot
of hard work without a lot of controversy.
Every one, school leaders, union leaders, superintendents,
school boards, everyone is moving outside their comfort zones
and doing some very, very different things for students. And
all of these turnarounds, they won't all be A's. Many will be
fantastic. Some will be okay. But for the first time, our
country is showing courage in doing this work. And it makes me
so hopeful about where we can be 3, 4, 5 years from now.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. My time has
expired.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Dr. DesJarlais.
Mr. DesJarlais. Thank you for being here, Secretary Duncan.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know by this point of the
discussion, a lot of these questions may be somewhat
repetitive, but I think there is some important points to
continue forward. The Department of Education doesn't seem to
be the only Department that has a draft like the one we saw
with the increase of spending without actual results. And it is
refreshing as we sit in this committee today that it does seem
to be a fairly bipartisan discussion. One thing I think my
colleagues might agree on that has come up a few times today is
that maybe one of the biggest impediments to learning is the
politicians and the Federal Government. So it is kind of
interesting to maybe stop and take a look at that, that we have
increased spending, the Department of Education has been with
us for over three decades and we are not really seeing the
outcomes.
And one thing that we haven't really focused a lot on
today, we have touched on it a little, my colleague from
Tennessee also mentioned that where do teachers come into the
picture here. And we had a panel a couple of weeks ago where we
asked them what were the top three things they are hearing from
teachers. And certainly with your travels around the country, I
am sure you get an earful. What would you say are the top three
concerns that you are hearing from our educators?
Secretary Duncan. Let me just go back to one more point on
the results that we have seen on the NAEP results, pretty
significant gains in math scores over time, but we are not
again, not at the same levels of other countries. So we are at
a competitive disadvantage and have to keep getting better.
Complaints from teachers, this idea of a well-rounded
curriculum I talked about.
This narrowing of the curriculum is a huge challenge that
teachers really struggle with. I haven't met a teacher yet who
is scared of accountability. They just want it to be fair. And
this idea of growth and gain is a huge one for them. If you are
my teacher and I come to you three grade levels behind and I
leave you a grade level behind, you have done an amazing job
with me. You are an unsung hero. And under current law, you are
labeled a failure, the school and ultimately the district is
labeled a failure. You have accelerated my learning. So we have
to focus on that. And then teachers want--they want to be held
to a fair standard but then they want the room to be creative,
to hit that higher bar.
So again for me that tradeoff is where is the high bars, I
have much more flexibility at the classroom level, at the
school level, the district level. If it is not working, then we
have to look at that. But room to move, better accountability
and a well-rounded education I think are amongst the tops of
the complaints I hear from great educators.
Mr. DesJarlais. I think that is fair. I think that the
teachers I have spoken with would echo those sentiments. As a
physician, I get to spend a lot of time in the examining room
having conversations about teaching. And I would just add to
more succinctly and maybe not as eloquently as you put it, but
one of the concerns--and you mentioned it earlier--was lack of
discipline in the classrooms. And I thought it was interesting
that you said that a school in Miami showed an improvement in
the discipline problem and therefore it was headed in the right
direction.
So perhaps there is an area of focus. I am certain to hear
from the teachers that are frustrated that they can't control
their classroom. And a second thing is that they seem to be
lacking a little bit in terms of pride in their profession and
I think that is because of the bureaucracy and regulation.
So if we have frustrated teachers, we may have less
effective teachers. And so I think that in a sense they feel
handcuffed and that lack of flexibility,--I appreciate you want
to see more flexibility. But I know, like, in Tennessee, they
have to teach to the standardized testing or the TCAP and they
have a lot of pressure put on them by the administrations to
make those numbers the way they should be. When we were kids, a
standardized test was something you came in from recess, they
dropped it on your desk, told you to take it and now they are
actually teaching to these tests. Do you think that is an
effective means of measurement?
Secretary Duncan. Again, if you are teaching to a test, the
best way students do well on any exam is to give them rich
content and to have them be creative in doing that. So again,
when the curriculum gets narrowed, when you are teaching to the
test, that is not good for children, not good for teachers.
Again, having a high bar, being real clear about that but
giving teachers lots of room to move to hit the higher bar, to
be creative is hugely important. Your other point, I think, is
so critically important, it is absolutely true that the
teaching profession in education in general has been beaten
down. And we have to reverse that. We have to elevate the
profession. We have to strengthen the profession.
In our high performing countries around the globe, teachers
are revered. In South Korea, teachers are known as nation
builders. It is a really powerful concept, one I have thought
about. Our teachers have to be believed to be nation builders.
We lose far too many of our good young teachers due to
bureaucracy, due to lack of support, due to difficulties of
classroom management skills. And I think the only way we are
going to get where we need to go again and lead the world is to
recruit and retain the hardest working, the most committed
young people to come into education. Other countries have done
this systemically. We haven't and we can get better together at
it.
Mr. DesJarlais. Thank you. I appreciate your comments. I
yield back my time.
Chairman Kline. Thank you. Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, how
are you? I am sorry I wasn't able to be with you yesterday in
Massachusetts, but I appreciated the visit on that. I cannot
help but say I think everybody is interested in eliminating
waste, fraud and abuse and duplication. And I commend the fact
that you and the President have been spending considerable time
trying to make sure that those are eliminated in the education
budget. But I also think that sometimes we have cut beyond
those areas and into the bone because both the White House and
Congress failed to have, I think, the courage to take on a
larger issue of making sure that people pay their fair share.
At the end of last year, at the end of 2010, this Congress
and the White House allowed for a continued tax break so that
people weren't paying their fair share, $800 billion over 10
years. We have $700 billion in tax expenditures to corporations
every year. We have the lowest effective tax corporate rate of
all the OECD countries on average. Google paid 2.4 percent
effective tax rate last year, the do-no-harm first company. GE
and Boeing paid no taxes at all in the last several years.
So while we are here debating eliminating or reducing
seriously some very important programs, there was a real lack
of courage, of profiles in courage on a number of occasions and
I think we are going to have to find some if we want to do it.
I think Governor Martin O'Malley yesterday in testimony before
our subcommittee--full committee rather up in Maryland made a
good statement. The balance is wonderful; but if you are on a
bicycle and you are trying to balance standing still, pretty
soon you are going to fall over. You have to pedal forward. And
if we want to be competitive in this country, we had better
pedal forward to make sure that we outdo China, Germany and
other countries to get there.
One of the ways we do that is by making sure we have a
sound investment in education. And Pell grants and Pell
scholarship money is one area along that. So it is of great
concern that we see H.R. 1 eliminating about 9 1/2 billion
college students--$800 a piece, a reduction in the Pell grant.
135,000 in my State of Massachusetts. Another 1.7 million low-
income students aren't even going to qualify for Pell grants if
that cut is maintained.
That is about 20 percent of the current people. So it is a
great concern there. But there is also a concern amongst many
and me about the administration's proposal to eliminate the
availability of Pell grants for those that are pursuing summer
studies. I know there is some that mention it hasn't been shown
to speed it up yet. But it hasn't even been in place long
enough for people to get an associate's degree, 18 months or
less. If we are going to compete with China and other countries
on that, we have to get people able to get through and get that
degree to be able to get back to work or get out to work in the
first instance. Can you tell us how you expect to meet that
need, while at the same time eliminating that program?
Secretary Duncan. And I really appreciate your
thoughtfulness on this. So where we scaled back $800, $900 on
Pell grants, that just means there are a lot of young people
who are working hard who come from families who are struggling
financially who have to drop out of school. And what is amazing
to me, which we haven't talked about here, which I am sure you
guys are aware, that at a time of high unemployment, we
actually have a couple million jobs in this country that go
unfilled every single day because we are not producing the
knowledge workers who have the skills to fill those jobs. And
the President and I met with a number of CEOs 2 weeks ago and
it is amazing to hear how many CEOs are trying to hire now and
there simply isn't the talent that we are producing K-12 and
through higher ed to fill those jobs.
So any cutback to Pell would have a devastating long-term
impact on our economy and our ability to compete. And jobs and
companies and corporations, they are simply going to go where
the knowledge workers are. And it is going to be in our country
or it is going to be in other countries. And we are either
going to put ourselves in a competitive advantage or we are
going to continue to lose not the low skill jobs, but the high
skill jobs which are really the jobs of the future. So we have
to continue to invest there.
Obviously, the decision to say no to Pell grants--again,
you can use the one Pell grant for summer--is not one that I
enjoyed or wanted to make or felt good about. It is simply in
very tough budget times trying to make a decision to preserve
the $5,550 for the vast majority of people who use those Pell
grants and by eliminating the second one is a savings of about
$7 billion. But in an ideal world, would I choose to do that?
Of course not.
Mr. Tierney. Just to remind you, Mark Canter, which is a
student aide expert, tells us just to increase the Federal
income tax revenue from increasing the number of college
graduates would pay for the cost of doubling Pell grants. So we
look forward to that. Let me ask you one last question while I
still have time. In the Higher Education Opportunity Act in the
House, I put in a provision, and Senator Kennedy put it in the
Senate with respect for model transition programs for students
with intellectual disabilities in higher education.
I know the chairman has a concern about that as do many
others. It is only $11 million. And the fact of the matter was
for model programs to move on, and particularly community
colleges who have a disproportionate number of students
challenged that way. We are going to put those models together.
Is there some way the administration could take another look at
that? Because there is a serious need with children aging into
that grouping that need to be able to have a sustainable way to
get through life.
Chairman Kline. If I may, the gentleman's time has expired
and we would love the answer for the record if we could, Mr.
Secretary.
Secretary Duncan. I would be happy to look at it.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Hunter.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, great
to see you. Love your name. Question. Mr. Tierney was just
talking about taxes and about how much we are spending. In
comparison to China, if you add State, Federal and local
spending on our end here, we are paying more per kid than I
think any other nation if you add everything together. I don't
know the answer to this question.
What is more, I am not supposed to ask questions I don't
have the answer to. But I am pretty sure that we pay more
State, local and Federal than any other country does. So tell
me, what is the real correlation, then, between spending cash
and getting good results in education? When if you look at a
model like China or any other country--Germany was mentioned--
any other country you throw out there--obviously their
structure is different. South Korea, they probably have a
different structure.
So it is not about money, then, in that sense and just
increasing funding into the future forever. What is it then?
What is the correlation?
Secretary Duncan. Again, to be very clear, I am not pushing
more investment in the status quo. I am pushing more investment
in a very different vision of where we need to go. So a couple
of things. I think the investment in early childhood
education--I can make a very compelling case to you that that
is the best investment we can make and the dividend is long-
term and the ROI and the savings to society are huge.
What you see in other countries is, I think, they have been
smarter, more strategic in how they invest. I think other
countries have done a much better job of targeting the students
in the communities that need the most help and have done much
better there. And I think we have to continue to increase
access to higher education.
And again, there are just so few good jobs out there, if
any, if you just have a high school diploma. So it is not
looking for investment in the status quo. I would never
advocate for that. I am advocating for significant investment
in a very different vision of what this country needs to do.
Mr. Hunter. But that means, though, that we are still going
to be spending more per kid and we are not seeing any
correlation between that spending and the actual results. So
why not just change the entire structure, then, if we are going
to do that and reinvest the money that we already have into a
different system? Which is what you are doing and what we are
trying to do here. But why increase it at all? Because if you
were to somehow even cut and find some savings, then we could
talk about Pell grants and things like that.
Secretary Duncan. So again, you and I may disagree on it. I
think going forward we are going to see many more young people
trying to go to college, trying to get some form of higher
education, 4-year, 2-year. 10, 20, 30 years ago you didn't
necessarily need that. I am from Chicago. You could graduate
from high school. You could drop out of high school and go work
at the stockyards, the steel mills and get a good job and own
your own home and support your family. As you know, all those
jobs are gone.
So in a knowledge-based economy, more and more not just 18
year-olds, but 38-year-olds and 58-year-olds are going back.
And so our Pell grant requests have gone up very significantly.
Mr. Hunter. Which I understand. I understand all this. But
talking about K-12, if it is the structure that really matters
and it is not increasing funding for a bad system, why not just
take away the bad spending, if you will, those things that you
don't believe in and restructure and reinvest as opposed to
right now trying to get more funding which would increase
funding per kid, which has not been proven has any correlation
whatsoever to the results?
Secretary Duncan. What I would argue is that with the
increased investment in the opportunity to drive systemic
change, you are seeing breakthroughs you have never seen in the
history of the country.
So again, 41 States raising standards for the first time
ever, voluntarily, college and career ready standards, not
dummied down standards, 44 States working together on this new
generation of assessments, about 3 dozen States eliminating
barriers to innovative schools, every State eliminating laws
that prohibited the linking of student achievement and teacher
evaluation, all of that happened, in part, due to our ability
to reward great behavior. And we want to be able to do more of
that going forward.
Mr. Hunter. Would you say, though, that we are still
spending on bad along with the good?
Secretary Duncan. No question. We have to continue--on
every single dollar. So we handed out to governors last week--
in very tough budget times, you have to make tough calls. We
handed out a document that we are happy to share. There are
smart ways to cut and there are dumb ways to cut. And I worry a
lot about in very tough budget times folks making decisions
that exacerbate the challenges that we have.
Mr. Hunter. Could you see being successful--if the amount
of funding does not go up, could you still be successful if you
cut the right way and put the money into the systems that you
know work? Could you do that?
Secretary Duncan. We have to do that anyway, but I continue
to think we underinvest. And it is actually interesting. We
underinvest relative to the high performing countries. We
underinvest significantly in the most disadvantaged children
communities relative to higher performance.
Mr. Hunter. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, for your
testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for working
so closely with the committee. Despite the overwhelming
evidence that teachers matter most when it comes to student
learning, low-income students and minority students receive
less than their fair share of access to the best teachers. We
would wish that even the most ordinary teachers could become
extraordinary. And I think that is the goal in any system, to
do that. But the reality is that as long as there are
inequities in the quality of teaching from classroom to
classroom and school to school, we are still going to see gaps
in the achievement, and it is tough to close that gap. And you
mentioned that earlier, and the distribution of effective
teachers. I am wondering, in the budget itself, how can we look
to that and see also in the ESEA blueprint what prompts States
and districts to ensure that the students who need the
strongest teachers most have access to those teachers?
Secretary Duncan. So again, this is just such a huge issue.
I so appreciate you bringing it up. Because what other
countries, other higher performing countries have done is they
have systemically solved this problem--not totally--but in a
much more thoughtful and comprehensive and systemic way than we
have in this country. Other countries have put in place great
incentives for the hardest working and most committed to go to
the toughest communities, to give them the support they need
and they retain them there. We have had almost no incentives,
and frankly, lots of disincentives for the most committed, the
hardest working teachers and principals--you have to have the
principals as well--to go to underserved communities, be that
inner city, urban or rural. And we can't talk honestly about
closing the achievement gap if we don't talk about closing what
I call the opportunity gap. And we have so many examples of
high poverty, high performing schools where students are
routinely beating the odds because they are getting great
talent there. How do we do it? Two concrete ways. One is
obviously--we have talked about some today--is the school
improvement grants and a huge investment in these lowest
performing schools.
And what I have said very publicly is if your community has
not been able to attract a great math and science teacher, use
our resources to do it. 10 grand, 15 grand, 20 grand. Pay that
great math and science teacher more to come and give them the
support they need. Not everyone agrees with me on that. I don't
see how our students take AP calculus and physics if they don't
have those kinds of teachers. If you have to pay a great
principal--pick a number, 25 grand, 30 grand, 50 grand--to go
to an underperforming community, use our resources to do that.
We have the teacher incentive fund, which is we go out on a
voluntary basis to communities. We have dozens and dozens of
districts now that are being very creative and starting to look
at this. I will give you one last example.
The district that I think systemically has done this better
than any others I have seen is Charlotte-Mecklenburg. They have
about 20 schools that historically, chronically underperformed.
They are, year after year, putting the best talent into those
schools. I met with a set of teachers and principals who have
taken on this work. I will never forget what one of the
principals said to me. He was a star principal in the district,
was about to retire, was given this opportunity to go to a
really tough school, which most people run away from. And he
said to him, he said this is the most moral and ethical work I
have ever done in my career. I am so thankful to have the
opportunity. And to me it is such a profound statement, the
most moral and ethical work he had ever done. So they are
systemically through incentives, through awards, through
support getting great talent.
Mrs. Davis. For those schools that are not applying for
grants or their schools or their States are not applying for
grants, trying to--obviously there are so many schools that are
not in that position or choose to do that, how do we do that?
And it ties in with evaluations, of course, as well.
Secretary Duncan. The school improvement grants go out
formally to every State. So every State we give that money to
and say you figure out who your bottom 5 percent of schools are
and you figure out--if you need to do more--teachers do that.
If you need to go to school after school, if you need more
time, you have to go to school on Saturdays, if you have to go
to school all summer, whatever it takes, more teacher planning
time, more awards for teachers, whatever it takes, use our
resources to do that. And that went out by form to every single
State in the country.
Mrs. Davis. Are there some outside--I don't know if I want
to call them--validators or mediators, if you will, who can
help schools to do this sometimes when there is a lot of
resistance in the school community? What do you suggest? What
have you seen as best practices?
Secretary Duncan. As a country frankly, we are in our
infancy. And I am so proud that historically there are
literally a handful nationally, a handful of schools that are
turned around. This school year, there are about a 1,000
schools that are being turned around. So we are starting to
build a community of practice. We are starting to learn what
works and what doesn't. And you are starting to have some
critical mass doing this work. And we want to do more every
year and come back and come back and do more. But if we can
turn around that bottom 5 percent of schools in this country
over the next 3 or 4 or 5 years, the difference that is going
to make not just for those children, but those entire
communities that have been underserved is huge.
So there is growing awareness--again, amazing courage that
I have seen. Union leaders, district superintendents, school
board members doing some things very, very differently. And so
I am--5 years from now, we are going to be in a different
place.
Mrs. Davis. And how is that being shared? They can find
this out in----
Chairman Kline. Excuse me. The gentlelady's time has
expired.
Secretary Duncan. We will continue----
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentlelady. It is Mr. Barletta.
Mr. Barletta. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you,
Secretary Duncan, for your time here today. Last month, this
committee heard testimony from Mr. Andrew Coulson from the Cato
Institute on the lack of any meaningful return on our
investment of Federal funds, with one notable exception, the
D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Yet this administration
has not supported that successful program and put forward a
budget proposal that increases spending on all of these other
programs that have not significantly improved student
achievement.
When our Nation is facing inconceivable debt levels and the
taxpayers of this Nation have been clear about Washington
getting its fiscal house in order, my question is, how can we
afford to ignore successful programs like the D.C. choice and
instead keep pouring money into costly programs that haven't
shown any results?
Secretary Duncan. So on the D.C. scholarship program, we
actually supported keeping students in the existing program. We
didn't support adding more students. If you actually look at
the data, the data was a little bit mixed. And I will go back
and look. And it was either in reading or math, in one area
student performance went up and the other one did not go up
significantly. And what I said repeatedly is that if the
private sector, individuals, businesses, philanthropy want to
help scholarship students, I absolutely support that.
Our goal has to be I think, frankly, more ambitious. We
have to give every single child a great education. The school
improvement grants here in D.C. are transforming entire
schools, not just saving 2 or 3 children from a tough school
and leaving the other 500 to drown. I think the D.C. school
system itself is absolutely going in the right direction. A
long way to go, but real progress. And my goal has to be to
help every single child and have a great system of public
schools so that we just can't go to bed and be comfortable at
night having saved a couple and left the rest to drown. That
has been the mentality. What is staggering to me quite frankly,
Congressman, is that for decades, the D.C. public school has
been an absolute disaster. In the Nation's capital, we allowed
that to exist, to be the status quo. And you have seen more
progress in the past couple of years in D.C. than you have in a
long time. And we want to make D.C. a world class school
system. And I think we have an opportunity to do that with
local leadership.
Mr. Barletta. Thank you. I yield back the rest of my time.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Loebsack.
Mr. Loebsack. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Secretary, good to
see you today. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate
almost everything--not quite everything--but almost everything
or at least much of what you and the President are trying to do
on the education front, all the way through preschool through
secondary education and even graduate school for that matter. I
am happy as an Iowan that when it comes to Race to the Top, you
do have a rural carveout that you mentioned. I am looking
forward to seeing the details of that. Because as I think I
have communicated to your Department, the last couple of years
it has been very, very difficult for States like Iowa,
especially those rural school districts that don't have grant
writers, don't have resources to participate in the program
such as Race to the Top. Also, I am happy that over the course
of the last several years, we have had a lot of discussions and
you seem to be implementing some of the changes that I think a
lot of us are recommending for NCLB, certainly moving to
multiple measures of achievement. I think that is much more
important and much better than high stakes test and being more
flexible when it comes to subgroups.
I think that is really important too. And growth models.
When I first came to Congress, for the life of me, I could not
figure out why the original law was comparing one group of
students one year in a grade level to another. It was apples to
oranges. It didn't any make sense to me. Growth models I think
are very important.
But really what I want to talk about today more than
anything else is the Pell grant program, and in particular, the
year-round Pell grant program and the proposed cuts that you
folks are making to that program. Because in your fiscal year
2012 budget, you propose to cut the year round Pell grant
program. I think this program, this is a significant one for a
variety of reasons. I think first and foremost, Pell grants in
general help people in poverty rise into the middle class,
become more productive citizens. Education does that anyway,
but in particular for those who get Pell grants.
Last year around the country, the first year of operation,
2009, 2010, about 760,000 students nationwide took advantage of
access to financial aid over the summer in order to graduate
faster and to come out of college with less debt. I think it is
making a big difference, especially in community colleges. As
you know, there are many community colleges such as Kirkwood
Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where they have
nursing programs or other programs that really are in effect
over the summer.
So for students to be able to access Pell grants in the
summer I think is really, really important. I just think this
doesn't make any sense to cut year round Pell grants for a
variety of reasons. I guess what I would like you to do, if you
could, is just give us some rationale as to why you are cutting
that program.
Secretary Duncan. So again--you are echoing Congressman
Tierney's real concerns and I share those concerns. So I am the
biggest champion you are ever going to find for increasing
access to college and increasing Pell grants. As you know,
through health care reform, we got an additional $40 billion
for Pell grants over the next decade, the biggest increase
since the GI bill, frankly, one of the things I am most proud
of that we have accomplished in the past 2 years.
So in an ideal world, we wouldn't have made that
recommendation. At a time of extraordinary budget pressure, we
made the tough decision to really fight to maintain current
levels of Pell grant funding, not see that 5,550 cut back as
some have proposed. And we made the tough decision that in
order to maintain those efforts for every single student, to
scale back on the twice-a-year program. I will say that at the
community college level, that 5,550 for the vast majority of
community colleges basically means that, again, whether you are
18 or 48 or 68, you can basically go to community college for
free. And we think that is so important. We want to invest an
additional $2 billion in community colleges. We think as
families get back on their feet, the country gets back on its
feet, the community colleges are going to the huge vehicle to
do that. So it is not a decision that we wanted to make or made
lightly or didn't understand the ramifications. We are just
facing tremendous budget pressure and made a very tough
decision.
Mr. Loebsack. And I went around my district for a week a
couple of weeks back and I went to community colleges
throughout my district, all of them. And I can tell you the
students, not just the administrators, but the students are
also very aware of these proposed cutbacks, very concerned, of
course, about fiscal year 2011 and H.R. 1 and what that is
going to do in terms of the $850 cut in Pell grants right now
during this academic year. But the summer Pell grants, the year
round Pell grant program, I just can't reiterate strongly
enough the testimonials I have heard from students and
administrators and teachers, especially at community colleges
and how important that is.
And again, after all, if what we are trying to do is
increase the size of the middle class and have more productive
citizens and have a more educated citizenry, then I just think
that--at least I hope you will reconsider that cut.
Secretary Duncan. I absolutely hear and I share your
concern.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired. Mr.
Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you,
Secretary. It is good to see you. I appreciate your testimony.
I appreciate reading within the testimony all--out of all the
pages, a small section on community--or career and technical
education training as we have talked about in the past. That is
an area I think that is an area of--well, there is nothing more
important to the competitiveness of this Nation than a
qualified workforce. And frankly, career and technical
education I think really has proven its salt in terms of the
outcomes it produces.
It is appropriate I follow my good friend from Iowa,
because last night I had a chance to spend a period of time
with four very impressive young persons from Iowa who are
involved in career and technical education from different
fields. And they shared with me some data that showed what
those students in career and technical education, how they
outperform. And I was limited to specifically that situation,
but how they outperform in both math and science because of the
value of applied education. It really was just very apparent.
And America's competitiveness both address emerging job
opportunities, but frankly with the retirement of baby boomers.
And so within your testimony, it was sort of a mixed
message in your testimony, and that is what I want to come to.
And I know we are on the same page with value in career and
technical education. As I follow what you talk about, write
about, most recently Harvard University's Pathway to Prosperity
Report, you said ``For too long career and technical education
has been a neglected stepchild of education reform. That
neglect has to stop. And second, we need to re-imagine and make
career and technical education as urgent. CT has an enormous
and often overlooked impact on students, school systems and our
ability to prosper as a Nation.'' And the fact that I say
similar things, I think your remarks were brilliant.
Secretary Duncan. I stole them from you.
Mr. Thompson. Yeah. What I wanted to come to, though I
agree with your sentiments and I serve as co-chair of the House
career and technical education caucus and I think it really has
proven its results of training and qualified workforce for a
relatively small Federal investment for the return on
investment, specifically in education. But despite that, the
statement that you made, the budget request, your testimony,
you affirm your support for it, but frankly the budget request
decreases funding for CT programs by over 20 percent. And I
guess just two questions. How do you expect schools to offer
more high quality CT programs that we strategically need with
fewer Federal resources?
Secretary Duncan. It is a great question and your
leadership in this area is really important to me. I will give
you one more stat that was interesting. When I ran the Chicago
public schools, we tracked the data for students in CT
programs. And they had higher graduation rates, they had higher
GPAs. So it wasn't just about that course. There was something
about engaging students in different ways that kept them
engaged in the broader school environment that was very, very
positive.
So this is one of those very tough decisions that we make,
not too dissimilar to second Pells each year. I will honestly
say that the results for CT across the country are mixed. There
are some amazing programs that are creating real jobs and there
are others that are frankly still antiquated. So what we tried
to do--the investment is still at a billion dollar level. So it
is still a very substantial investment. But we did scale back
on basically trying to challenge the sector that where things
aren't working, we have to do some things very differently. We
have to get better results. Again, some pockets of excellence
but that hasn't always been the norm. Some programs aren't
leading to the kind of results we need.
Mr. Thompson. How do we do that?
Secretary Duncan. I think we learn from what is working. We
replicate those successful models and frankly pay greater
attention to outcomes. There are too many places that are
saying we offer this class and okay, what does that mean? What
is it leading to? What job is that leading to? What certificate
is that leading to? We don't always get great answers there,
quite honestly. So by replicating successes and I think
building a stronger base, then I think it gives us the room to
invest more going forward.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, my time I will yield
back.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Ms. Hirono.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Aloha, Mr. Secretary.
Just as there is a growing bipartisan, or there already is
bipartisan consensus around the use of the growth model under
NCLB, I think that there is a growing consensus around the idea
of supporting quality early education. And you have mentioned
it a couple of times. So it is not just the educators who know
this, but scientists, economists, business leaders. I know for
a fact that the L.A. Chamber of Commerce supports quality early
education. Our military is telling us that this is important.
And, in fact, just last week in this committee, we heard
from a Republican witness, Dr. Ed Hatrick who is a
superintendent of the Loudoun County Public Schools and
President of the American Association of School Administrators,
when asked about the most important innovation we can make to
improve outcomes--and you have had a lot of questions about
outcomes--he replied pre-K, pre-K, pre-K.
So music to my ears and for a lot of us here. So obviously,
I am very pleased that there is 350 million in the early
learning challenge fund because this is one of the new programs
that we are pursuing as we focus on using scarcest dollars for
those things that actually work. So can you highlight some of
the more recent research on the effectiveness of quality early
learning?
Secretary Duncan. So we don't need another study. There
have been hundreds of studies. The most recent one I saw was
about 2 weeks ago from Vanderbilt University that talked about
dramatic gains, looking at students who went through quality
early childhood programs compared to students in a control
group that didn't have those kinds of opportunities. But there
have been dozens, if not hundreds of studies that demonstrate
the efficacy here. What we are trying to do with the Early
Learning Challenge Fund is a race to the top for early
childhood, to really challenge States and districts to do two
things, to increase access, particularly for disadvantaged
children, but to make sure it is high quality.
And we know that quality can be uneven in the early
childhood space. If this is glorified babysitting, it doesn't
get us where we need to go. But we want to put significant
resources there. I would also add that it concerns me that in
these tough budget times, you have many governors who are
scaling back, they are cutting back on early childhood
programs. And I met with the governors and said that again I
recognize the tough times. I don't think that is a place where
you should be cutting back and you have to continue to invest
and 3- or 4-year-olds don't have a lobby, they don't have
people here in Congress working on their behalf.
Look, we reduce those investments at great cost long-term.
To Congressman Hunter's point on reallocating resources, again
this is where our flexibility comes into play. We really
encourage governors to think about using our dollars--for
example, Title I dollars that are having tough budget times to
think about using those Title I dollars to maintain full-day,
high-quality early childhood programs. And that flexibility
already exists. A lot of the new governors don't quite
understand that part of our advice to them is to be very
creative. That to me should be one of the last things you cut,
not one of the first things.
Ms. Hirono. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think it
is about time that we all recognize that every dollar we spend
on quality--and I always use that adjective, quality in front
or early learning. That every dollar we spend on quality early
learning really comes back to us many times fold, up to $17
worth. So for those of us who--and all the business people who
are talking about cause and effect of the dollar spent, this is
the one area where there is so much research, I say we better
get on with it. And I am glad that the President's budget
reflects that.
Do I have more time? Yes. The issue of effective teaching,
because that teacher standing in front of the classroom is the
single most important person affecting student learning. Does
your budget reflect an emphasis on encouraging the States to
really focus on appropriate measures of effectiveness?
Secretary Duncan. That is an area that for the country for
far too long didn't move. And again, we literally had States
that had laws on the books that prohibited the linking of
teachers and students, which is absolutely backwards. There is
a remarkable outburst of creativity and innovation in this
area. And there is no one district that has gotten this right,
but there are many that are breaking through and doing some
very significant things. I always say you have to evaluate
teachers along multiple measures. You can never look at one
test score. You have to look at multiple things. Peer
evaluation, principal evaluation, professional dominant
leadership, student achievement, student growth and gain have
to be a significant part of that. And this conference we held
in Denver with 150 school districts from around the country,
labor and management and boards all there together, we had some
fascinating conversations of what folks are doing to break
through in this area.
Again, I think as a country we are in our infancy. We are
putting a usage amount of resources behind this and you are
seeing folks who traditionally fought over silly issues coming
together. And I think it is going to help strengthen the
profession in a critically important way.
Ms. Hirono. So the President's budget also reflects the
support for this kind of effort that is going on all across our
country?
Secretary Duncan. Huge investments not just for teachers
themselves, but for creating the systems that help teachers be
successful. Better data systems, the move towards higher
standards is something teachers are desperately looking for.
The move to better assessments. Teachers have been crying out
for that for a long time. So both direct support for teachers
but also creating the structure and the infrastructure around
them to allow them to be very, very successful. Massive
investments there.
Ms. Hirono. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentlelady. Dr. Bucshon.
Mr. Bucshon. Thank you. I want to start out with just
commenting on some recent comments that were made about
fairness in the U.S. Tax Code even though this isn't a Tax Code
discussion. I just want to clarify that. I guess my definition
of fairness isn't the same as was previously described when 45
percent of the American people don't pay any income tax at all
and the top tax brackets are paying 35 percent of their income
and the top 10 percent of the taxpayers pay 70 percent of all
federal income tax.
So I think I disagree with that definition of fairness and
I want to just clarify that in the context of budgetary
discussions: The question that I have is the EPA recently--and
this is a little bit difference direction than has been taken
so far. But they have five education efforts in their recent
congressional justification document talking about support and
working in partnership with K-12 schools, colleges and
universities, Federal and State agencies, community
organizations to assess the needs established priorities and
leverage resources and lastly an effort to increase promotion
of green principles and increase the nation's scientific
education.
I would like to know if the Department of Education has
been involved in those efforts through the EPA because it seems
to me that that--those type of things should be talked about in
education, not through EPA.
Secretary Duncan. We have had a very good partnership with
Administrator Jackson. And I know they are doing some tough but
important work in the New York City school system now. But your
basic point, though, about collaborating and about sharing
scarce resources I couldn't agree with more. Where we can have
students and districts focus on these issues, do it in a
thoughtful way, in a creative way. The knowledge for students,
the savings to districts, the better environments obviously are
all upsides. So we need to continue to partner and collaborate.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Bucshon. I guess my concern is that, you know, there
appears to be an educational underlying political agenda
through EPA to--I wouldn't call it indoctrinate--but would you
consider advocacy and promotion of green principles as
something that we should be doing at the K-12 level when there
is broad difference of opinion on this subject?
Secretary Duncan. So I don't know if I would agree with
your characterization as political activities. I can just speak
as a parent of two young children at home, that my wife and I
continue to get a very good education every single day if we
don't recycle, if we waste water, if we don't turn off our
lights.
Mr. Bucshon. I guess that is fine. But I guess what I am
saying is should the Federal Government, through an agency like
the EPA, be telling our children these things? Or should it be
us--I am a father of four children; I totally agree. We recycle
everything. We want to do that. We want a clean environment for
our children and grandchildren.
But the question in my mind, again, is through our
educational system, should we be, in my view, promoting what I
consider a political agenda through an agency that is not
involved directly in our educational system?
Secretary Duncan. So you and I may agree or disagree on
whether there is a political agenda there. What I will say is
that there are many things that schools are asked today to do
that maybe they shouldn't--in the past have had to do. Your
four children are lucky to have an active family. My two
children are lucky to have an active family. Unfortunately
many, many children come into school each day who don't have
those lessons at home.
This is a little bit off topic. But I had tens of thousands
of children in Chicago who I fed three meals a day to because
they weren't eating. I sent food home with them on the weekends
because I worried about them going hungry. People challenged
me, was that the role of the school system to provide
nutrition? In an ideal world, I wouldn't have to provide that,
but I had to.
So I would only say that whether it is around this or
financial literacy or whatever it might be, schools are asked
to do more than they have in the past. Is that a good thing?
Maybe not. Is that a reality? Our children need to learn these
lessons. And if they are not learning them at home, if they are
not eating, if they are not getting eye glasses, schools and
communities have to step up to provide those opportunities.
Mr. Bucshon. I wouldn't disagree with that. My view is that
the Environmental Protection Agency is not the avenue for the
government to address these issues. If anyone is to address it,
it should be State, local, or potentially Federal education
people that really understand education.
And, finally, I would like to say thank you for your
testimony and for your advocacy for our Nation's children. So
thank you.
Secretary Duncan. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Grijalva.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr.
Secretary, for being here. My two cents' worth on gainful
employment, I hope that as a rule that there is some date for
implementation. I think it brings accountability both to the
student for their education that they are taking a loan on and
also to the taxpayers of fiscal accountability on how that
money is being used. I think it is a good process that we are
in, and I hope we continue it.
The other observation--and I was glad the Secretary said
that we need to have the educators, the practitioners at the
table, as we start looking at turning schools around. My
colleague also mentioned the stress on the pride of the
profession. And I think you also mentioned that the profession
is beat down right now for a lot of reasons.
And I would suggest that all those things are true. But I
would also suggest that recently we have seen a lot of attack
and commentary against teachers based on collective bargaining
agreements, based on the cost in the budget and the stresses
some States are going through.
The Governor of Wisconsin was bold enough to call teachers
a privileged class that needed to be reduced more. I think as
we try to lift the morale of teachers and also uplift the
status of the profession, that that kind of commentary works in
the opposite direction. It makes it harder for us to find good
people to want to continue to be the critical partner in
education, and that is educators.
You also said something, Mr. Secretary. And I am asked
about this back home all the time. You said, sometimes when I
was the head of the public schools in Chicago, we would ignore
the State so we could get stuff done at the local level.
The improvement grants being a strategy, a question you
hear more and more from local school districts, whether it is
English learner issues, whether it is incentives for teachers
to go into certain schools--more autonomy in terms of the
resource allocation so they can apply it that way. How do you
see that question evolving?
Secretary Duncan. I absolutely agree with that sentiment.
So school improvement grants go to a local community. They
decide what the most effective use of those resources is. They
decide how to turn around those schools. The Teacher Incentive
Fund grant to go only to districts that come up with their
creative ideas and want to implement. And we just want to
reward--I keep going back. We are pushing everybody really hard
to change. We are pushing management, we are pushing labor. All
of us have to get better.
But, Congressman, our Department has been a big part of the
problem. We have been this big compliance-driven bureaucracy
and we have stifled innovation, we have stifled creativity. We
are trying to provide a lot more flexibility. We tried to
shrink the Federal footprint, quite frankly. We want to reward
excellence, we want to reward innovation, and we want to put
resources behind places that are willing to do some things
differently. And I think what we have done is we have unleashed
a huge amount of creativity, a huge amount of courageous work,
and we want to continue to take to scale those best practices.
Mr. Grijalva. Middle schools, the proportionate share of
Title I funds being an issue; Success in the Middle being
another piece of legislation; the graduation promise piece of
legislation. But I think they both directly and indirectly talk
about the proportionate share of Title I funds going to those
two parts of the continuum.
Secretary Duncan. TRIO, Gear Up. And again, if we want to
get serious about ending the dropout crisis, again, fifth
sixth, seventh, eighth grade, we know what students are
struggling. What are we doing to make sure students in eighth
grade are taking high school algebra so they can be on a path
to take, you know, AP calculus as a senior?
If we are serious about reversing some of these negative
outcomes, we have to intervene and provide great opportunities
early. And that middle school sometimes is I think neglected,
and your focus and others' focus is hugely important there. And
we want to continue to invest again, whether it is Title I,
school improvement grants, Teacher Incentive Fund, scarce
resources to get great talent in there.
The final piece, I would say, is the STEM piece. Often
where students start to lose interest in science and technology
and math is in middle school areas where the teachers don't
quite know the content, don't have that. And getting more great
STEM teachers--again, not just for the senior year in high
school, but in fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth grade,
could just open up a world of possibilities for students.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. I yield back, sir.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Walberg.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Secretary Duncan,
your staying power at the witness table is impressive, but
probably should have been expected because of your record-
setting tenure in the Chicago Public Schools system as a
superintendent.
Secretary Duncan. You are wearing me down.
Mr. Walberg. That was the school system, Cook County and
Chicago school system of my birth and education as well. So for
you to stay there that long indicates your staying power. So
thank you for being with us.
It was mentioned, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships
program, and there is certainly some disagreement on whether or
not that should have been expanded, continued. I personally am
one that likes to see a lot of competition, a lot of variety, a
lot of framework for research and development that can come
through things like that.
But moving into my question, first in the higher education
realm, the Department recently finalized regulations for higher
education which have caused private and faith-based colleges,
universities, some great concern as these regulations will most
likely require increased regulation by the government,
affecting potentially the autonomy and mission and really just
liberty of these schools.
Are you planning on clarifying these regulations or making
accommodations for the concerns that you might have?
Secretary Duncan. There has been great feedback. And let me
sort of say where we are. And we will continue to clarify. So
under the regulations, States are explicitly permitted to
exempt religious schools. That exists now.
Mr. Walberg. If I may jump in, is that exemption just for
the mission courses; i.e., if it was a seminary or divinity
school, that they would be exempt from some of the regulations
just in the courses of religious education? Or would it be like
one of my alma maters, Wheaton College for instance, where it
is across the board?
Secretary Duncan. Wheaton is a great university. It is
exempting those schools.
Mr. Walberg. The school in total?
Secretary Duncan. Congress requires that States authorize
schools. And we are just asking the States to do a couple of
basic things. We are not trying to be heavy-handed or anything
like that.
A State has to have a process to review and appropriately
act on complaints concerning the schools, just a place to hear
what the issues are. A school is authorized by name as an
educational institution by a State through a charter, a
statute, a provision, or anything issued by the State. And the
school complies with State approval and licenses. So just sort
of the basic commonsense things that, you know, States have the
responsibility given to them by Congress.
Mr. Walberg. Well, there definitely is a lot of latitude
potentially in there for concern for how far, how aggressive,
the regulating entity of the States might be.
Secretary Duncan. I understand that. We will continue to
try to provide great clarity and I would be happy to continue
the conversation. There are some States like New York that have
done this extraordinarily well. So there are examples out there
that I think are thoughtful and not heavy-handed, not
overbearing. But I hear your concern.
Mr. Walberg. I would applaud that effort because, again,
the diversity that is there, this country is built on that as
you, I am sure, would agree with.
Secretary Duncan. I understand. And for all the challenges
we have talked about with K-12, we have the best system of
higher education in the world.
Mr. Walberg. They all come here.
Secretary Duncan. Yes.
Mr. Walberg. Moving to foundational area with early
childhood education, the administration's education budget
wishes to spend, as I read it, $350 million for creating State-
run early education programs, Early Learning Challenge fund.
This will lead to more requirements for existing preschool
programs, many of which are privately run or faith-based as
well.
What will you do to ensure protection for the autonomy, the
mission, the purpose of private preschool centers and schools
as you go forward with this agenda?
Secretary Duncan. So this is obviously a voluntary program.
States can compete or not compete to come in. And again, we
have just two goals: to increase access, particularly in
disadvantaged communities for children who need these
opportunities, and to make sure it is high quality. Those are
our only two goals through the Early Learning Challenge fund.
Mr. Walberg. There won't be any hurdles that would keep a
school like this from applying or being able to apply due to
resources, or to gain the resources because of some of those
standards that we set arbitrarily?
Secretary Duncan. Again we want to go to the most stressed
communities and give those children and those families who are
trying to give their children a chance at life a chance to have
a great childhood education. That is our goal.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you. I yield back my time.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman.
In order to keep my promise to the Secretary, I regret to
tell my colleagues that we are going to go on the 3-minute
clock. I would like to give everybody in the room a chance to
ask a question. Mr. Payne, you are recognized for 3 minutes.
Mr. Payne. Thank you. For the new members that came or for
those who have been here for the whole time? Anyway, I will try
stay to 3 minutes.
Last week, Mr. Secretary, during a committee hearing on
education regulations, I asked the Loudon County district
administrator from Virginia if he thought Virginia would still
be focused on educating all students equally, advantaged and
disadvantaged, if the disaggregation data required of NCLB had
not shed light on such an achievement gap. To this, he answered
the following. He said: In Loudon County, we actually
disaggregated and reported disaggregated data before NCLB was
law. We realized, he said, that when you are as wealthy and
have as high a social economic index as we have, children do
not have those same opportunities and are in greater danger of
not succeeding.
So I think it is very fair to say that probably one of the
most important change outlooks of the law has been the
disaggregation of data and reporting that. And I think it would
be fair to say that had the law not been passed, practices
would not have changed. We recognize in a place like Loudon
County, it would have been easy to let the overall wonderful
performance, on average, of our students mask the issue that we
face. As far as I am concerned, this is the signal strength of
the law.
Now, his statement supports much of what has been alluded
to today. NCLB drew attention to poor performance of specific
subgroups in our schools and held schools accountable for
improving their performance. However, some have inferred that
the Department intends to have a targeted accountability
focused only on the lowest 5 percent of schools. These schools
educate a significant share of the Nation's disadvantaged
youth, but there are also a large number of disadvantaged youth
in schools above the 5 percent threshold who, prior to NCLB,
were not receiving the attention they deserved because, as Dr.
Hartwick said last week, it was too easy to let the overall
wonderful performance, on average, mask the issue they faced.
So in my opinion, I find it equally important to hold
schools with demonstrated capacity to educate some of their
students to high levels accountable for educating all students,
regardless of the demographics.
Can you assure us that, you know, to reiterate how the
blueprint maintains accountability for student subgroups, since
you are just basically going to focus on the lower 5 percent,
and that other group not disaggregating can go back to the way
it was before NCLB?
Secretary Duncan. That is a great point. You can just rest
assured that we are absolutely committed. I said in a pretty
lengthy way in my opening statement how we are going to
continue to disaggregate it, how that was one of the best
things about NCLB, whether it is for minority children, whether
it is for English language learners, we want to continue to
look at those gaps and challenge them. So we will absolutely
maintain that accountability.
Let me give you one more, though. What I would also argue
what never happened under NCLB are those districts that did a
great job of closing those gaps, no one ever got rewarded, no
one ever got recognized. We didn't learn from that. So, yes, we
want to hold folks accountable. Desperately important. But we
also want to shine a spotlight on success. And where you have
districts that are closing gaps and helping every single
student be successful, we want to recognize them. We want to
reward them. We want to learn from them. We want to give them
more flexibility.
So, rewards at the top. Challenge folks to continue to
improve. Massive interventions--as you know, if districts and
schools aren't making differences--intervention, if that need
be. But let's also reward excellence.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired. Mr.
Kelly.
Mr. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, it is good to see you in person after
talking to you on the phone. I know you have a great passion
for this. But I really do question where we are going with the
spending because it is not that we don't spend enough, it is
just that we don't get enough for what we spend.
And if there was no clearer message on November 2, we have
to rein in the spending. I am just looking at this. For a
budget that has increased 68 percent in the last 3 years--in
2009 alone, the budget tripled. My question--and Mr. Hunter
asked this several times--why not redeploy funds that aren't
working? And why isn't part of the strategy let's eliminate
what is not working and put it into what is working?
And I keep hearing about so many countries are doing it
better than we are. Well, obviously, we must know what other
countries are doing. Why continue down the same path that we
are on, in not getting results, where in the private sector--I
have got to tell you, when it is your own money, when it is
your own skin in the game, you don't have that option of just
spending it. I think the worst thing we can do is to continue
to throw money at a problem. We have to start coming down to a
strategy that actually fixes the problem.
So please tell me what is the strategy for the DOE? Because
a lot of people are starting to wonder, Why do we even have a
DOE? We are spending tons of money and I am not seeing any
results for it.
Secretary Duncan. So what I would argue to you, sir, that
in the past 2 years you have seen more change in this country
than in the past decade or two combined. And I would make a
pretty compelling case to you that because for the first time
our Department was awarding excellence and encouraging that
kind of creativity and ingenuity and courage, you have seen
those dramatic changes. So I would be the first to concur with
you.
Our Department historically has been part of the problem. I
have told the story repeatedly, that I almost had to sue our
Department of Education when I ran the Chicago Public Schools
for the right to tutor my children after school. It made no
sense whatsoever. I won that fight.
Mr. Kelly. I am not an adversary. There is not a person in
this room that doesn't want better education for our kids. But
there is also, on behalf of the taxpayers who fund every one of
these programs, where is the return on investment and when do
we start to see that there is actually a positive to this?
Because everything I look at looks at a tremendous spend and a
flat line.
Secretary Duncan. I understand that. So I would argue that
there is compelling, compelling, data that investments in early
childhood education, particularly for disadvantaged children,
are hugely important. So, yes, we want to invest there and we
haven't in the past. I think that has been a strategic error on
our part. We are trying to drive dramatic K-12 reform, higher
standards, better assessments, much more flexibility to award
excellence. And we are asking to continue to fund young people
who are trying to go to college with access to Pell Grants who
desperately need that.
Mr. Kelly. And I understand that. But my question goes back
to we keep spending more money, and at some point it has got to
stop. It has absolutely got to stop. And the argument always
is, well, there are a lot of people out there who aren't paying
for their share. Really? Look what is being paid. There is no
other country in the world that invests more in education than
the United States and has a lower return on the investment.
My concern is--and again, I am not adversarial. It is just
at what point do we start to realize what we are doing isn't
working, and when are we going to stop? And I understand that
you are saying that there is compelling evidence that it is
getting better.
Chairman Kline. If I can interrupt. I am sorry, the
gentleman's time has expired. Mr. Scott, you are recognized for
3 minutes.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being with us. You mentioned
the achievement gap. The 1954 Brown decision talked about the
harm inflicted on children when the children of the minority
race were denied an equal educational opportunity. The school
system maintains a significant and persistent achievement gap.
Are the children of the minority race being denied an equal
educational opportunity in violation of their civil rights?
Secretary Duncan. I think all of us have to use every fiber
in our bodies to close those achievement gaps. And where you
have huge and gaping achievement gaps, we are trying to push
more dramatic change than we have ever seen. Every child has a
right to have a great education. We have to provide those
opportunities, particularly for disadvantaged children. That is
the only way we end cycles of poverty and social failure.
Mr. Scott. And speaking of civil rights, the Department of
Education gives out grants. If the sponsor of a grant insisted
on discriminating on employment based on religion or which
church a job applicant attended, would your Department continue
to fund such a program or not?
Secretary Duncan. I understand the significance of the
issue and the question. And it is one that I will follow up
with the Department of Justice on.
Mr. Scott. So it is possible that you might continue to
fund an organization that has a policy of employment
discrimination?
Secretary Duncan. Well, again, this is an area where the
Department of Justice I think can provide some real guidance
and help. I will follow up with them directly.
Mr. Scott. Civil rights implications of zero tolerance
policies, particularly in pre-K, people being expelled. Can you
tell us what the Department's position is on zero tolerance,
kicking kids out of school without any services?
Secretary Duncan. So one of the things the Office of Civil
Rights is doing is looking at places where you might have
disproportionate rates of expulsions or suspensions, whether it
is by race or whether it is young boys of color. And where we
are expelling students to the street, again, we are part of the
problem. So we are going to track that. We are going to
challenge that. And there are many places that are finding
creative ways to help the students who have historically
struggled to stay engaged in school and be successful, and we
need to continue to learn from those examples.
Mr. Scott. Since you are going to get back with me on the
other, I have several questions that I am obviously not going
to have time to address. But you indicated if a subgroup fails,
the resources ought to be--the response ought to be targeted at
that subgroup and not schoolwide. If you could follow up on
that.
And also you mentioned the importance of higher education.
Could you tell me what your strategy for access to higher
education is, and college completion, particularly as it
pertains to the TRIO programs, whether or not the Promise
Neighborhoods will be correlated with the dropout factories and
whether there is a strategy of dealing with dropouts in No
Child Left Behind? Some of the dropout factories are actually
being awarded AYP, which seems absurd to me.
And finally, there is a controversy over what to do with
less qualified teachers, but there are two problems. To my
knowledge, there is no accurate measure of what an effective
teacher is. And you have the counterproductive school
collaboration where teachers might not want to collaborate and
take on problem children because it might adversely affect
them. Can you talk about how you are going to identify who a
qualified effective teacher is?
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired. You will
will have to talk about that on the record. And we would
appreciate it if you would do so.
Mr. Gowdy, you are recognized for 3 minutes.
Mr. Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, in the interest of full disclosure I had the
privilege of hearing you speak in Colorado several years ago,
and despite some differences, left that seminar finding you to
be incredibly candid, challenging, willing to offend if
necessary. And I want to thank you, along with my colleagues,
for being here today.
I just want to ask you about one thing because you
mentioned reform. And in listening to your testimony, it
strikes me that if a program is working or if it even appears
to be working, you would be willing to continue it.
So I have to go back to the Opportunity Scholarship
program, a 91 percent graduation rate. Their reading scores are
higher, their math scores may not be higher, but educational
attainment is being reached even if, assuming arguendo,
educational results are not. The parents like it. The demand
outpaces the supply four to one. So why not continue it?
Secretary Duncan. No. Again, more than fair question. I
stated earlier that we fought very hard to keep children in the
program, to be able to stay in those schools, and we are able
to do that. I would disagree a little bit with you on results.
I think the results were pretty mixed actually. But at the end
of the day, what I see our responsibility here is to create a
great system of public schools, where the private sector, where
the philanthropic community, where individuals want to step up
and provide scholarships to a relatively small number of
students; that is fantastic. We need to do more of that.
But we have to be much more ambitious. We have to fix the
D.C. Public Schools. They have made remarkable progress. Great
local leadership. We are continuing to invest in that
transformation. They are a Race to the Top winner. My goal is
not to save a handful of students and leave the other 500 to
drown. My goal is to save every single child, and that is what
I think our proper role should be.
Mr. Gowdy. If I told you that we could craft legislation
that funded all three sectors of the D.C. school system--
public, private, and charter--to fund all three of them, would
you then support the Opportunity Scholarship program? If there
was no harm being done at all to the public school system and
no harm being done to the D.C. charter school system, you would
then support it?
Secretary Duncan. I don't think any harm is being done.
Again, our focus has to be to create a great set of public
schools. So they are expanding charter schools very
significantly here. We want to create access to great public
schools for every single child. That is where I think our focus
has to be. I am a big fan of choice. I am a big fan of
competition. But it has to be access across the board, not for
a tiny percent of students.
Mr. Gowdy. I will do something uncharacteristic and yield
back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Holt you are
recognized for the final 3-minute question of the day. I am
almost going to keep my promise, Mr. Secretary.
Mr. Holt. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you for your
endurance and all of your good work.
Let me just state two questions and three comments, ask you
to get to them as time allows, or get back to me or the
committee with your answers.
First of all, ARPA-ED. What do you imagine doing with the
$90 million and why is it important? Secondly, in your
legislative proposal, you proposed ending the year-round or
summer Pell Grant programs. Why are you taking on that? They
are new, relatively new. Are they already determined not to be
as successful? Why did you choose to cut there?
My three comments or concerns. I remain concerned that the
math and science partnerships are combined under teacher
effectiveness. And it puts science in competition with, oh,
gender equality and foreign languages and other such things.
And I question the wisdom of that.
Also, you are celebrated for your competitive grants and
indeed you have shown how the competitive instinct gets people
to work hard. But if the best practice is not replicated and
extended, it turns out to be very inequitable. And I guess I
would like to know what measures you are applying to see that
in--again, this is new, too. So I mean, you have only been at
it for a couple of years, but what measures are you applying to
see that the competitive grant actually results in, well,
lifting all boats?
And I had a third concern, but I will let it go at that.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Secretary Duncan. So on ARPA-ED--and I appreciate you
bringing that up--what I have said repeatedly is that I think
the education sector has lacked the transformational change
that other sectors have had. I think technology can do an
amazing job of equalizing opportunity and accelerating
learning. I think we have to be much more thoughtful there. We
need to invest more in R&D. And this is a chance for us to
invest in a set of players that could potentially transform the
learning for young people. And I think a part of our job is not
just to deal with the day-to-day issues today but to look over
the horizon.
What DARPA has done I think is pretty extraordinary. And if
we can see those kinds of transformational changes in the
education sector, in part due to our investment, that would be
a hugely important piece of work that we can do for the
country.
On summer Pell, we discussed it a couple of times, that
again in an ideal world, in flusher times, this is not a choice
I would have begun to have thought about. In very tough budget
times you have to make tough choices. The summer Pell was set
up with an estimate of a couple hundred million dollars a year
and ended up being a couple of billion dollars. In a perfect
world, we would continue that. In tough budget times, we have
to make tough choices. And our choice was to try and maintain
the commitment for the $5,550 Pell for everybody.
Mr. Holt. Thank you Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kline. Thank you. The gentleman's time has
expired. Mr. Miller, you are recognized for any closing
remarks.
Mr. Miller. I won't take any more of the Secretary's time.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary. We will all have follow-up
conversations. I thank you.
Chairman Kline. Mr. Secretary I thank you. I do have one
note that I would like to bring up. The last time we had a
hearing, we asked for some responses for the record. We,
frankly, had the hearing in March and got the answers in
December.
We have had several requests today. I hope you will look at
getting those responses in as timely a way as possible. I
apologize to you; I am 7 minutes over. Thank you very, very
much for your attendance, for your testimony, and for your
responses.
There being no further business, the hearing is adjourned.
[Questions submitted for the record and their responses
follow:]
------
[Responses from Secretary Duncan follow:]
Secretary Duncan's Responses to Questions Submitted for the Record
Chairman John Kline
1. How many political appointees are employed by the Department as
of March 28, 2011? How many full-time employees (FTEs) are working at
the Department as of March 28, 2011? Provide a breakdown of political
appointees and FTEs by program office. Provide a comparison of these
aggregate numbers to political appointees and FTEs employed by the
Department for each of the last 30 years, broken down by fiscal year
(1980-2010).
As of March 28, 2011 the number of political appointees is 145 and
the number of full-time employees is 4,315. A table has been provided
displaying the number of political appointees and FTEs for each of the
past 30 years.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1980\3\ 1981\4\ 1982\4\ 1983\4\ 1984\5\ 1985\5\ 1986\6\ 1987\6\ 1988\6\ 1989\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Program office Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time
appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary........................................... ......... 1,484 ......... 1,458 ......... 212 ......... 198 25 151 16 163 ......... 47 ......... 67 ......... 65 ......... 66
Deputy Secretary.................................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Under Secretary..................................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 29 ......... 36 9 59 23 45 ......... 43 ......... 20 ......... 22 ......... 17
Civil Rights........................................ ......... 1,092 ......... 1,050 ......... 970 ......... 922 7 922 5 879 ......... 840 ......... 831 ......... 778 ......... 784
Inspector General................................... ......... 236 ......... 283 ......... 272 ......... 283 1 315 1 288 ......... 263 ......... 314 ......... 302 ......... 328
General Counsel..................................... ......... 75 ......... 92 ......... 84 ......... 85 2 95 1 95 ......... 96 ......... 102 ......... 100 ......... 95
Special Ed and Rehabilitative Services.............. ......... 510 ......... 507 ......... 464 ......... 459 12 433 10 402 ......... 378 ......... 385 ......... 396 ......... 403
Postsecondary Education............................. ......... 1,176 ......... 1,091 ......... 1,213 ......... 1,182 10 1,210 10 1,054 ......... 995 ......... 1,169 ......... 997 ......... 1,068
Federal Student Aid................................. ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Institute of Education Sciences\1\.................. ......... 803 ......... 614 ......... 520 ......... 463 10 447 7 447 ......... 402 ......... 432 ......... 417 ......... 454
Elementary and Secondary Education.................. ......... 458 ......... 496 ......... 359 ......... 271 7 265 5 254 ......... 239 ......... 259 ......... 253 ......... 242
Vocational and Adult Education...................... ......... 180 ......... 172 ......... 147 ......... 125 5 114 6 117 ......... 102 ......... 109 ......... 107 ......... 104
Chief Financial Officer............................. ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 107 ......... 115 4 117 5 108 ......... 151 ......... 166 ......... 168 ......... 166
Chief Information Officer........................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Safe and Drug Free Schools.......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Innovation and Improvement.......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Planning, Evaluation and Policy Develop............. ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs........... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 73 ......... 51 8 72 13 65 ......... 110 ......... 121 ......... 102 ......... 112
Communications and Outreach......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
English Language Acquisition........................ ......... 53 ......... 57 ......... 54 ......... 50 3 52 3 47 ......... 48 ......... 45 ......... 49 ......... 44
Advisory Councils and Committees.................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 24 ......... ......... ......... 28 ......... 23 ......... 17 ......... 16 ......... 12 ......... 17
Management.......................................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 783 ......... 739 11 736 13 618 ......... 653 ......... 636 ......... 611 ......... 623
Legislative and Congressional Affairs............... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 69 ......... 69 13 61 11 62 ......... 25 ......... 26 ......... 25 ......... 22
Institute of Museum Services........................ ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 5 ......... 9 ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
National Institute for Literacy..................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
National Assessment Governing Board................. ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Miscellaneous Offices............................... ......... 11 ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 21 ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total......................................... 102 6,078 115 5,820 125 5,385 128 5,078 127 5,077 129 4,667 140 4,409 127 4,698 118 4,404 129 4,545
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
\1\ Prior to August 2003 was called Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
\2\ Only Full Time Equivalent Usage Available for 1992 and 1994 and is not comparable to full-time employees.
\3\ Political Appointees for 1980 are as of November 1980 by total only.
\4\ Political Appointees for years 1981-1983, 1989-1991, 1994, and 1995 are as of December of each year by total only.
\5\ Political Appointees for years 1984-1985 are as of March of each year by Program Office.
\6\ Political Appointees for years 1986-1988 are as of September of each year by total only.
\7\ Political Appointees for years 1992, 1993, 1996-2010 are as of September of each year by Program Office.
\8\ Political Appointees and Full Time Employees for 2011 as of March 28, 2011
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1990\4\ 1991\4\ 1992\7\ 1993\7\ 1994\4\ 1995\4\ 1996\7\ 1997 1998 1999
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Program office Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time
appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary........................................... ......... 112 ......... 115 31 110 38 117 ......... 110 ......... 105 35 95 41 102 40 100 37 102
Deputy Secretary.................................... ......... ......... ......... ......... 8 25 10 ......... ......... 20 ......... 22 12 17 10 23 10 26 12 27
Under Secretary..................................... ......... 20 ......... 24 4 16 1 17 ......... 132 ......... 130 5 126 4 126 1 125 1 126
Civil Rights........................................ ......... 800 ......... 856 8 848 5 848 ......... 821 ......... 760 5 721 5 650 5 720 4 706
Inspector General................................... ......... 329 ......... 358 1 350 1 369 ......... 358 ......... 326 1 286 2 275 0 289 2 281
General Counsel..................................... ......... 95 ......... 95 4 103 2 99 ......... 106 ......... 104 4 104 4 106 3 97 3 100
Special Ed and Rehabilitative Services.............. ......... 421 ......... 400 8 407 2 404 ......... 388 ......... 349 10 338 10 352 9 351 9 361
Postsecondary Education............................. ......... 1,116 ......... 1,169 13 1,146 7 1,234 ......... 1,240 ......... 1,507 12 1,398 11 1,409 10 1,350 14 246
Federal Student Aid................................. ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 1,165
Institute of Education Sciences\1\.................. ......... 431 ......... 472 9 448 6 431 ......... 407 ......... 359 3 343 2 346 2 340 1 338
Elementary and Secondary Education.................. ......... 267 ......... 300 10 254 3 262 ......... 213 ......... 239 8 231 12 246 13 256 10 253
Vocational and Adult Education...................... ......... 112 ......... 121 8 112 3 106 ......... 102 ......... 111 5 107 7 110 7 114 6 122
Chief Financial Officer............................. ......... 134 ......... 136 3 168 ......... 239 ......... 313 ......... 322 ......... 304 2 260 1 317 0 263
Chief Information Officer........................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 80
Safe and Drug Free Schools.......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Innovation and Improvement.......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Planning, Evaluation and Policy Develop............. ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs........... ......... 113 ......... 110 39 108 20 91 ......... 100 ......... 99 27 110 32 106 35 115 39 125
Communications and Outreach......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
English Language Acquisition........................ ......... 46 ......... 48 2 51 1 45 ......... 42 ......... 46 4 43 5 47 3 46 1 49
Advisory Councils and Committees.................... ......... 14 ......... 10 ......... 12 ......... 14 ......... 12 ......... 7 ......... 7 ......... 7 0 7 0 8
Management.......................................... ......... 602 ......... 675 8 621 ......... 499 330 ......... 301 ......... 1 289 ......... 286 0 197 0 194
Legislative and Congressional Affairs............... ......... 22 ......... 23 8 26 5 22 ......... 22 ......... 23 5 22 5 22 6 21 6 22
Institute of Museum Services........................ ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
National Institute for Literacy..................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 6 ......... 10 ......... 11 ......... 13 ......... 13 ......... 12 0 14 0 15
National Assessment Governing Board................. ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 10 ......... 10 ......... 10 ......... 9 ......... 9 ......... 10 0 10 0 10
Miscellaneous Offices............................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total......................................... 160 4,634 174 4,912 164 4,821 104 4,817 156 4,737 147 4,832 137 4,563 152 4,495 145 4,495 145 4,593
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
\1\ Prior to August 2003 was called Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
\2\ Only Full Time Equivalent Usage Available for 1992 and 1994 and is not comparable to full-time employees.
\3\ Political Appointees for 1980 are as of November 1980 by total only.
\4\ Political Appointees for years 1981-1983, 1989-1991, 1994, and 1995 are as of December of each year by total only.
\5\ Political Appointees for years 1984-1985 are as of March of each year by Program Office.
\6\ Political Appointees for years 1986-1988 are as of September of each year by total only.
\7\ Political Appointees for years 1992, 1993, 1996-2010 are as of September of each year by Program Office.
\8\ Political Appointees and Full Time Employees for 2011 as of March 28, 2011
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Program office Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time Political Full-time
appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees appointee employees
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary........................................... 40 100 27 85 53 130 58 136 50 144 39 118 40 122 40 123 31 125 32 128
Deputy Secretary.................................... 10 22 7 17 9 19 2 99 11 68 6 12 6 10 5 12 3 8 8 13
Under Secretary..................................... 0 124 6 126 8 127 10 47 3 89 1 2 2 1 5 5 5 7 7 8
Civil Rights........................................ 5 686 0 697 7 676 5 646 2 643 5 613 6 598 8 599 4 577 2 554
Inspector General................................... 2 261 1 280 0 275 1 277 1 268 1 303 1 289 1 271 0 272 0 291
General Counsel..................................... 3 96 2 94 4 97 5 98 5 96 4 97 5 92 7 97 7 92 5 96
Special Ed and Rehabilitative Services.............. 8 359 4 363 9 362 7 357 6 344 6 299 7 259 4 259 4 262 3 266
Postsecondary Education............................. 11 257 0 224 8 225 6 239 6 228 5 227 6 215 6 208 3 211 0 205
Federal Student Aid................................. ......... 1,175 ......... 1,172 ......... 1,128 ......... 1,069 ......... 1,070 ......... 1,007 ......... 979 ......... 1,005 ......... 1,008 ......... 968
Institute of Education Sciences\1\.................. 1 308 1 307 2 277 2 177 3 171 1 184 1 178 1 183 1 183 1 188
Elementary and Secondary Education.................. 8 261 4 255 11 268 6 210 8 170 10 200 10 200 11 203 10 211 5 218
Vocational and Adult Education...................... 6 117 2 117 5 118 4 123 6 119 4 115 2 97 4 94 4 94 4 89
Chief Financial Officer............................. 0 265 0 280 4 277 4 288 4 280 3 275 3 271 2 258 2 262 0 182
Chief Information Officer........................... 0 106 0 103 0 110 0 106 0 102 0 96 0 77 0 70 0 67 0 138
Safe and Drug Free Schools.......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 2 49 3 54 4 50 4 49 4 46 4 44 3 43
Innovation and Improvement.......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 5 84 3 91 2 86 2 87 4 89 4 88 5 84
Planning, Evaluation and Policy Develop............. ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 4 112 4 112 6 114 6 124 7 125
Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs........... 32 127 11 104 25 105 26 105 27 106 8 10 ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
Communications and Outreach......................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... 31 122 44 135 44 135 40 130 13 106
English Language Acquisition........................ 1 51 0 48 4 48 4 45 4 43 1 38 2 41 2 37 0 30 0 22
Advisory Councils and Committees.................... 0 7 0 7 0 9 0 9 0 7 0 7 0 8 0 8 0 5 0 5
Management.......................................... 0 187 0 196 5 194 6 189 3 178 3 165 4 182 4 179 4 196 1 189
Legislative and Congressional Affairs............... 6 23 5 20 5 19 10 25 10 25 10 24 9 23 11 24 6 19 6 21
Institute of Museum Services........................ ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
National Institute for Literacy..................... 0 16 0 17 0 13 0 16 0 13 0 11 0 17 0 14 0 12 0 11
National Assessment Governing Board................. 0 10 0 11 0 11 0 11 0 10 0 12 0 11 0 11 0 11 0 12
Miscellaneous Offices............................... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total......................................... 133 4,558 70 4,523 159 4,488 163 4,405 155 4,319 148 4,185 158 4,053 169 4,044 138 4,038 102 3,962
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
\1\ Prior to August 2003 was called Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
\2\ Only Full Time Equivalent Usage Available for 1992 and 1994 and is not comparable to full-time employees.
\3\ Political Appointees for 1980 are as of November 1980 by total only.
\4\ Political Appointees for years 1981-1983, 1989-1991, 1994, and 1995 are as of December of each year by total only.
\5\ Political Appointees for years 1984-1985 are as of March of each year by Program Office.
\6\ Political Appointees for years 1986-1988 are as of September of each year by total only.
\7\ Political Appointees for years 1992, 1993, 1996-2010 are as of September of each year by Program Office.
\8\ Political Appointees and Full Time Employees for 2011 as of March 28, 2011
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2010 2011\8\
-------------------------------------------
Program office Political Full-time Political Full-time
appointee employees appointee employees
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary................... 39 140 37 145
Deputy Secretary............ 8 16 10 33
Under Secretary............. 10 10 10 13
Civil Rights................ 7 609 7 604
Inspector General........... 1 327 1 323
General Counsel............. 6 95 6 91
Special Ed and 6 267 6 266
Rehabilitative Services....
Postsecondary Education..... 3 213 3 210
Federal Student Aid......... ......... 1,157 0 1,212
Institute of Education 1 194 2 187
Sciences\1\................
Elementary and Secondary 11 239 12 226
Education..................
Vocational and Adult 7 85 6 82
Education..................
Chief Financial Officer..... 0 191 0 185
Chief Information Officer... 0 128 0 132
Safe and Drug Free Schools.. 3 42 3 43
Innovation and Improvement.. 7 94 6 101
Planning, Evaluation and 11 133 12 130
Policy Develop.............
Intergovernmental and ......... ......... ......... .........
Interagency Affairs........
Communications and Outreach. 14 104 16 104
English Language Acquisition 1 20 2 22
Advisory Councils and 0 6 0 5
Committees.................
Management.................. 1 183 0 171
Legislative and 7 20 6 18
Congressional Affairs......
Institute of Museum Services ......... ......... ......... .........
National Institute for 0 10 ......... .........
Literacy...................
National Assessment 0 12 0 12
Governing Board............
Miscellaneous Offices....... ......... ......... ......... .........
-------------------------------------------
Total................. 143 4,295 145 4,315
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
\1\ Prior to August 2003 was called Office of Educational Research and
Improvement.
\2\ Only Full Time Equivalent Usage Available for 1992 and 1994 and is
not comparable to full-time employees.
\3\ Political Appointees for 1980 are as of November 1980 by total
only.
\4\ Political Appointees for years 1981-1983, 1989-1991, 1994, and
1995 are as of December of each year by total only.
\5\ Political Appointees for years 1984-1985 are as of March of each
year by Program Office.
\6\ Political Appointees for years 1986-1988 are as of September of
each year by total only.
\7\ Political Appointees for years 1992, 1993, 1996-2010 are as of
September of each year by Program Office.
\8\ Political Appointees and Full Time Employees for 2011 as of March
28, 2011
2. How many new employees is the Department expected to hire in the
next fiscal year? What specific projects and program offices are these
new employees connected to?
The Department's 2012 budget includes a net increase of 61
positions in fiscal year (FY) 2012. Twenty of the positions are for
Federal Student Aid, primarily due to increases resulting from the
Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which terminated the
Federal Family Education Loans program and shifted all new Federal loan
originations to the Direct Loan program.
Fifteen positions are to help the Department achieve other high-
priority performance goals. These efforts will include providing
technical assistance to States to help achieve education reform (7
positions in the Office of the Deputy Secretary); enhancing and
increasing the Department's program evaluations (6 positions in the
Institute of Education Sciences); administering the proposed Workforce
Innovation Fund, in conjunction with the Department of Labor (1
position in the Office of Vocational and Adult Education); and
supporting the Rehabilitation Service Administration's Management
Information System (1 position in the Office of Special Education and
Rehabilitation Services).
An additional 12 positions are included in the 2012 budget for the
Office for Civil Rights to handle increased workload. In FY 2010, OCR
received 6,933 complaints, a 9 percent increase from FY 2009--the
largest number of complaints ever received by the office.
Lastly, the 2012 budget includes an additional 30 positions for the
Office of Inspector General. In order to fully address high-priority
areas, additional auditors and investigators are needed to perform a
larger number of audits and to conduct investigations larger in scope,
with emphasis on programs funded by the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act), including the Race to the Top and
Investing in Innovation programs, as well as oversight of guaranty
agencies, Direct Loans, and distance education. The additional auditors
and investigators, supported by additional Information Technology
Audits and Computer Crime Investigations staff, also will allow OIG to
expand reviews of student loan programs.
The addition of these 77 new positions will be partially offset by
the elimination of 16 positions of staff currently working on the
administration of the Recovery Act and the Education Jobs Fund, and
through the streamlining of administrative processes in several areas
of the Department.
3. How many contracts does the Department utilize to operate its
programs and projects, as of March 28, 2011? For each contract, specify
how many contractors and subcontractors are utilized to carry out the
required activities. For each contract, also specify the number of
workers attached to the particular contract. In complying with this
request, group the relevant information by program office. List the
number of contracts, contractors, subcontractors, and workers assigned
to the Direct Loan program. How many contracts utilize more than ten
contractors?
The number of active contracts, as of March 28, 2011, is listed
below.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of
Principal office active
contracts
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance..... 6
Institute of Education Sciences........................ 198
National Assessment Governing Board.................... 24
Office of the Chief Financial Officer.................. 18
Office of the Chief Information Officer................ 35
Office of Communications and Outreach.................. 40
Office for Civil Rights................................ 38
Office of English Language Acquisition................. 1
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education........... 32
Office of the General Counsel.......................... 1
Office of Inspector General............................ 41
Office of Innovation and Improvement................... 13
Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs........ 1
Office of Management................................... 116
Office of Postsecondary Education...................... 46
Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. 30
Office of the Secretary................................ 23
Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools................... 10
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services 28
Office of Vocational and Adult Education............... 22
Federal Student Aid.................................... 228
----------------
Total............................................ 951
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Each contract is between the Department and one prime contractor.
The number of subcontractors per contract is not tracked except under
the Direct Loan program.
The Department does not track the number of workers attached to a
particular contract except under the Direct Loan program.
A total of 36 contracts are associated with the Direct Loan
program. The contracts are with 33 contractors and 15 subcontractors,
and include approximately 7,600 contract workers. The Department does
not assign staff to specific programs, as there are many functions,
activities and contracts that overlap programs--1,034 federal employees
work on some aspect of the Direct Loan program.
4. How many additional employees (defined as FTEs, contractors, and
people working under current or new contracts) will be needed once the
Department assumes ownership of all federal student loans in the
country? How many additional employees would be needed to implement the
Administration's proposed changes to the student loan programs included
in the Department's fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget request?
Under current law, the Department will not assume ownership of all
federal student loans in the country. However, the Department has
purchased a significant share of recent loan volume pursuant to the
Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008 (ECASLA), as
lenders exercised the option to sell these loans to the Department. In
addition, per the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), as
of July 1, 2010, the Department has begun to originate 100 percent of
all new student loan volume that was previously divided between the
Direct Loan program and the Federal Family Education Loan program.
Implementing these two pieces of legislation has required approximately
120 new federal staff. While the Department does not track exact
figures for contract personnel, approximately 3,400 additional contract
workers have been needed to implement ECASLA and SAFRA.
The Department expects that 5 additional employees will be needed
to implement proposed changes to the student loan programs. Some
additional contract staff may also be needed.
5. What cost efficiencies have been undertaken to reduce the
Department's Administrative budget since January 20, 2009?
The Department has undertaken a number of steps to reduce the
Department's Administrative budget since January 20, 2009, including
the following:
Savings through dissolving the National Institute for
Literacy.
Savings realized through implementing the Department's ED
Pubs project, which distributes Department publications, through an
interagency agreement rather than through a contract.
Savings through reducing the number of leased computers
and printers.
Efficiencies through Deputy Secretary review of the annual
acquisition plan and elimination of programs and contracts.
Savings through strategic sourcing, including
strategically sourcing office supplies and preparing to transition to
the new Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative for office supplies
(OS2), strategically sourcing online subscription services, and
developing in-house strategic sourcing methods for conference planning.
Savings through the implementation of a five-year plan to
consolidate building locations within the Washington, D.C. area, which
will reduce rental and security costs.
Federal Student Aid programs have seen savings through:
Changing the Common Origination and Disbursement
fulfillment processes to replace paper letters to borrowers (in
specific circumstances) with electronic notices.
Modifying the Common Services for Borrowers (CSB) contract
modification to eliminate borrower account transfer fees, when accounts
were moved from CSB to other servicers.
Reducing the percentage payout rate through negotiated
pricing with Federal Student Aid Private Collection Agency contracts.
Cost avoidance of development work costs through a
renegotiated contract for the Default Management Collection System.
6. The Administration's Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) reauthorization proposal requires states and school districts to
focus accountability and school turnaround efforts on the lowest
performing schools in the state and defines this category as the bottom
5 percent of schools. How did the Department determine that 5 percent
is the appropriate cut-off, and what data was used to ensure the
students most in need will be reached by this proposal to focus on the
bottom 5 percent of schools?
Our proposal requires states and districts to focus specific
intensive interventions on the 5 percent of schools that represent the
lowest achieving schools in the State that also are not improving,
because these are schools that have consistently failed their students
and communities. While there are additional schools that may need
significant intervention to improve, we limited the most intensive
interventions to 5 percent of schools because states and districts may
not have the capacity to fully and effectively implement these
interventions in too many schools, and we want them to focus their most
intense support and resources on a limited number of schools that are
farthest behind to increase their chances of success in improving these
schools. The Department has examined state performance data over time,
as well as research and reports from outside organizations to determine
there are very low-performing schools that are not improving across the
country, where intensive support is needed. For example, research has
found that there are approximately 1,600 ``dropout factories'' where
less than 60 percent of 9th-grade students are still enrolled in 12th
grade, which represent about 10 percent of all high schools. Beyond
this 5 percent of schools, our proposal would also require states to
implement evidence-based, data-driven interventions in the next-lowest
5 percent of such schools and the 5 percent of schools with the largest
achievement gaps that aren't closing, which will help ensure that
states focus on the schools and students most in need.
7. Several states, including Indiana, Wisconsin, Florida, and New
Jersey are making dramatic changes to their K-12 education systems that
improve student academic achievement. Has the Department examined
whether there are provisions in federal law or regulation that may
limit the ability of state and local leaders to innovate? If so, what
are those provisions?
The Department wants to right-size the federal role and to serve as
an engine of innovation, not a compliance-driven bureaucracy. Our
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization proposal
is designed to reduce burden and allow States and districts to focus on
results. Through proposed program consolidations, streamlined
accountability systems, and other measures, we would reduce red tape so
that state and local leaders can focus on innovating and improving
student achievement.
Also, at the President's direction, the Department and other
agencies are undertaking a collaborative process to coordinate and
streamline requirements as well as reduce administrative, regulatory,
and legislative barriers. While this work is still in its initial
phases, the Department hopes it will help to reduce burden and improve
results. Finally, there are many existing flexibilities that are under-
utilized by States and districts. The Department is taking steps to
shine a bright light on these burden-reducing options and to identify
innovative practices in using them. In March, the Department brought
together in one place options and ideas for handling education funding
in tough budget times and released this information to Governors. The
materials and technical assistance, which are available on our website
(http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-education-provides-
promising-practices-productivity-flexibility), clarify the
flexibilities available for using federal funds, which can reduce
burden and provide more room for local innovation if states and schools
districts take advantage of these opportunities.
8. Mr. Secretary, you have stated that it is critically important
for parents to be involved in their children's education. Where do you
stand on the idea of allowing parents to petition school districts for
the right to turn around their schools (a.k.a. a parent trigger)?
We are in favor of parents demanding excellence in their schools.
We need to do a better job of empowering our parents to demand a high-
quality education and better, safer schools for their children. Parents
should have good options and demand better schools when their children
are consistently being ill-served, but for public school choice
programs and school improvement efforts to work, they have to be fair,
open, and transparent and fully engage parents so they can make the
best decision for their children.
9. The Department has made several changes affecting student
privacy and has been actively working on new regulations under the
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). What has the
Department done to help states and school districts protect the
personal information of students they are required to collect? What
changes is the Department planning to make to protect student privacy?
The use of data is vital to ensuring the best education for our
children. However, the benefits of using student data must always be
balanced with the need to protect students' privacy rights. Students
and their parents should expect that their personal information is
safe, properly collected and maintained and that it is used only for
appropriate purposes and not improperly disclosed. It is imperative to
protect students' privacy to avoid discrimination, identity theft or
other malicious and damaging criminal acts. All education data holders
must act responsibly and be held accountable for safeguarding students'
personally identifiable information--from practitioners of early
learning to those developing systems across the education continuum (P-
20) and from schools to their contractors. For this reason, the
Department has begun several initiatives to provide technical
assistance to States, districts and schools to protect the privacy
rights of students and promote the responsible use of data to inform
education policy.
chief privacy officer
The Department has hired its first Chief Privacy Officer. Kathleen
Styles joins the Department from the U.S. Census Bureau where she most
recently served as Chief of the Office of Analysis and Executive
Support. In that role she managed a portfolio that included
confidentiality, data management, the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA), privacy policy and coordination for the acquisition and
management of data from other agencies. She has extensive experience
with Federal data collections, including the decennial census, and with
ensuring appropriate protections for large databases. As Chief Privacy
Officer, Ms. Styles oversees a new division at the Department dedicated
to advancing the responsible stewardship, collection, use, maintenance
and disclosure of information at both the national level and for
States, local educational agencies (LEAs), postsecondary institutions
and other education stakeholders. Her office will help to ensure that
the Department complies with applicable legal obligations and
epitomizes the best practices we espouse. It will work with other
Department offices to include privacy, confidentiality and data
security requirements in Department policies and programs; coordinate
the development and delivery of privacy training for all Department
employees and contractors; oversee the Department's retention and
disposition of records; coordinate the development of official
Department guidance for the education field on topics such as data
stewardship, electronic data security and statistical methods for data
protection; serve on the advisory board that manages the work of the
Privacy Technical Assistance Center; and administer the Department's
responsibilities under the following statutes: FERPA, the Protection of
Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), the military recruiter provision of the
ESEA, the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, and FOIA.
privacy technical assistance center
The Department has established a Privacy Technical Assistance
Center (PTAC) which serves as a one-stop resource for State educational
agencies (SEAs), LEAs, the postsecondary community and other parties
engaged in building and using education data systems. PTAC's role is to
provide timely and accurate information and guidance about data
privacy, confidentiality, and security issues and practices in
education; disseminate this information to the field and the public;
and provide technical assistance to key stakeholders. PTAC will share
lessons learned; provide technical assistance in both group settings
and in one-on-one meetings with States; and create training materials
on privacy, confidentiality and security issues. PTAC will accomplish
its mission by providing:
A ``privacy toolkit'' including such resources as common
FAQs, FERPA guidance and checklists for data governance plans;
Technical assistance site visits that offer in-depth
reviews of data policies and practices;
Training materials that offer real-world examples of
proper data governance strategies;
A help desk that provides a centralized location for
education stakeholders to submit questions to the Department; and
Regional meetings for sharing training materials and
facilitating the sharing of best practices.
At conferences and State-requested site visits, State educational
agencies have responded very positively to PTAC and its offerings, both
in terms of its content expertise, such as reviewing security
architecture plans, and its ability to provide important and timely
input to strengthen and inform the work of States.
technical briefs
The National Center for Education Statistics has been working on a
new series of technical briefs that further the national conversation
on effective practices for overall data stewardship, which include data
security and privacy protections. The methods in the briefs incorporate
NCES statistical expertise and best practices from the field and
consider various Federal data privacy laws, including, but not limited
to FERPA. These best practices are presented as voluntary methods and
not a one-size-fits-all solution. NCES has already released the
following three briefs: Basic Concepts and Definitions for Privacy and
Confidentiality in Student Education Records; Data Stewardship:
Managing Personally Identifiable Information in Electronic Student
Education Records; and Statistical Methods for Protecting Personally
Identifiable Information in Aggregate Reporting. The technical briefs
can be accessed online at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/ptac/
TechnicalBriefs.aspx. The Department will release at least four more
technical briefs, covering the topics of Electronic Data Security, Data
Access for External Researchers, Data Sharing across Sectors and
Training. The Department encourages the public to review these
resources as they become available and to direct comments to:
[email protected].
proposed changes to ferpa regulations
The Department has also released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
(NPRM) outlining proposed amendments to its regulations implementing
FERPA. Over time, interpretations of FERPA have complicated valid and
necessary disclosures of student information without increasing privacy
protections and, in some cases, dramatically decreased the protections
afforded students. As States develop their longitudinal data systems,
the Department has been informed of significant confusion in the
education field surrounding what are permissible disclosures of
personally identifiable student information from education records.
This confusion has led to delays in developing these systems or States
proceeding in ways that may ultimately jeopardize student privacy. It
was imperative for the Department to propose clarifying amendments to
the FERPA regulations to ensure that these systems are being developed
in ways that would allow States to meet the requirements of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the America COMPETES
Act of 2007 and that do not put individual privacy at risk or create
significant regulatory burdens. The proposed changes are designed to:
Strengthen enforcement. We need stronger, more specific
enforcement authority against entities (SEAs, student loan guaranty
agencies, student loan lenders and nonprofits) that receive our funds,
regardless if they have students in attendance.
Ensure the safety of students. Schools need to have the
flexibility to implement directory information policies that limit
access to the information to prevent marketers or criminals from
accessing the data but allow flexibility to pursue mundane uses of
information such as yearbooks without getting consent.
Ensure that our taxpayer funds are invested wisely in
effective programs. It is vital to ensure that all State or federally
funded education programs are adequately preparing children for success
in the next stage of life, whether that is in kindergarten or the
workforce. It is critical that we assess all taxpayer funded programs
so that we target our investments effectively and learn what works and
what does not. Currently there are perceived barriers to collecting
this information that need to be fixed and regulatory burdens that do
not increase the privacy protections afforded students that need to be
addressed.
10. The Administration's budget request includes very few concrete
proposals to address the growing and unsustainable costs of the Pell
Grant program. Although we need bold ideas, you gave us short-term
fixes. Why has the Pell Grant program almost doubled in size in two
years, and how does the Administration propose to address the problem
five or ten years down the line?
In recent years, the Pell grant program has undergone significant
growth. Since 2008, we have seen our investment more than double, with
an additional 3 million students receiving grants. The growth is
primarily driven by the economy and higher enrollments. Other factors
include the ``Two Pells'' provision, the auto-zero expansion, and the
higher maximum award. In response to the growing costs of the Pell
Grant program as currently structured, the Administration proposed a
range of measures to reform program operations and funding. Our efforts
to place Pell on a secure financial footing, rather than simply
implementing a temporary fix, are at the center of our budget proposal.
In particular, our Pell Grant Protection Act proposal will help ensure
that students continue to receive the maximum grant of $5,550, even in
these challenging times. The single largest step is the elimination of
the provision allowing for two Pell Grants per year. The cost of this
policy is between $4 and $6 billion a year--more than 10 times higher
than expected--and questions remain about whether the policy has
meaningfully accelerated students' degree completion. (The elimination
of this authority was included in the continuing resolution that
provides funding for federal operations for the remainder of FY 2011.)
In addition, we propose to reduce loan subsidies for graduate and
professional student borrowers, allow borrowers whose loan servicing is
split among banks and the Department of Education's loan servicing
contractors to convert such servicing with a single servicer, and
expand the Perkins Loan program as a lower-cost alternative to private
student loans. Collectively, these tough choices and options will save
over $100 billion over the next decade and will put the Pell program on
firmer financial footing. It remains our priority to protect the
maximum grant of $5,550 and ensure that we don't force students out of
the Pell Grant program. Also, through initiatives like reforming
community colleges, College Completion Incentive Grants, and the Fund
for Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) ``First in the
World'' competition, the Department is working to help more students
graduate from college and to help them graduate sooner.
11. More than 2,000 nonprofit colleges and universities have
students with extremely low graduation rates who leave those
institutions with massive student loan debt levels. Provide specific
examples of what oversight the Department is conducting of the
nonprofit sector.
The Department is committed to supporting improved college outcomes
that help students succeed and protect the taxpayer investment in the
federal student aid programs. A specific example of reform that the
Department is conducting of the nonprofit sector is enhancing our
efforts around school comprehensive program compliance reviews. This
process ensures that all institutions that participate in the Title IV
Federal loan program meet certain standards of quality, and is
conducted at each of the 6,200 participating schools. This is a
holistic review of the institution, ensuring that standards are met in
regards to eligibility and recertification, accreditation and state
licensing, program reviews and administrative actions, default rates,
and other complaints received from students or members of the
community. The Department has increased its capacity to conduct program
reviews of all institution-types by 50 percent since 2009.
Additionally, the Department of Education is attempting to set
minimum standards for postsecondary programs that are required by the
Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) to lead to ``gainful employment in a
recognized occupation.'' These standards will apply to all career
education programs, including certificate programs at public and non-
profit institutions.
As part of our broader reform agenda, Congress made a $2 billion
investment over the next four years through the Trade Adjustment
Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants program. The
program will reward evidence-based practices that lead to successful
student outcomes for students who enroll in community colleges. In
addition, institutions will be encouraged to apply to develop a new
generation of high-quality, cutting-edge shared courses and resources
to help students learn more quickly, transfer high-impact practices
more quickly and lower costs and to better meet workforce and industry
needs.
The President's FY 2012 Budget request also includes targeted
investments to help disadvantaged students enroll in and complete
college. This includes funding through FIPSE to test and fund
innovative strategies for improving college access, quality, and
completion, along with the College Completion Incentive Grant proposal
to reward states and colleges that increase their number of graduates
with a degree or certificate. These proposals are offset fully as part
of our higher education and Pell Grant Protection Act proposals.
12. The proposed College Completion Incentive Grant program would
provide funds to states to encourage better student outcomes for
colleges. However, the Department already operates the College Access
Challenge Grant program. What is the difference between these two
programs? What positive results have been documented from the Challenge
Grant program that demonstrate the need to create additional state-
based college programs when the federal government usually operates
programs focused on institutional aid?
The proposed College Completion Incentive Grant program (CCIG) is
designed to provide grants directly to States, who will then make
payments to institutions linked to measured performance outcomes. To
participate, States would be required to set goals for increasing the
number of students who successfully complete college and for closing
the achievement gap for vulnerable student populations. States would
also be encouraged to align high school graduation requirements with
standards for postsecondary academic preparation, create stronger
articulation agreements among systems and colleges, facilitate student
transfers, and match Federal funds or provide their own performance
based funding for institutions. The Department is proposing $1.25
billion over the course of four years, which is offset fully as part of
our higher education and Pell Grant Protection Act proposals.
The purpose of the College Access Challenge Grant Program (CACGP)
is to foster partnerships among federal, state, and local governments
and philanthropic organizations through matching challenge grants that
are aimed at increasing the number of low-income students who are
prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. The College
Access Challenge Grant Program is based on a formula designed to meet
college access needs in each state and does not require states to make
key policy changes prior to receiving funding. The College Completion
Incentive Grant is a necessary investment for institutions that do a
good job of supporting students through to completion, in line with the
President's goal that the U.S. once again lead the world in college
attainment by 2020.
13. What is the Department doing to protect the federal assets
being held by the guaranty agencies, particularly since these entities
may have to start winding down without new loans to guarantee? What is
the Department's plan for the guarantee agencies?
The Department has increased the frequency of reporting from
guaranty agencies from annually to monthly and maintains open lines of
communication with guaranty agencies to ensure protection of Federal
assets and that these agencies are continuing to provide high-quality
service to students, borrowers, schools, and lenders. Additionally,
each guaranty agency must submit an independent audit annually. These
audits are reviewed by Department staff and inform our oversight of
each agency. The Department is fully prepared to transition the
functions of guaranty agencies that wish to leave or otherwise change
their participation in the FFEL program or if the Secretary believes a
transition is required to protect Federal assets and maintain high-
quality service. In the past, the Secretary has successfully
transitioned guaranty agency functions from one agency to another due
to such circumstances. Moreover, the Department is considering inviting
guaranty agencies to submit proposals for entering into a Voluntary
Flexible Agreement with the Secretary, as permitted under the Higher
Education Act. Under this authority, agencies could be encouraged to
submit proposals outlining their ideas of how best these agencies could
individually or collectively ensure all required functions be carried
out in light of their changing circumstances.
14. How many federal programs operated by the Department have been
evaluated for their effectiveness over the last two years and/or five
years? Please provide a list of all federal education programs
administered by the Department over the last five years and the
increase or decrease in the program's budget over the last five years;
denote whether each individual program has been evaluated within the
last five years; detail the results of the program evaluations, if any;
and cite the independent or Departmental source that conducted the
evaluation.
The Department has not tracked or consolidated results from all
individual program evaluations in the exact format described. The links
below provide lists of evaluations of the Department's programs
conducted by the Program and Policy Studies Service and the National
Center for Education Evaluation at the Institute of Education Sciences:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/projects/evaluation/index.asp
The attached document includes a list of programs administered by
the Department and their funding levels from FY 2008 through the
President's FY 2012 request.
15. As was mentioned in the hearing, I am very concerned about
recent documents that have become available demonstrating that
Department employees have corresponded with short sellers involved in
proprietary colleges. I believe it is incumbent on the Department to be
transparent about short sellers' involvement in the development of the
gainful employment regulations. Please provide a list of all short
sellers with whom any Department employee, past or present, including
contractors, have communicated regarding the gainful employment
regulation; what information was obtained from such short sellers; and
how that information was used by the Department. Please also provide
copies of all communications between all Department employees,
including contractors, and short sellers regarding the gainful
employment regulation.
The Department of Education has operated with utmost integrity and
transparency in its efforts to protect students and taxpayers. Senior
officials and staff have reached out to as many people as possible,
including numerous representatives from the for-profit industry, in its
efforts to craft the most effective regulations possible--in fact,
staff have communicated with more parties on all sides of this issue
than on any other regulatory effort undertaken by the Department in its
history. The Department received more than 90,000 public comments in
response to its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published on July 26,
2010. The Department believes a broad set of views leads to a more
informed and positive process.
Because there is no public list of individuals or institutions with
short positions on education stocks, we are unable to provide all of
the records you requested. We will send you the related documents we
have already released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Representative Tom Petri
1. The Department published final regulations in the Federal
Register (75 FR 67170) on November 1, 2010, designed to better regulate
and eliminate fraud and abuse by foreign institutions. However, I am
concerned that these regulations may have two significant unintended
consequences and am hoping that the Department can clarify its intent
on these two issues.
My questions relate to non-profit American institutions that are
located outside of the United States but which are accredited in the
U.S. and authorized by U.S. states to operate.
This includes institutions such as the American University of
Paris, the American University in Cairo, and the American University in
Beirut.
Under these new regulations, it is my understanding that the
Department requires institutions it designates as ``foreign schools''
to be authorized to operate by their host governments and for these
governments to recognize the school's diplomas as a prerequisite for
the schools to be eligible to administer Title IV student loan funds.
I am very concerned that the second part of this requirement will
be difficult to meet for American international colleges and
universities because these schools often offer American-style degrees
focusing more on a liberal arts education, something that may not be
consistent with the degree recognition requirements of the countries
where they reside.
If this is the case, then these regulations could have the
extremely unfortunate consequence that American students would not be
able to use Title IV student loan funds at these American schools if
the schools are unable to obtain foreign recognition of their degrees.
This would discourage American students from attending American schools
in foreign countries at a time when we should be encouraging American
students to study abroad to gain valuable international experience.
a) Given that these institutions meet the same requirements in
terms of accreditation and state authorization as their peer
institutions in the U.S., and that they are required to show
authorization to operate from the country in which they are located,
what is the Department's rationale for also requiring these schools to
obtain foreign recognition of the degrees they offer?
If an institution is not located in a State, under sections
101(a)(2) and 102(a)(1) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended
(HEA), it cannot be eligible under the regulations as a domestic
institution. Rather, under section 102(a)(2)(A) of the HEA, the
Secretary is required to establish regulatory criteria for the approval
of foreign institutions and for the determination that they are
comparable to institutions located in the United States.
One reason the Department did not rely on accreditation and state
licensure in this matter is that by statute the Department cannot
recognize accrediting agencies for their accreditation of foreign
schools. See HEA 496(a)(1). For this reason, accreditation of foreign
institutions would not be comparable to the oversight that exists for
domestic institutions. In addition, States do not have jurisdiction to
authorize the offering of postsecondary education and credentials in
foreign countries, nor is there any way by which the Department could
ensure that a State that ``authorized'' a foreign institution even had
any of its citizens enrolled. Also, the Department believed it
important to have oversight of federal tax dollars beyond that which
might be entailed by a foreign government issuing a business license in
exchange for a licensing fee and perhaps tax revenue. The final
regulations you reference were subject to the negotiated rulemaking
process. This is a process through which the Department works to
develop proposed regulations in collaboration with representatives of
the parties who will be significantly affected by the regulations. The
proposed regulations, published in the Federal Register on July 20,
2010, were agreed to by all members of the negotiating committee. Final
regulations were published November 1, 2010, and will be effective July
1, 2011.
b) Has the Department taken any steps towards determining what
institutions might be at risk of losing eligibility for Title IV
student loans if these institutions are not able to obtain recognition
of their degrees by their host country? Is the Department concerned
about the loss of eligibility that may occur for those institutions who
do not already comply with this requirement? If so, is the Department
taking action to remedy this situation?
We have evaluated documents from five institutions, including the
American University of Paris, the American University of Cairo, and the
American University of Beirut. Thus far, we have not determined that
any institution is out of compliance with these requirements. In
addition, we have reviewed our files to identify all of the other
similarly situated institutions (there are fewer than ten), and have
begun obtaining information relevant to these requirements regarding
those institutions. We will be in contact with institutions if
additional information is needed and are committed to working with
institutions to identify the options available for demonstrating
compliance with these requirements.
c) Would permitting the Department to make separate regulations for
these American international colleges and universities solve this
problem?
Establishing a separate category of eligible institutions
specifically for these colleges and universities would be one way to
address this problem.
2. I am very concerned that these new regulations would also
prohibit American students who are pursuing a degree abroad at American
international colleges and universities from using Title IV funds to
study in the U.S. at accredited U.S. colleges and universities for a
semester or a year as part of their program (without having to take
additional steps of withdrawing from the international college or
university). Can you clarify the Department's rationale for prohibiting
U.S. students from using Title IV aid to attend accredited U.S.
institutions in the U.S.?
The final regulations were developed for several reasons. To begin
with, the rules will prevent abuses by institutions that seek to
circumvent other Federal requirements by more clearly distinguishing a
foreign institution from a domestic institution. For example, these
regulations prevent a domestic institution that has established an
offshore location but expects the majority of its students' coursework
to be completed in the United States from claiming to be a foreign
institution to avoid the requirements applied to domestic institutions,
such as recognized accreditation. In addition, the Department wants
U.S. students attending postsecondary institutions in the United States
to be eligible for the full range of Title IV, HEA program funds
available to domestic institutions. It does not want a foreign
institution to send its U.S. students to a U.S. location of a foreign
institution, or to a U.S. institution with which it has an agreement
for their education, because students enrolled in a foreign institution
are only eligible for Direct Loans. For this reason, the Department
believes that for U.S. students who wish to attend a program partially
in the U.S. and in a foreign institution, it is preferable that the
students enroll in the U.S. institution and attend the foreign
institution through a written arrangement, rather than the other way
around. The Department has offered to work with foreign institutions to
assist them in restructuring their programs in this manner in order to
continue to make Title IV Federal student financial aid available to
U.S. students who attend them.
Representative Virginia Foxx
1. Other than the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA), is there a single program in the Department that has
demonstrated measured success as a direct result of spending from the
federal government? Can you prove anything has come out of one dollar
of spending from the federal government?
The Department of Education invests in a number of programs that
have demonstrated measured success. In addition to IDEA, Title I, Part
A and Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act have
resulted in significant increases in achievement for students targeted
by these programs. For example, since 1996 on the National Assessment
of Educational Progress (NAEP), 4th grade math scores for students
eligible for the National School Lunch program have increased 20 points
to 227. Over the same period, 4th grade math NAEP scores for English
Learners have increased 17 points.
In higher education, where Pell Grants are the foundation of
student aid, the percentage of low-income high school graduates
continuing on to college has nearly doubled in the last 30 years. The
Department has also provided institutional aid to Historically Black
Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions and other
Minority Serving Institutions that serve as the backbone of higher
education for many communities across the country and are critical to
college access for many minority students.
Investments made by the Department have also leveraged significant
reform throughout the country. Race to the Top made it possible for
states to develop groundbreaking, comprehensive reform plans and make
significant progress on issues that were previously considered
intractable. These reforms are moving forward in both winning and non-
winning states.
But we need to do more as there are still significant achievement
gaps. And, there are too many students dropping out of school, and not
enough students completing postsecondary education.
Building the evidence base is a key part of new programs in the
Department such as Investing in Innovation (i3). The program includes
an evidence requirement for the Department to provide less funding for
applicants with less evidence and more funding for applicants with more
evidence. Each i3 grantee is also required to conduct a rigorous
program evaluation to further build the evidence base for future
proposals.
Representative Richard Hanna
1. When was the last time the Department conducted a comprehensive
audit of all its regulations to determine the cost passed down to
schools and the number of hours spent implementing these regulations by
state educational agencies and local educators?
The President issued a memorandum to Executive Departments and
Agencies in February calling on Federal agencies to work with State,
Tribal, and local governments to reduce unnecessary regulatory and
administrative burdens in order to focus resources on achieving better
outcomes at lower cost. The Department will be working with OMB and
other agencies on this effort and is required to identify regulatory
and administrative requirements that can be streamlined, reduced, or
eliminated, and where increased State flexibility could be provided to
achieve the same or better outcomes at lower cost.
The Department is also required under the Paperwork Reduction Act
of 1995 (PRA) to estimate the burden on grantees and subgrantees for
maintaining and collecting information under programs of the
Department. The Department is required under the PRA to calculate the
costs of these burdens whenever a new requirement to maintain or
collect information or is established and reconsider those burdens
every three years thereafter. Each time that a new information
requirement to collect or maintain information is established or
reconsidered, the public has the opportunity to comment on the
reasonableness of these estimates through the PRA review process, which
requires the Department to publish notices in the Federal Register
soliciting public comment on the proposed burdens.
Representative Todd Rokita
1. The budget request put forward by President Obama for the
Department represents a 10.7 percent increase over current levels. In
the last three years, the Department has had nearly a 68 percent
increase in its budget. At a time when we are asking most American
families to tighten their belts and survive in a weakened economy, how
can the Administration responsibly ask for this level of funding?
The Department's budget request includes many tough choices,
including reductions in spending, program eliminations, and
consolidations. To rein in Pell costs, the Budget proposed eliminating
the ``Two Pells'' policy and changes to student loan programs to
generate significant savings to support Pell Grants. The proposed
reduction in career and technical education (CTE) funding indicates our
support for fiscal discipline as well as a recognition that the CTE
system is characterized by uneven quality and has limited high-quality
data on student outcomes. The Budget also proposes the elimination of
13 programs and the consolidation of 38 programs into 11 new
authorities aligned with the Administration's Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization proposal.
The Budget, however, is about balancing critical investments needed
to grow our economy and targeted cuts that represent responsible
reductions needed in difficult fiscal times. President Obama has said
that to win the future, we have to win the education race so that
``every American is equipped to compete with any worker, anywhere in
the world.'' That is why his 2012 Budget would provide the resources we
need to educate our way to a better economy.
2. Mr. Secretary, you have been on record that within the
Department's proposed budget you have consolidated 38 programs and
eliminated 13. While I commend your first steps, there is still more to
do. You have at least two programs in this budget, totaling $3 billion,
which would be used to ``recruit, develop, retain and reward effective
teachers.'' Why do we continue to see duplicative programs within your
Department?
Our Excellent Instructional Teams initiative would consolidate nine
programs that focus on teaching and school leadership into three
programs better designed to help States and LEAs recruit, prepare,
support, reward, and retain effective teachers and school leaders, with
a priority on improving teacher and school leader effectiveness and
learning for all students. Each of the programs in our proposal has a
distinct role in driving educator workforce reforms. The Effective
Teachers and Leaders State Grants program would provide formula grants
to all States and districts to support the development of rigorous and
fair teacher evaluation systems that are aligned with professional
development opportunities and ensuring the equitable distribution of
effective teachers and leaders. While this formula program would
support and incentivize all States to implement essential reforms, the
Teacher and Leader Innovation Fund would make competitive awards to
States and LEAs willing to implement bold approaches to improving the
effectiveness of the educator workforce, including innovative
performance-based compensation systems. The third program in our
proposal is the Teacher and Leader Pathways program, which would make
competitive grants to create or expand pathways into teaching, through
high-quality programs such as teaching residency programs. This
approach of integrating formula and competitive funding streams would
be more effective than the current array of largely disconnected
programs and an important step in realizing our goal of getting great
teachers into our classrooms and great principals into our schools.
3. While I know that you are not supportive of a policy of ``Last
In First Out'' regarding teacher layoffs, and are open to moving
towards a teacher evaluation model, can you explain to the Committee
why you support teacher collective bargaining agreements that contain
provisions about teacher layoffs with no consideration of teacher and/
or student performance?
We need to look hard at the impact of staffing rules and policies
on students, especially in high-poverty and low-achieving schools. We
also have to make sure that the teachers having the biggest impact
remain in the classroom. But many States and districts don't have
systems in place that even identify who these teachers are. For this
reason, one of the Department's greatest priorities in ESEA
reauthorization is to ask States and districts to develop and implement
fair, rigorous teacher and principal evaluation systems hat
meaningfully differentiate teachers and principals by effectiveness and
are based, in significant part, on student academic growth, but that
also use other meaningful measures of a teacher's practice and impact.
These systems will help identify teacher and principals who are
succeeding. This is an essential step toward enacting State laws, labor
contracts and personnel practices to support our best teachers and keep
them in schools. Throughout this process, we are committed to building
on the successful collaborative efforts taking place across the nation.
At our labor-management collaboration conference this February, we
saw teacher leaders, administrators and school board members from
across the country who have found new ways to work together to focus on
student success. We expect this collaboration to lead to new contracts
and agreements that will dramatically improve the way teachers teach
and students learn, and that will focus efforts on improving student
learning. We are learning from these successful collaborative efforts
and challenging other districts to take action. Collective bargaining
agreements can be a tool to drive student achievement. Bold reforms are
most achievable, most effective, and most sustainable when they are
designed and implemented in collaboration with teachers.
Representative Kristi Noem
1. Mr. Secretary, the budget proposal converts several formula
programs to competitive grant programs. It includes a rural priority
for many of these programs. How will the conversion to competitive
grants impact rural communities and how will this new priority work in
practice?
The President's budget maintains funds for the Rural Education
Achievement program (REAP) and other critical formula programs, such as
Title I, Title II-A, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act, that support schools in rural areas and elsewhere. At the same
time, the budget invests in high-impact initiatives that make the best
use of scare resources and drive reform. All schools, including rural
schools, will benefit from competition that drives reform, spurs
innovation, and rewards success. In some cases, we believe that
competition provides the best framework to challenge the status quo and
improve student outcomes. The Department will use a number of
strategies to better support prospective rural applicants and ensure
that size and geography do not prevent rural schools from having a fair
chance to successfully compete. In the Race to the Top district
competition and Investing in Innovation programs included in our FY
2012 budget, we propose to carve out funds for rural applicants to
ensure that a portion of funds goes to rural areas. In other grant
competitions, the Department will use absolute priorities and
competitive priority points to level the playing field for remote
schools with limited resources and staff. Other strategies to ensure
that rural districts can successfully compete include recruiting and
training peer reviewers with rural expertise, providing additional
technical assistance, holding pre-application webinars, and encouraging
consortia and partnerships to increase capacity, expertise, and
resources for rural applicants. For this last strategy, the Department
has encouraged small schools and districts to work with Educational
Service Agencies (ESAs), colleges, and universities. We have also
engaged the philanthropic and nonprofit communities in an effort to
better support high-need rural schools. Completing our set of
strategies, we will work to increase States' capacity to support rural
schools and districts through the work of our Comprehensive Centers as
well as by providing technical assistance to REAP State Coordinators.
2. Mr. Secretary, Impact Aid payments to some school districts are
years behind. What is the Department doing to improve payment times to
these districts?
We recognize that historically, there has been a problem of delays
in getting final grant payments out and we are taking steps to fix it.
We know it is important to get districts these funds, especially in
difficult budget times.
One obstacle to getting final grant payments out in a timely
fashion has been delays in determining estimated assessed values (EAV)
for the federal property within the section 8002 program--payments
relating to Federal acquisition of real property. We are interested in
working with Congress to streamline this process from a prolonged back-
and-forth with a small number of districts over the correct property
value, delaying allocations. The Department's Impact Aid office has
made significant progress speeding up processing of these payments and
has dedicated additional staff to support the effort. Beginning with FY
2010, new section 8002 regulations adopted in 2008 changed the
application procedures to require reviews of all applicants. Because
FYs 2010 and 2011 had not been reviewed and the new regulations
institute a three-year cycle for FYs 2010-2012, we will review
applications for FYs 2010-2012 concurrently. This action will ensure
that we are able to catch up to the current application year (FY 2012)
and decrease the backlog in payments. The Impact Aid office has closed
and finalized payments for FYs 2006, 2007, and 2008 and is currently
working to close out payments for FY 2009 by the end of the summer.
Representative Robert Scott
1. How does the Department intend to structure its response to
schools that are not making adequate yearly progress (AYP)? Currently,
responses are targeted to the entire school or to groups of students
that may not need it. Does the Department intend to target assistance
specifically to those groups of students within a school who need it
most?
Under the Administration's proposal for ESEA reauthorization, the
current system of AYP would be replaced by a system that focuses on the
5 percent of schools that represent the lowest achieving schools in the
State that also are not improving, the next 5 percent of such schools,
and schools with persistent achievement gaps. The bottom 5 percent of
schools would be required to implement dramatic reform strategies to
support better outcomes for students, and the next 5 percent of schools
would be required to implement research-based, locally determined
strategies to help them improve. Schools with persistent achievement
gaps would target data-driven interventions to support those students
who are furthest behind and close the achievement gap. By asking states
to identify these schools with the largest achievement gaps, our
proposal would ensure that States and districts focus on the students
furthest behind. Beyond these categories of particularly high need
schools, states would be required to have a plan to differentiate and
support all of their schools, which should include how the State will
determine what each school's needs are and how it should focus
improvement efforts.
2. What is the Department's strategy to ensure that more students
attend and complete their college education?
A wide range of factors influence a student's ability to attend
college and earn their degree. The Department has adopted a broad
strategy to address each of these issues in an effort to improve both
college enrollment and degree completion rates as it works to achieve
President Obama's goal of ensuring that the United States once again
leads the world in college completion. The Department also is pursuing
opportunities to raise awareness of promising practices that individual
institutions and States are engaging in that others may wish to adopt.
We incorporated the goal of improving postsecondary student outcomes
relating to enrollment, persistence, and completion into the
Department's supplemental priorities, which were published in the
Federal Register in 2010 and are now being used in a number of
discretionary grant programs. The Department has been using the
priority related to improving postsecondary student outcomes relating
to enrollment, persistence, and completion in all appropriate
discretionary grant competitions to ensure that every available
Department resource is used to effectively address the issue of
completion. Moreover, the Department recently published a College
Completion Tool Kit, which details how States can use existing programs
and funding, such as the Educational Opportunity Centers program and
College Access Challenge Grants, to significantly improve degree
completion rates at their postsecondary institutions. Looking beyond
its own programs, the Department is partnering with the Department of
Labor to assist with the implementation of community college support
programs across multiple agencies.
In addition to incorporating the completion agenda into existing
programs, the President's 2012 budget request proposes several targeted
investments to help disadvantaged students enroll in and complete
college. The Administration has proposed the creation of a College
Completion Incentive Grant program designed to, among other things,
help States align high school graduation standards to postsecondary
academic requirements and support postsecondary institutions as they
develop ways to measure and use performance outcomes. Similarly, a
``First in the World'' competition would refocus the FIPSE program on
the most needed and likely-to-succeed institutional reform efforts.
And, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Education (ARPA-ED)
would help to support broad transformational change in American higher
education. The Department will continue to use all of its resources to
highlight the issue of college completion and productivity and make a
compelling case for action.
3. Every child and every classroom deserves a qualified and
effective teacher, not simply someone who appears highly qualified on
paper. How does the Department intend to gauge whether a teacher is
actually effective in the classroom? In addition, how will this be
gauged without creating an anti-collaborative atmosphere? In other
words, teachers may not want to collaborate or take on lower-performing
students if it will adversely affect their performance rating. How does
the Department intend to balance the need for qualified and effective
teachers with collaborative environments and promote professional
development for underperforming or ineffective teachers?
Through Race to the Top, our proposals for ESEA reauthorization,
and other initiatives and programs, we are supporting the development
and implementation of teacher and principal evaluation systems that
take into account multiple measures, giving significant weight to the
teacher's track record of improving student learning, while also
considering other meaningful measures of a teacher's instructional
practice. The measurement of a teacher's impact on student learning
should be based on the progress a student makes over the course of the
year, not just on one test on one day.
These systems should be designed in collaboration with teachers and
based on fair, rigorous measures that take good teaching as seriously
as the profession deserves. Schools and systems that do this work
successfully cultivate strong, supportive school cultures that use
evaluation systems to identify ways for teachers to better collaborate
and learn from each other. Currently, too many evaluation systems just
label 99 percent of teachers as satisfactory and do little to help
teachers improve. Our Excellent Instructional Teams initiative in our
ESEA proposal places a priority on providing teachers the support they
need and on building a culture where collaboration is the norm. From
pre-service to induction and throughout a teacher's career, we believe
that professional development should be school-based, job-embedded, and
provide opportunities for educators to work collaboratively, such as
through classroom coaching, data analysis teams, peer observation, and
the provision of common planning time. Systems that identify teacher
strengths and needs, connect teachers with mentorship and professional
development opportunities, and recognize and retain great teachers
(like the ones our proposals will support) can ensure a qualified and
effective teacher for every child, and a strong, supportive school
environment for every teacher.
4. While recognizing that AYP as we currently know it may change in
ESEA reauthorization, it is nonetheless imperative that all schools are
held accountable by the federal government for the performance of all
students. Is the Department committed to federal accountability for all
schools and all students? Does the Department intend to include a
meaningful high school graduation rate factor as part of the new
accountability system and if so, what will that look like?
The Department is absolutely committed to strong accountability for
all schools and all students. Our proposal for ESEA reauthorization
includes a fair, flexible, and focused accountability system that
requires dramatic change in the 5 percent of schools that represent the
lowest achieving schools in the State that also are not improving, and
research-based, data-driven interventions in the next 5 percent of such
schools, and schools that are not closing significant, persistent
achievement gaps. Beyond these particular categories, States would be
required to have a plan to differentiate and support all of their
schools, and determine what actions to take in improving them. We have
also proposed meaningful district and state accountability, to ensure
that all levels of the system are responsible for student success.
The Department does intend to include meaningful high school
graduation rates as part of the new accountability system. States,
districts, and schools would be required to publicly report data on
four-year adjusted cohort graduation rates, disaggregated by subgroup,
and states would include graduation rates in their identification of
schools that are in need of intervention and support.
5. Are any programs permitted to discriminate based on religion
using federal funds supplied, granted or otherwise given out by the
Department of Education?
The Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR)
expressly provide that in the selection of grantees and contractors,
the Department and grantees shall not discriminate for or against a
private organization on the basis of the organization's religious
character or affiliation and that private organizations that receive
grants or contracts under Department programs may not discriminate
against a program beneficiary or prospective beneficiary in the
provision of program services on the basis of religion or religious
belief. However, these regulations also provide that a religious
organization's exemption from the Federal prohibition on employment
discrimination on the basis of religion is not forfeited when the
organization receives assistance from the Department or a grantee.
Additionally, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which
prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, states ``this section
shall not apply to any educational institution which is controlled by a
religious organization if the application of this subsection would not
be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization.'' See
also the Title IX regulation implementing this provision at 34 CFR
106.12.
6. The Department continues to place an emphasis on charter schools
despite several reports finding that they do not serve students better
than traditional public school and many in fact perform worse than
traditional public schools. What is the Department doing to ensure that
civil rights, including for students with disabilities, are applied to
charter schools?
The Department is committed to supporting the establishment and
maintenance of high-quality public charter schools, including strong
measures to promote charter accountability, as part of an overall
comprehensive strategy focused on ensuring that all students have an
equal opportunity to receive a quality education that will prepare them
for academic and professional success in an increasingly global world.
Charter schools must, as must traditional public schools, comply with
our nation's civil rights laws so that each and every student has equal
access to a quality education irrespective of race, color, national
origin, sex, or disability.
The Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is charged with
enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting
discrimination based on race, color, or national origin by federal
recipients); Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (prohibiting
discrimination based on sex by federal recipients); Section 504 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (prohibiting discrimination based on
disability by federal recipients); and Title II of the Americans with
Disabilities Act of 1990 (prohibiting discrimination based on
disability by public entities irrespective of whether they are federal
recipients). In advancing its mission to bring equity into the
classroom, OCR and its twelve regional offices use all the tools that
are at their disposal, including complaint resolutions, compliance
reviews, policy guidance, and technical assistance.
OCR remains committed to using its tools to address potential civil
rights violations at charter schools. For example, of the headquarters-
initiated compliance reviews that will be launched this fiscal year,
several will involve charter schools. OCR and its twelve regional
offices also provide technical assistance to federal recipients,
parents, students, and community stakeholders so that they can better
understand their rights and responsibilities under our civil rights
laws.
Additionally, State educational agencies that apply for grants
under the Charter Schools Program (CSP) are required to provide in
their grant application a description of how a charter school that is
considered an LEA under State law, or an LEA in which the charter
school is located, will comply with sections 613(a)(5) and 613(e)(1)(B)
of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). SEAs that
receive CSP grants are required to ensure that any charter school
receiving a subgrant provides assurances that it is in compliance and
will continue to comply with the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, Title
VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education
Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and
Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We closely
monitor State compliance with this provision, including monitoring
whether the SEA itself closely monitors its subgrantees to ensure
ongoing compliance with IDEA and other Federal laws.
Finally, the Department uses CSP National Activities funds to
provide technical assistance to charter schools and other charter
school stakeholders in the area of serving students with disabilities.
7. Research shows that disparities exist in discipline treatment by
gender as well as by race and ethnicity for all students, including
pre-kindergarten students. In fact the Yale University Child Student
Center conducted a study of almost 4,000 pre-kindergarten classrooms
representing all 52 of the national state-funded pre-kindergarten
systems. The research found that African-American students attending
state pre-kindergarten programs were approximately twice as likely to
be expelled as preschools of European descent. Further, boys were over
41/2 times more likely to be expelled than girls. Importantly, these
data demonstrated that being both a boy and a racial/ethnic minority
places a preschooler at dramatically greater risk for expulsion.
African American boys were 8.76 times as likely as African American
girls to be expelled. Similarly, Latino boys are 6.66 times as likely
as Latina girls to be expelled. Given that high-quality preschool
programs improve school readiness and reduce racial/ethnic disparities
in school readiness, preschool serves as a critical tool in reducing
the racial/ethnic disparities in achievement in K-12 education.
Monitoring disparities in discipline of preschoolers now promises to
encourage local education agencies to address this problem sooner
rather than later. Delaying examination of disparities in this area
could contribute to and potentially worsen unequal education
opportunities. Your testimony suggested that the Department of
Education intends to address disparities in discipline and expulsion
rates of students. Could you please explain in greater detail how the
Department of Education intends to address the disparities in
discipline and expulsion of students? Also, how does the Department
specifically intend to address the disparities in expulsion of
preschool students within its budget and in general?
The Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is using all the
tools at its disposal to address the disparities in student discipline
and help support schools to meet the challenge of adopting effective
and appropriate disciplinary policies, practices and procedures that do
not violate a student's civil rights.
With regard to its enforcement actions, OCR receives and resolves
approximately three hundred individual complaints annually alleging
discrimination in the administration of student discipline based on
race, color, and national origin. Additionally, OCR launched several
compliance reviews in 2010 and 2011 touching on the administration of
student discipline under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
With regard to its technical assistance and policy guidance
efforts, OCR is developing guidance, in the form of a Dear Colleague
Letter, that will inform states and districts about their
responsibilities in avoiding discrimination based on race, color, and
national origin in the administration of student discipline which would
apply to all students in schools receiving federal financial
assistance, including preschool students. Furthermore, OCR in
partnership with the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil
Rights Division of the Department of Justice, convened conferences last
fall in Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA on civil rights and school
discipline.
Finally with regard to data, the Department received Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) clearance to significantly enhance the data
it collects on discipline as part of the 2009-10 Civil Rights Data
Collection (CRDC). This included expanding the types of discipline data
and collecting separate discipline data for students with disabilities
and students without disabilities. The revised collection will include
data on corporal punishment, in-school and multiple suspensions,
referrals to law enforcement, school-related arrests, and zero
tolerance policies. The Department anticipates that these data will be
available in late summer. The Department received approval from OMB to
collect data from a universe of all LEAs for the 2011-12 CRDC. The last
time a universal CRDC was conducted was in 2000. The Department also
received approval from OMB to collect data on suspensions and
expulsions in preschool programs operated by SEAs and LEAs as part of
the 2011-12 CRDC. These data, like other data collected by the CRDC,
will be disaggregated by race/ethnicity, disability, LEP and sex.
8. Has the Department considered developing data collection
software for the states in order to help ease their regulatory
paperwork burden?
The Department has done significant work to utilize electronic data
submission processes to streamline the data reporting for State
educational agencies and maximize the utility of the data. A multitude
of data collections that were historically done through paper
collections or non-machine readable formats have been converted into
less burdensome web-based collection methods to make data reporting
easier for SEAs.
This includes, for example, much of the data required by the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Gun-Free Schools Act, the
Consolidated State Performance Report, and the Carl D. Perkins Career
and Technical (Perkins).
By moving to electronic data submissions, the burden on States and
districts can be further reduced by utilizing the data reported once to
meet multiple requirements. For example:
The Department's Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC)
traditionally collects its data directly from LEAs. However LEAs also
report some of these same data to their SEAs. With the school year
2009-10 CRDC, the Department was able to use some of the information
that States submitted to EDFacts so districts didn't have to ``double-
report'' the data on the number of students with disabilities served
under IDEA or the number of graduates and high school completers at the
end of the school year.
Most SEAs have been approved to meet the data reporting
obligations for both ESEA and IDEA by submitting special education data
once to EDFacts, and no longer need to submit those duplicative data
elements through the manual process for IDEA.
SEAs approved to meet data reporting obligations for both
ESEA and Perkins by submitting performance data once to EDFacts no
longer need to submit those data elements through the manual process
for Perkins.
In school year 2008-09, the non-fiscal Common Core of Data
collection was fully consolidated into the EDFacts collection, which
alleviated SEAs from doubly reporting these data to the Department each
year.
Representative Carolyn McCarthy
1. Secretary Duncan, as you know, I have been an advocate for
reducing violence, bullying, and other activities that make our schools
unsafe and make learning difficult. I would like to ask you about the
consolidation of several existing school safety programs into the new
Successful, Safe, and Healthy Students program. While I support
flexibility in funding, I'm concerned about the possibility of losing
sight of individual priorities within in a consolidated framework. I am
specifically concerned with cuts to the Readiness and Emergency
Management for Schools program. Can you talk about how this new
approach will address the variety of different challenges faced by
schools?
The proposed Successful, Safe, and Healthy Schools (SSHS) program
would consolidate several programs into a single framework in order to
accomplish three major goals:
1. Improving safe school evaluation by using student surveys to
assess school-level conditions, so that school officials can monitor
multiple risk factors and protective factors in order to watch for
school improvement or decline. By supporting efforts to improve safe
school evaluation using State and locally chosen student surveys, SSHS
would enable individual schools to better monitor and respond to a
broader range of health and safety priorities, including risk factors
(such as student weapons possession, physical fights, bullying,
harassment, substance use, and teen dating violence) and protective
factors (such as student engagement, mental health, nutrition, and
physical activity).
2. Improving access to financial assistance for the schools and
school districts with the greatest need for safe school improvement.
Federal safe school surveillance efforts show that there are pockets of
youth violence amongst schools. During the 2007-2008 school year, about
75 percent of schools recorded one or more violent incidents, but 24
percent recorded 20 or more violent incidents (School Survey on Crime
and Safety, National Center for Education Statistics.) Under the
current authorization, the Department administers multiple small,
competitive grant programs to fund local safe school efforts. Each
grant program requires educational agencies to spend time and effort
preparing an application, and, at the end of competition, funds may go
in a disjointed manner for related but overlapping purposes, making it
difficult for schools and districts to plan for and implement
activities that address school safety issues comprehensively. A
consolidated framework would reduce application burden, help to
identify unsafe schools by improving school-level assessment, and
enable states, districts, and schools to implement comprehensive
programs that focus on schools with greatest need.
3. Allowing educational agencies to utilize grant funds in a manner
that suits the unique, local needs of schools and school districts.
Currently, the Department administers a number of safe school grants,
each offering a short, fairly restrictive list of program options.
These grants may not be helpful to an unsafe school that already
implements the types of activities supported by the programs or has
needs that don't quite fit into the current criteria. Because many safe
school programs and activities often allow a school to address a range
of priorities (improving access to mental health services might be
selected to address substance use or school violence), we have proposed
a consolidated framework to ensure that unsafe schools are able to
access the solutions they need using federal safe school dollars.
President Obama's FY 2012 budget request would provide $365 million
for the Successful, Safe, and Healthy Students (SSHS) program. Under
the national activities authority in this program, we would provide $6
million for State Emergency Readiness Preparedness, which would provide
competitive grants to States to help build state-level capacity for
emergency preparedness and to respond to and recover from emergencies
and crisis events. Also, we would provide $2.2 million for the
Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) Technical
Assistance Center, which would allow the Department to continue its
support of this important investment that has provided technical
assistance for schools, districts, states, and institutions of higher
education on emergency management issues. Our proposal to fund grants
to States is consistent with the National Commission on Children and
Disasters recommendations to the President and Congress. In this 2010
report, the Commission recommended that ``competitive disaster
preparedness grants be awarded to States through the REMS program as an
initial step toward developing innovative models designed to ensure a
higher level of school preparedness statewide.''
2. Secretary Duncan, we have heard the President call on parents to
take a more active role in their children's education. As you may know,
Representative Platts and I have been working on this issue within the
committee, and we have introduced the Family Engagement in Education
Act. How can the Department and Congress encourage more meaningful
parental involvement in our efforts to reform the public education
system?
The federal government has often contributed to a fragmented and
non-strategic approach to family engagement by offering small, siloed
funding streams with narrow purposes and strict requirements. The
Administration's proposal for ESEA reauthorization would help change
that by preserving and expanding foundational funding for family
engagement, similar to the proposal in the bill that you introduced. We
have proposed doubling the 1 percent set-aside for family engagement in
Title I and giving more flexibility in working towards key outcomes, as
well as giving districts a greater share, to enable them to partner
with nonprofits and coordinate a district-wide approach to engaging
parents at all levels of schooling and before kindergarten entry. We've
also proposed, for the first time, allowing states to set aside 1
percent of their Title I funds to scale up promising and proven
approaches to family engagement that have been developed by nonprofits
and districts. We believe this will be a key lever for identifying what
works and scaling it up.
Also, instead of thinking of family engagement as a matter of
particular funding streams, it's important to put in place a context
for coordinated and aligned strategies that drive towards the most
important outcomes. That's why our proposals embrace and emphasize the
vital role that families play in their children's learning at all
stages of their child's development and academic career. For example,
we want to make sure that parents know whether their children are
prepared for college and a career by ensuring that all states have high
standards and providing families with better data about where their
students and schools are. This will help empower families to take
action in their children's learning and improving their schools.
3. Secretary Duncan, we have heard the administration advance the
idea of tying teacher pay to the performance of their students. While I
support using student performance as a component of teacher
evaluations, I believe that we need to have a more comprehensive
approach to teacher evaluations. In the 111th Congress, I introduced
legislation, the Teacher and Principal Improvement Act, which, among
other provisions, will incorporate the classroom practices of teachers
along with student performance to provide a more complete picture of an
individual teacher's performance. Evidence of classroom practices that
would be evaluated include: observations of the teachers, videos of
teacher practice, lesson plans, and parent, student, and peer feedback.
By looking at the actual practices of teachers in the classroom, we
will be better able to understand teacher effectiveness and evaluate
teachers on a fairer, evidence-based basis.
Does the administration support a more comprehensive approach to
teacher evaluations, such as that contained in my Teacher and Principal
Improvement Act?
We agree with you that teacher evaluations should be informed by
multiple measures, including student growth and also other measures of
a teacher's instructional practice. Evaluations informed by a rigorous
and fair set of measures, including student growth in significant part
but also other measures, can most fairly and effectively inform both
compensation and also the ways that schools support and develop
teachers, and connect them with opportunities for collaboration and
professional growth. This is an approach we have supported through Race
to the Top and the Teacher Incentive Fund, as well as in our proposals
for ESEA reauthorization.
This is an area where many states, either on their own or with the
support of Race to the Top, are pioneering innovative new approaches to
measuring teacher classroom practices. Your home state of New York,
with support from its Race to the Top grant, is in the process of
developing a teacher evaluation system that includes both student
growth and also other measures like classroom observations against a
fair and objective rubric, and student and parent feedback. Systems
like this--in schools in New York and across the country--will help
support and advance our teachers, and will help ensure that every
student benefits from effective teaching.
4. Secretary Duncan, as you know, I have worked to reduce school
violence, especially gun violence in our schools. Loopholes exist in
the Gun-Free Schools Act that prevent us from being as effective as we
need to be in appropriately monitoring and preventing guns from ending
up on school campuses. In the 111th Congress, I introduced the Safe
Schools Against Violence in Education Act which, among other provisions
would close some of these loopholes and strengthen the protections in
current law. Specifically, the bill requires that local educational
agencies report not only expulsions for incidents related to firearms,
but also include information on incidents leading to suspension as
well. The bill also expands the scope of current law to include not
only incidents that occur on school campuses, but also include
incidents occurring on school buses and events for which the local
educational authority is responsible. Finally, the bill requires all
incidents that occur on school grounds, not just those committed by
students.
I look forward to working with you and the President to make sure
our schools are safe and gun free. What steps are being taken by the
Department to continue to ensure the safety of our schools?
Specifically, is the Department looking at ways to improve the Gun-Free
Schools Act?
The Administration recognizes the need to ensure that schools
provide a safe and supportive environment free from physical violence
and substance abuse. As described in the answer to your first question,
the proposed Successful, Safe, and Healthy Schools (SSHS) program would
assist schools in fostering a safe environment. Specifically with
regard to gun safety, the Department is still reviewing options for
reauthorization of the Gun Free Schools Act.
______
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SUMMARY OF DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FY 2008-FY 2012 PRESIDENT'S BUDGET
[In thousands of dollars]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Change from FY2011-
2008 2009 Recovery 2010 2011 2010 FY2012
Office, account, program and activity Appropriation Appropriation Act Appropriation Appropriation President's -------------------------
budget Amount Percent
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ELEMENTARY/SECONDARY EDUCATION (K-12)
Elementary and Secondary Education
(ESEA):
Race to the Top..................... 0 0 4,350,000 0 TBD 900,000 ........... ...........
Investing in innovation............. 0 0 650,000 0 TBD 300,000 ........... ...........
College- and career-ready students 13,898,875 14,492,401 10,000,000 14,492,401 TBD 14,792,401 ........... ...........
(Title I grants)...................
School Turnaround Grants............ 491,265 545,633 3,000,000 545,633 TBD 600,000 ........... ...........
Early learning challenge fund....... 0 0 0 0 TBD 350,000 ........... ...........
Effective teaching and learning: 0 0 0 0 TBD 383,348 ........... ...........
Literacy...........................
Effective teaching and learning: 0 0 0 0 TBD 206,046 ........... ...........
STEM...............................
Effective teaching and learning for 0 0 0 0 TBD 246,084 ........... ...........
a well-rounded education...........
College pathways and accelerated 0 0 0 0 TBD 86,000 ........... ...........
learning...........................
Effective teachers and leaders state 0 0 0 0 TBD 2,500,000 ........... ...........
grants.............................
Teacher and leader innovation fund.. 0 0 0 0 TBD 500,000 ........... ...........
Teacher and leader pathways......... 0 0 0 0 TBD 250,000 ........... ...........
Expanding educational options....... 0 0 0 0 TBD 372,000 ........... ...........
Assessing Achievement............... 408,732 410,732 0 410,732 TBD 420,000 ........... ...........
Magnet schools assistance (Part C).. 104,829 104,829 0 100,000 TBD 110,000 ........... ...........
Promise Neighborhoods............... 0 0 0 10,000 TBD 150,000 ........... ...........
Successful, safe and healthy 0 0 0 0 TBD 364,966 ........... ...........
students...........................
21st century community learning 1,081,166 1,131,166 0 1,166,166 TBD 1,266,166 ........... ...........
centers............................
English Learner Education........... 700,395 730,000 0 750,000 TBD 750,000 ........... ...........
Impact Aid.......................... 1,240,717 1,265,718 100,000 1,276,183 TBD 1,276,183 ........... ...........
Other ESEA.......................... 6,506,141 6,148,589 850,000 6,151,979 TBD 877,992 ........... ...........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subtotal, Elementary/Secondary 24,432,121 24,829,068 18,950,000 24,903,094 TBD 26,701,186 ........... ...........
Education........................
Special Education (IDEA):
Grants to States (Part B)........... 10,947,511 11,505,211 11,300,000 11,505,211 TBD 11,705,211 ........... ...........
Other IDEA.......................... 1,034,382 1,066,371 900,000 1,073,729 TBD 1,113,045 ........... ...........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subtotal, IDEA.................... 11,981,893 12,571,582 12,200,000 12,578,940 TBD 12,818,256 ........... ...........
State Fiscal Stabilization Fund..... 0 0 48,600,000 0 TBD 0 ........... ...........
Career and technical education State 1,160,911 1,160,911 0 1,160,911 TBD 1,000,000 ........... ...........
grants.............................
Other K-12.......................... 358,986 377,306 170,000 389,377 TBD 258,639 ........... ...........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subtotal, Elementary/Secondary 37,933,911 38,938,867 79,920,000 39,032,322 TBD 40,778,081 ........... ...........
Education........................
Postsecondary Education:
Federal Pell grants (net)........... 14,215,000 17,288,000 15,640,000 17,495,000 TBD 28,600,059 ........... ...........
Other Student Financial Aid......... 1,866,136 981,973 200,000 1,801,809 TBD 1,737,957 ........... ...........
TRIO................................ 828,178 848,089 0 853,089 TBD 920,089 ........... ...........
Other Postsecondary Education....... 1,581,336 1,625,250 0 1,785,990 TBD 1,738,326 ........... ...........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subtotal, Postsecondary Education. 18,490,650 20,743,312 15,840,000 21,935,888 TBD 32,996,431 ........... ...........
Other Discretionary:
Research, development, and 159,696 167,196 0 200,196 TBD 260,413 ........... ...........
dissemination......................
Statistics.......................... 88,449 98,521 0 108,521 TBD 117,021 ........... ...........
National assessment................. 98,121 130,121 0 130,121 TBD 135,121 ........... ...........
Statewide data systems.............. 48,293 65,000 250,000 58,250 TBD 100,000 ........... ...........
Departmental Management............. 1,247,578 1,338,249 74,000 1,407,679 TBD 1,749,415 ........... ...........
Other Programs and Activities....... 1,144,769 1,164,933 680,000 1,261,879 TBD 1,263,909 ........... ...........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total, ed discretionary funds..... 59,211,468 62,646,199 96,764,000 64,134,856 TBD 77,400,391 ........... ...........
Total, ed discretionary without 44,996,468 45,358,199 81,124,000 46,639,856 TBD 48,800,332 ........... ...........
Pell.............................
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Department is in the process of completing a funding table for FY 2011, based on H.R. 1473/Public Law 112-10. We will update this table with that
information as soon as possible
------
[Whereupon, at 5:08 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]