[Senate Hearing 105-537]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 105-537
LESSONS LEARNED IN THE D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOLS
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF
GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING,
AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 9, 1998
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
48-163 cc WASHINGTON : 1998
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine JOHN GLENN, Ohio
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas CARL LEVIN, Michigan
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
DON NICKLES, Oklahoma RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania ROBERT G. TORRICELLI,
BOB SMITH, New Hampshire New Jersey
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah MAX CLELAND, Georgia
Hannah S. Sistare, Staff Director and Counsel
Leonard Weiss, Minority Staff Director
Michal Sue Prosser, Chief Clerk
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING, AND
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas, Chairman
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah MAX CLELAND, Georgia
Michael E. Rubin, Staff Director
Laurie Rubenstein, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Esmeralda Amos, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Brownback............................................ 1
WITNESSES
Monday, March 9, 1998
Gloria L. Jarmon, Director, Health, Education and Human Services,
Accounting and Financial Management, Accounting and Information
Management Division, General Accounting Office................. 3
David L. Cotton, Managing Partner, Cotton and Company;
accompanied by Ed Fritts, Senior Manager, Cotton and Company,
and Marvin Allmond, Managing Partner, Allmond and Company...... 5
Joyce Ladner, Member, District of Columbia Financial
Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority............. 12
General Julius W. Becton, Jr., Superintendent, District of
Columbia Public Schools; accompanied by Arlene Ackerman, Chief
Academic Officer............................................... 16
Taalib-Din Uqdah, Parent of D.C. Public School students.......... 28
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Becton, General Julius W., Jr.:
Testimony.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 120
Cotton, David L.:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 104
Jarmon, Gloria L.:
Testimony.................................................... 3
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 35
Ladner, Joyce:
Testimony.................................................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 109
Uqdah, Taalib-Din:
Testimony.................................................... 28
APPENDIX
Prepared statements of witnesses in order of appearance.......... 35
Letters submitted by General Becton.............................. 124
Chart submitted by General Becton................................ 133
Letter from General Becton clarifying the record regarding a
statement during the March 9 hearing........................... 134
LESSONS LEARNED IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS
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MONDAY, MARCH 9, 1998
U.S. Senate,
Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the
District of Columbia Subcommittee,
of the Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:14 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sam
Brownback, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senator Brownback.
Senator Brownback. We will call the hearing to order.
OPENING STATEMENT BY SENATOR BROWNBACK
Senator Brownback. I am sorry for being a little bit late.
I just flew in out of the snow in Kansas. We had between 6 and
12 inches across Northeastern Kansas, and that was not so bad,
but we had about 30-mile-an-hour winds, and there is not a
whole lot to stop it there. There was a fair amount of snow-
drifting, and so the planes were delayed.
I appreciate you coming to the hearing today. I appreciate
our witnesses being here and all the other people interested in
D.C. Public Schools. I think we have a lot to talk about, and
for all of our panelists, I have some questions for each of you
and I hope we can get some good illumination for everybody.
There are a number of educational reforms that could play a
critical role in achieving results and success, in the D.C.
Public School system. One important reform would be the D.C.
scholarship bill. This bill would provide scholarships to low-
income children in the District to attend private schools. It
passed the Senate, and it is currently pending in the House.
In addition, I, along with Senator Lieberman, sponsored
legislation under the fiscal year 1998 D.C. appropriations bill
requiring the D.C. Public Schools to give preference to charter
schools in selling excess Public School property. I am happy
that D.C. Public Schools has been working with the charter
school community to implement these changes. The District can
now look forward to having more charter schools in the upcoming
school year.
At today's hearing, though, we will focus on lessons
learned in the D.C. Public Schools during this past year. We
have held several hearings in this Committee room on the D.C.
Public Schools. It has been an issue that has been very clear
in importance to me and very dear to me as well, along with
Senator Lieberman, the Ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee.
I think you have to look at the D.C. Public Schools as
being one of the critical components for the District of
Columbia. We are going to look at some of the lessons learned
over the past year of the D.C. school system's Public Schools.
I have to say, I am troubled certainly by some of the
academic results that we have seen. I think one of the first
lessons we have to say is that the academic quality of the
schools is in dire need of improvement. We have a couple of
charts, and I know these figures are nothing new to the people
in the District of Columbia Public Schools that have looked at
the Stanford-9 test results. I am pleased that the District is
doing the Stanford-9 test, so we will have an objective set of
tests and factors to look at, but, according to the test
results, which were taken at the end of the last school year,
100 percent of the 10th graders in two high schools scored
below basics in math. Not one 10th-grade student scored at the
basic level in math in two of the high schools that we have in
the District of Columbia, and that is simply not good enough.
What we have up here, the two charts, are 10th graders in
math, and this is not good enough either. Sixty-one percent of
the Nation's 10th graders are below the basic levels, 61
percent in the Nation. In the Nation's Capital, 89 percent of
the 10th graders are below the basic levels of math. This is
simply not a tolerable situation. We have got to get this
turned around. We have to do it in short order. We are failing
our students, and our students are not getting the necessary
education that they need to succeed in a very competitive
world.
As for reading, which we have on the other chart, about 26
percent of the Nation's 10th graders are classified as below
basic, and 53 percent of the 10th graders in the District's
Public Schools are performing below basic. Again, this is just
not acceptable.
I realize that our leadership team has not been in place
for that long of a period of time, but we have to get these
scores improving on a rapid basis. It has got to get better.
When a child reaches the 10th grade without these basic
skills, time is running out for that child to gain those skills
back before they graduate. The District's Public Schools must
not only begin earlier to teach these basic skills, they must
maintain these standards so that the skills are not lost by the
10th grade.
I am concerned on a second set of lessons, and that is on
the consistency of school safety and disciplinary policy in the
District's Public Schools. We have had a number of security
violations that have occurred, a number of them involving
weapons that have been confiscated. These have been reported
since September of 1997. The information that I have is that
more than 1,600 security violations have occurred and at least
157 weapons, such as guns, knives, machetes, etc., have been
confiscated since September 1997.
The discipline policy for these serious offenses remains,
in my opinion, inconsistent and unclear among the District's
Public Schools. This sends the wrong signal to those
jeopardizing the safety of the D.C. Public Schools.
Having a successful academic plan and a solid roof on these
school buildings means nothing if the students and teachers
fear for their lives.
Then we want to look, also, at the school's roof repairs
which has been covered quite extensively in the press, and we
will have some people here to testify about that.
I am pleased that we have General Becton here to testify
and to answer some questions for this Subcommittee. He had been
tasked with a very difficult job, and he has had just a little
over a year in leadership in that position. It is an
extraordinarily difficult task, and I have a great deal of
admiration for the General's abilities and character.
He did state in September of 1997 the following, ``I
believe that our success or failure will be judged on whether
or not we have achieved fundamental improvements in three core
areas. One is in academics, two is in school facilities, and
three in personnel and financial management systems.'' I think
we need to review the progress that has taken place since
September of 1997 on those three scores and what is proposed
for the near future so that we can get all of those areas
improving.
This is an important hearing. It is a difficult subject for
everybody that is in leadership and everybody that is working
to try to improve the D.C. Public Schools. They simply are not
performing up to standards, and I want to be convinced after
this hearing that we have a plan and we are actually improving
to where these test scores change, to where security of the
students in the systems change and improves, and the facilities
improve in the near term. Where are we on getting those three
core issues moving forward? We simply have to get them better.
If we are not getting this done, then we need to take steps to
improve that.
The first panel that we have will be Gloria L. Jarmon. She
is the Director of Health, Education and Human Services,
Accounting and Financial Management, Accounting and Information
Management Division of the General Accounting Office.
We have David L. Cotton, the Managing Partner of Cotton and
Company. They have done some extensive reviews of some of the
financial management and some of the issues that have
previously been raised publicly concerning the D.C. Public
Schools.
I look forward to your testimony, and I will have some
questions regarding the findings that you have brought forward.
Ms. Jarmon, would you care to go first?
Ms. Jarmon. Yes.
Senator Brownback. Thank you for joining us, and the floor
is yours. We can take your full statement in the record and you
can summarize, or you can present your full statement.
TESTIMONY OF GLORIA L. JARMON,\1\ DIRECTOR, HEALTH, EDUCATION
AND HUMAN SERVICES, ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT,
ACCOUNTING AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT DIVISION, GENERAL
ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Ms. Jarmon. Mr. Chairman, I would like to summarize my
statement and present the entire statement for the record.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Jarmon appears in the Appendix on
page 35.
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I am pleased to be here today to discuss the results of our
review of the District of Columbia Public Schools' efforts to
repair school roofs during the summer of 1997.
Consistent with your request, we focused on three issues:
First of all, determining when funds were made available to pay
for school roofs; second, the cost of the school roofs,
including the cost per square foot; and, third, looking at
additional roofs to be repaired in 1998 and beyond.
Our primary message today related to the availability of
funds is that sufficient funding was available to begin work
when schools were closed for the summer on June 20, 1997. Bond
proceeds was $11.5 million. It became available in October of
1996, and were being used to fund the GSA-managed roof repair
projects.
Additional funds later became available for the DCPS-
managed projects, with $18 million becoming available in March
of 1997, and an additional $20 million in June of 1997.
Therefore, when schools closed on June 20, 1997, at least $38
million was available for DCPS-managed roof repairs.
As you know, much of this work did not start until the
third week of July. DCPS was not prepared to begin this work
earlier because it had not completed sufficient initial work
such as determining the scope of work which forms the basis for
seeking bids. In addition, there had been an almost complete
turnover in technical support staff within DCPS, and there were
problems in securing bids.
DCPS officials also told us that they had planned to do
this work through the end of October, but because of the court
order that work not be done while classes were in session, they
had to do the work in a compressed time frame.
I will now talk briefly about the costs of repairs. Our
work shows that DCPS spent about $37 million for these repairs
during fiscal year 1997. A significant, but not determinable,
amount of these costs were attributable to factors other than
what would be strictly interpreted as roof replacement or
repair work. Among these were structural integrity, fire
damage, general deterioration from neglected maintenance, and
warranty stipulations.
Considering the cost of all of this work, we found that the
average per-square-foot cost of the roof repairs during fiscal
year 1997 was $20, with the GSA-managed roof repairs being
about $13 per square foot, and the DCPS-managed roof repairs
being about $22 per square foot.
Some of the reasons for the differences seem to be that GSA
uses existing contracts to do their work. So they did not have
to go out for bids when the market was already saturated with
roof work. Second, GSA's projects were done over a longer time
frame, thus requiring less overtime, and third, GSA's contracts
covered only flat work roof. Whereas, DCPS contracts covered
multiple roof areas.
Last, I will address the future roof work plan. For fiscal
year 1998, DCPS plans to spend about $35 million for 40 school
roof projects. DCPS has about $41.8 million available for these
projects, most of that coming from Sallie Mae funds. To date,
five schools have been completed, and the scopes of work on the
remaining 35 are expected to be completed in May 1998. Twenty-
six of these 35 scope of works were completed by the end of
February. The other nine, we have been told, will be completed
sometime in May.
We would like to stress here that it is very important that
these scopes of work are completed, solicitations distributed,
and the contracts awarded as soon as possible to ensure that
prior year problems with the compressed time frame do not
reoccur.
We also know that an additional $63 million is included in
a proposed DCPS plan covering the years--fiscal year 1999
through the year 2004. This is not a detailed plan. We were
told that the proceeds from the sale of the closed schools are
expected to help cover these out-years of 1999 through 2004.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I will be happy
to answer any questions from you.
Senator Brownback. We will have some questions for you
later.
Mr. Cotton, we are pleased to have your statement for the
Subcommittee.
TESTIMONY OF DAVID L. COTTON,\1\ MANAGING PARTNER, COTTON AND
COMPANY; ACCOMPANIED BY ED FRITTS, SENIOR MANAGER, COTTON AND
COMPANY, AND MARVIN ALLMOND, MANAGING PARTNER, ALLMOND AND
COMPANY
Mr. Cotton. Thank you, sir.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Cotton appears in the Appendix on
page 104.
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Chairman Brownback, I am pleased to be here today to
discuss the results of our audit of the DCPS procurement
process.
With me today are Ed Fritts, a senior manager with Cotton
and Company; and Marvin Allmond, managing partner of Allmond
and Company. Mr. Allmond and his staff assisted Mr. Fritts and
me in our audit.
I know that you and your staff have already reviewed our
report. I would just like to emphasize two points related to
the audit.
First is the issue of whether DCPS followed proper
procurement procedures. The second is regarding the refusal by
DCPS personnel to affirm in writing certain representations
about the roof repair projects.
Since the audit was completed, DCPS official have asserted
that they complied with the D.C. Board of Education procurement
rules which allow for emergency contracting.
There are two problems with that assertion. First, the DCPS
people who were actually performing the procurements told us
during our audit that they did not comply with any procurement
policies or procedures.
The DCPS Chief of Contract Administration told us in
writing that, ``There are no procurement procedures which DCPS
had to follow in awarding capital contracts. The authority
resolution requires only that the CEO enter into contracts
which he deems appropriate and in the best interest of the
school system.''
The DCPS Chief of Capital Projects told us in writing that,
``All of the work done by DCPS in fiscal year 1997 was done
under emergency conditions as declared by the Control Board. We
were thereby exempted from procurement policies and
procedures.''
The second problem with the assertion that these procedures
were followed is that even if DCPS officials thought they were
following these procedures, what occurred failed to conform to
those procedures. For example, our audit found that
documentation requirements were ignored. Segregation of duties
requirements were bypassed or circumvented. Project managers
rather than procurement officials decided what contractors to
invite to submit bids, received and opened bids, and made
contract award decisions. Contracts and contract modifications
were executed without first certifying that funds were
available. Contract work was allowed to commence without
evidence that required bonds were obtained. Contract compliance
requirements were not monitored. Millions of dollars of change
orders were approved without justification or written findings
and determinations.
Nothing in these procedures, emergency or otherwise, permit
such practices. These were the conditions that we cited in our
report as being conducive to fraud.
I want to address the issue of management representations.
In a hearing on January 23, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton
asked General Becton and his staff why they refused to sign the
management representation letters we asked them to sign as a
routine part of our audit. They did not answer that question.
Instead, they stated that it was unfair and inappropriate for
us to have asked them to sign these letters.
It was neither unfair nor inappropriate, although
requesting written management representations is not a
mandatory procedure in performance audits, it has been a
suggested or recommended procedure for nearly 20 years.
The current version of GAO's Government Auditing Standards
suggests that this procedure be considered. The 1988 version
and the 1991 version recommended that management
representations be obtained.
The focus should not be on whether or not our request for
management representations was appropriate. The focus should be
on why DCPS officials refused to provide these representations.
We asked six management officials to affirm certain key
assertions made to us explicitly or implicitly during the
audit. Four officials did not respond. Two officials gave us
some, but not all of the representations, 16 days after we
issued our report. Our request was simple and straightforward.
We asked them to affirm to the best of their knowledge and
belief that, for example, they knew of no material recorded
transactions; that they had made available to us all relevant
information; that they had informed us of all evidence of error
or fraud of which they were awarded; that they knew of no
violations of law that had occurred in connection with the
contracts; that they had provided us with all relevant
information regarding the conviction of two DCPS procurement
officials for accepting bribes and illegal gratuities, and that
these two officials had nothing to do with the procurement
process, and so forth. These were legitimate questions within
the scope of our audit. You deserve answers to these questions.
Mr. Chairman, that completes my prepared statement. I will
be happy to respond to any questions that you have.
Senator Brownback. Thank you very much, Mr. Cotton, for
your statement.
Mr. Cotton, let me just kind of cut to the chase of this.
You stated that there was an atmosphere that fraud could occur
in, and you said some questions were not answered. Do you have
any evidence of fraud actually having occurred in this roof
repair project that went forward?
Mr. Cotton. We have what I consider circumstantial evidence
that fraud could have occurred, and I think further
investigations may reveal that bribes, gratuities, or kickbacks
could have taken place, perhaps did take place. I think further
work is needed to determine that.
Senator Brownback. You will be proposing to this
Subcommittee an outline of further investigation to determine
whether or not fraud occurred or whether kickbacks or bribes
occurred?
Mr. Cotton. We provided an outline of what we think needs
to be looked into to the Control Board. My understanding is
that the Control Board has asked the D.C. Inspector General to
follow up and pursue those issues.
Senator Brownback. Do you feel comfortable discussing with
this Subcommittee today the circumstances that you believe show
circumstantial evidence of fraud having occurred?
Mr. Cotton. The general points that I outlined in my
statement, I think, is as far as I would like to go. We
provided the Control Board with some more specifics. If they
are under investigation, I would be reluctant to describe them
in further detail.
Senator Brownback. You note that the cost was roughly
double, for the repair work on the school roofs, what was
stated in front of the Subcommittee. I believe it was about a
year ago, maybe not quite a year ago. I thought they said it
would be about $11, and it was, instead, around $20 per square
foot?
Was that the figure, Ms. Jarmon?
Ms. Jarmon. Yes. It was about $20 per square foot, and
early on in our work, we did ask for the support for the $11
per square foot. We were told that the schedules had been
revised and the schedules were not available. So, based on our
work, like I said in my opening statement, including all of the
additional costs, it was about $20 per square foot.
Senator Brownback. Let's take into consideration all the
factors that were in place. There was a court order. The school
year was pressing. We ended up having to delay the school year
because of the lack of ability to repair the roofs.
There was a lot of emergency-type situations present. Did
you consider all of that in determining whether or not those
figures going from $11 to the $20-plus were appropriate?
Ms. Jarmon. We took those factors into account, and that is
why we mentioned these factors within the report.
We really did not look into whether they were appropriate.
We were more addressing the question of what the overall costs
were.
Senator Brownback. Mr. Cotton, how about you on that? We
have a situation that, obviously, there was a lot of pressure
at that particular point to get these roofs repaired and to get
it done now. Should that have driven the cost up double of what
it was told to us?
Mr. Cotton. Well, Senator, I think there is no question
that General Williams did an incredible job accomplishing what
he accomplished, and he started from no staff, and the issue of
whether or not he could have gotten statements of work prepared
sooner, whether he could have gotten procurements in place in
April and May, and had the work ready to be started in June, I
guess, is a question I think Gloria's report tried to answer.
We talked with the engineering firm that prepared most of
the estimates. They told us that their estimates were already
high because they had taken into account the fact that the work
was compressed; that D.C. was not a favorite place for
contractors to work and so forth.
Our results showed that if you take those factors into
account, the actual costs as of the time we completed our work
was about 11 percent above those already-high estimates.
I am not sure whether anyone will ever know whether this
work could have been done at $12 or $15 a square foot. My focus
was on the process, and I understand that DCPS had a legitimate
position that they needed to streamline the process. My concern
was that I think they streamlined it too much.
Senator Brownback. Did you draw this to their attention
early on, or was this ever drawn to the attention of the DCPS
about this, excess of a streamlined process that would lend
itself to potential for fraud or abuse?
Mr. Cotton. Well, we began our audit work in the last week
of October 1997 when most of the procurements were finished,
but we kept DCPS officials informed of our findings as they
were developed.
Senator Brownback. Ms. Jarmon, in looking at your analysis
on the roof repair procurement, the cost of repair and the
availability of funds for repair, what are the main flaws that
should be addressed immediately in proceeding forward with any
other repairs to D.C. Public Schools?
Ms. Jarmon. Well, we would suggest that it is going to be
very important that there is a detailed plan going forward that
would highlight what needs to be done, what schools need to be
done, the priorities, and that there be controls in place to
make sure it is followed, and when changes are made to it,
those changes be documented, and also to ensure that the
warranties are honored that warranties have been received based
on the work that was done, and to ensure that the neglected
maintenance, deferred maintenance that we referred to in our
report does not reoccur, and that these contracts be awarded as
soon as possible. And if they cannot be awarded very soon, that
consideration be given to utilizing GSA more. That was an
option also in 1997. Those are the primary issues that we would
suggest.
Senator Brownback. Good.
You noted in one place in your study that you did not have
sufficient data to make certain determinations. What kind of
bookkeeping does the D.C. Public School system have, and do you
have any suggestions for them to come up with the type of data
that you would need to make appropriate reviews?
Ms. Jarmon. Our report talks about at least a couple of
examples where documentation was not available to support what
we were trying to do. One related to fund availability, where
there were some differences as far as--our report talks about
when funds were available to the Control Board. We were told
that D.C. Public Schools were not aware of those funds until,
in some cases, several months later, and we received no
documentation to show us when D.C. Public Schools received the
funds.
We are aware now, based on information we received from the
District CFO's office, that they are in the process of changing
those procedures, so that there will be some written memos or
internal memos to notify the agencies when funds are received.
We would support that type of documentation.
In addition, in our report when we were talking about the
cost of the school roofs that were internally repaired for the
District, there were seven school roofs internally repaired. We
noted that we could not get cost data on those seven school
roofs, and we would recommend that there be a good cost system
to support that data.
I know that David Cotton's report talks about many other
deficiencies with the record-keeping. So he may be able to
better address that.
Senator Brownback. Mr. Cotton, would you care to follow up
on that question with some specifics of what additional data is
necessary to properly track these projects?
Mr. Cotton. Well, our major concern about record-keeping
had to do with the status of the contract files, and we
understood that some of the projects were just being completed.
Some of them had not been completed yet. The files were
understandably incomplete.
Our concern was that many of the documents that should have
been in the files, whether the projects were complete or not,
were not in the files.
The file organization was not consistent. Files were
disorganized. Every file was a little bit different. I
understand DCPS has taken steps to correct that.
The paperwork issue is of less concern to me than the other
control issues, such as segregating procurement duties from
project management duties, requiring supervisory approvals and
sign-offs of key procurement decisions and so forth, and I
think that is the area that I am most concerned about seeing
corrected.
Senator Brownback. Have you outlined those in detail in
your report, where you think we need to have different
processes in place, different approvals in place to make sure
that a situation like this does not come up in the future?
Mr. Cotton. Well, I think you do. It had been my
understanding that the procurement responsibility was moved
from DCPS to some other D.C. Government organization, but I
found out recently that that may not be the case.
I think my recommendation would be that until a set of
established and solidly controlled procurement procedures are
put in place and formally adopted by either the Control Board
or DCPS that we need to go back to what the law said, and the
law said that Federal procurement rules need to be followed. If
these procurements are done in accordance with the Federal
Acquisition Regulation, I think you have the controls you need.
If you decide to allow DCPS or some other organization to
adopt its own policies, then I think you need to focus on the
issue of segregation of duties, documentation of reviews and
approvals, and another key requirement should be maximum
competition for these procurements.
Senator Brownback. Which there was not in this particular
case, competition?
Mr. Cotton. No, sir, there was not.
Senator Brownback. Was there any competition for the
procurement in these cases?
Mr. Cotton. The Chief of Contract Administration told us
that he could not recall how the initial procurements were
advertised. He said he thought that they were advertised in the
Washington Times because the account with the Washington Post
was delinquent.
The follow-on, procurements late in the process, the final
20 procurements, the degree of competition was limited to a
project manager deciding which three or four contractors to
invite to bid on the project, and those three or four
contractors sometimes would bid, sometimes would not, and they
would select from amongst the bids that they got.
Senator Brownback. How many projects did you say, 7 or 17?
Mr. Cotton. Twenty.
Senator Brownback. The last 20 projects? The project
manager would invite three or four that he thought were the
appropriate ones to bid on this project?
Mr. Cotton. Yes, sir.
Senator Brownback. Then some of those would submit bids and
some would not?
Mr. Cotton. They were given sometimes less than 24 hours to
prepare a bid. Some of the potential bidders said they simply
could not prepare a bid in that period of time.
Senator Brownback. Then the project manager had the
authority to grant the project at that point in time?
Mr. Cotton. Bids were submitted to the project managers for
these final 20. The project manager would then send the
paperwork over to the procurement official for signing of the
contract, but the selection was essentially made by the project
manager.
Senator Brownback. So you had one person with limited
competition, possibly no competition, awarding these last 20
projects?
Mr. Cotton. That is correct.
Senator Brownback. Is that the basis of your concern of
circumstantial evidence of fraud, or is it something else that
is there?
Mr. Cotton. Well, there are five attributes to every fraud,
a perpetrator, a victim, intent, motive, and opportunity. The
only one of those five attributes that an organization can
control is the last one, opportunity. So, by not segregating
duties, that created the opportunity for irregularities, fraud
to have occurred, we had some additional concerns about some
specific procurements that we have communicated to the Control
Board that are a little bit more specific than that, but that
is a major concern.
Senator Brownback. In those last 20 cases, do you know
whether some of those bids that were let with only one
contractor bidding on the project?
Mr. Cotton. There might have been one or two with only one
bid.
Senator Brownback. Were there several with only two bids?
Mr. Fritts. I think generally that----
Senator Brownback. I am sorry. Would the gentleman please
identify himself, so we could have it for the record here?
Mr. Fritts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Ed Fritts
with Cotton and Company.
I recall that for those last 20 projects, a standard number
of bids received would be two or three. There were one or two--
I do not remember the specifics--but there were one or two in
which there was only one bidder or at least the contract file
did not document if there were more than one bidder, but,
typically, two or three bids would have been received, and
those bids were addressed directly to the project manager, not
to the procurement officer.
Senator Brownback. And sometimes these bids were pulled
together within 24 hours?
Mr. Fritts. Yes, sir. Well, from 1 to 3 days, something
like that, but, yes, a very short turnaround time, much shorter
than you would normally expect in a sound procurement process.
Senator Brownback. Were you able to track any of the
advertising for these bids?
Mr. Fritts. The only advertising, as we were told, was the
project manager or at least somebody from the Capital Projects
office, but the contract file suggested the project manager
called the prospective bidders to come out to a school, to walk
through the school, and then to subsequently make their
independent bids.
Senator Brownback. Mr. Cotton, I want to go back through
and get your statement clearly because these are strong
statements that you are making.
Mr. Cotton. Yes, sir.
Senator Brownback. You are saying that the potential for
fraud clearly existed.
Mr. Cotton. Yes.
Senator Brownback. That there is circumstantial evidence of
fraud having occurred in these school repairs?
Mr. Cotton. Yes, sir. That is correct.
Senator Brownback. And that from that, you think it would
be wise for further investigation? Obviously, if there is that,
I mean, this Subcommittee and many others are going to be
asking for further investigation of this to occur.
Mr. Cotton. Yes, sir.
Senator Brownback. Is there anything further you would feel
confident in presenting in front of this Subcommittee of the
circumstantial evidence concerning the fraud?
Mr. Cotton. I would be uncomfortable getting into more
specifics.
Senator Brownback. All right. We will be delving into that
at a later time.
Ms. Jarmon, did you have anything further that you would
like to add to the Subcommittee and to your report?
Ms. Jarmon. No, I do not, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Brownback. All right. Well, thank you, and, Mr.
Cotton, I appreciate both of your testimonies. We will be
following up on this because they are serious findings and
statements. Thank you very much for your help.
Our next panel will be Dr. Joyce Ladner, Member of the
District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management
Assistance Authority, and General Julius Becton, Superintendent
of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
I want to thank the two panelists for joining us today, and
I think both of you were present for the last testimonies. They
are serious allegations that are being put forward.
It is a serious topic. I do not want to lay it out either
as any sort of--out here trying to hunt to say ``gotcha'' on
something. I do not like these test scores at all. I do not
think anybody in this room likes or agrees with these test
scores. I do not like accusations and people saying that there
was fraud that occurred, that the circumstances for fraud
occurred, and I am sure neither of you do either, but I will
look forward to hearing some clear testimony as to what has
happened, what systems have been put in place to correct this,
and what we can look forward to by correcting these problems in
the future. I will have some tough questions for you.
I appreciate the difficulty of the job that you are in, but
these are just some terrible accusations and bad test results
that we have. We have to get at the root of this.
Dr. Ladner, you can present your full testimony or
summarize, whichever you care to do.
TESTIMONY OF JOYCE LADNER,\1\ MEMBER, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND MANAGEMENT ASSISTANCE AUTHORITY
Ms. Ladner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
opportunity to testify on the progress made and lessons learned
in our efforts to reform the District's Public Schools.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Ladner appears in the Appendix on
page 109.
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When the Authority issued its report in November 1996
entitled ``Children in Crisis,'' the report on the failure of
the D.C. Public Schools, we concluded that the deplorable
record of the District's schools and every important
educational and management area had left the system in crisis,
and, virtually, every area, every grade level, the system
failed to provide the children--the schools with the quality of
education and a safe environment in which to learn.
In response to that report, we took immediate action on
November 15, 1996, to fundamentally improve the schools through
a resolution and order. We replaced the Superintendent and
reduced the powers of the elected Board of Education. In their
place, we appointed, as you know, retired Army Lieutenant
General Julius W. Becton, and we established an emergency
transitional board of trustees.
The progress made to date has laid the foundation for
further reform and demonstrable success in the outcomes of
children's education. I think that at best, what I can say is
that a large number of things have occurred to put in place the
foundation, the infrastructure, some of the personnel that can
carry this task forth so that those test scores that you have
placed here before us do begin to change.
I am a realist, and in being a realist, I recognize that
the problems in the school system did not come about overnight.
The physical structures have been deteriorating for a period of
roughly 50 years. The average age of our schools is in excess
of 50 years.
The physical problems and the educational ones cannot be
fixed overnight. Yet, the important thing--and I emphasize that
here--is that they are being fixed. For the first time, there
now exists comprehensive plans both on education and facilities
that we did not have before.
Despite the hard work that has gone into this by all
parties involved, including the parents, teachers,
administrators, and volunteers, much remains to be done. In
researching the approach taken by other educational reform
efforts, one of the most essential ingredients was the
establishment of the reform-minded team that committed to
change.
In places such as Chicago that I visited prior to the
Authority making the change in the governance structure, they
successfully recruited a top management team and eliminated
drastically the middle-level management tier. We have strongly
encouraged General Becton to employ the same approach. We are
very pleased, therefore, that Dr. Arlene Ackerman, who has been
appointed Deputy Superintendent and Chief of Academic Office as
a result of the national recruitment campaign, has joined the
schools, and in the coming months, we know that General Becton
will continue to assemble a team that can bring the Public
Schools up to the level of achievement that we want them.
With respect to academics, the Chief Academic Officer is
instituting a plan that will leverage accountability for
educational change throughout the school system. All of the
actions in the future, present and going forth, all of the
procedures and processes are being examined for their impact
upon educational attainment.
Therefore, the schools have limited the appointment of
principals to 1 year--that is the first major change that was
made--and removed the selection of principals from the
previously politicized process. Fifty percent of the
principal's evaluation now will be based on students' academic
performance. So we are tying performance of students to the
effectiveness of principals.
The schools are also moving to make teacher evaluations
performance-driven, and that will be instituted next fall.
Principals and teachers are receiving training and the
expectations supporting performance-based management.
We are also making changes in academic standards. On her
arrival, Ms. Ackerman implemented the nationally recognized
Stanford-9 test, and they are being administered on a biannual
basis.
Mr. Chairman, I would hazard to guess that because all of
our efforts are being placed in an intensive way to campaign to
raise these scores; that when that test is administered again
in the spring, we may well see some--the next time it is
administered, we may well begin to see some increase in those
scores. I say that because the principals have organized
inasmuch as 50 percent of their evaluation is now tied to the
way in which children's test scores are turning out. They are
under the gun.
The teachers know that come September, their evaluations
will also be very, very heavily tied to the performance of
students. They also know that we are getting rid of social
promotion, come this summer, and by putting in place a safety
net for those students who, as you have demonstrated here on
these charts, are not functioning at the adequate level at
which they should be.
We expect somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 students to
go to summer school. It will be a tough pill to swallow in the
beginning, but we also know that none of us could justify
continuing to have students passed on from one grade to the
next if they have not mastered the basic skills that they
should have mastered.
We also have an educational strategic plan that will guide
the development of all the administrative priorities that are
set. For a long time, the District's schools have not tied the
programs to the finances available, and for the first time, we
will have a road map that will be tied to the ability to fund
these programs.
In terms of administrative and financial management
improvements, we the Authority are assisting the schools in
addressing longstanding problems in central personnel and asset
management and technology and procurement functions.
I want to clarify something that was said by the last
panel, I believe by Mr. Cotton. The procurement and information
technology systems are being centralized, and procurement will
be placed under--in the process of being placed under the Chief
Procurement Officer for the City, Richard Fite, and we will be
working with the schools in the months to come to try to make
sure that the centralized system will address their specific
needs, but there is no question that the Authority has made the
decision to place procurement under the aegis of the chief
procurement officer.
Information technology is the same. We will work with the
schools on asset management and on personnel because many of
the other agencies in the City have had those two functions as
well centralized.
We have made some progress. The size of the central
administration has been reduced from 15 percent of the work
force in fiscal year 1997 to 11 percent in 1998, and we are
also--have developed in conjunction with the schools--the
Authority has implemented, developed a monitoring plan that
measures management and programmatic changes. Monitoring
program measures, the progress in the schools in terms of
results are outcomes that the chief executive officer achieves,
and it will help to support the future changes needed to
improve these results in the future.
Much has been said about the infrastructure improvements. I
would like to say here that while we understand that we were
required to make a lot of changes in the physical facilities of
the schools in a very short period of time, that we were also
under the gun of the judge who ordered many of the changes that
resulted in change orders, I should clarify here.
We also know that ultimately all of us bear accountability
for what did or did not occur. The Authority met with Mr.
Cotton in a closed session, and we have forwarded to the IG our
concerns, and they are investigating. We did that immediately
after talking with him.
I do not want to say more than that except to say that I am
a little surprised at how specific Mr. Cotton was today
relative to our conversation we had with him a month or two
ago.
The Public Schools are now marketing surplus facilities,
including the 11 schools we closed last fall. All the monies
that are received will be placed in--plowed back into the
revitalization of the physical plants of the schools.
One of the remaining challenges facing the schools, Mr.
Chairman, is special education. It is a crisis in most major
cities around the country, and for the District, it is no
different.
We have nearly 7,700 students in special ed, and the
numbers are growing precipitously. This growth is having
tremendous implications for the future cost of education in the
City. Fiscal year 1997 we spent $93.8 million from all sources
on special ed. In fiscal year 1998, we estimate we will spend
$102 million.
Under the Mills decree, the court order, the D.C. Schools
are required to assess and place special ed students within 50
days of referral. I might say to you, Mr. Chairman, that I know
that you know a great deal about education in conversation and
the hearing we had earlier this year. This 50-day referral
period is the shortest time period for assessment and placement
of any school district in the Nation, according to our
research. Most school districts have about 120 days to do the
assessment.
Consequently, so many times, what happens is that because
we cannot do this turnaround of assessing a child's proper
placement in the 50 days, what happens is that on procedural
grounds, we lose the cases to families that are represented by
counsel, and the school system ends up having to pay the
tuition, the exorbitant cost for the child's education, and you
know that this occurs irrespective of parents' income and so
on. We need relief in this area from the City Council.
Finally, I would just speak to school funding.
Unfortunately, as you well know, the District of Columbia is
not represented by a State. Therefore, we have to assume City
functions, State functions as well, and every major city around
the country receives a significant part of its budget for its
school system from the parent State, for building,
construction, etc., as well as curriculum development and so
on.
We do not have that. So I would simply say to you, Mr.
Chairman, that in the months ahead, it would be very, very
important for us to be able to continue the discussions along
the lines of how do we realign a school system that does not
have the traditional basis of support that other cities have
and still bring it up to standards and to the level at which we
know the children have to come.
Thank you.
Senator Brownback. Good. I look forward to having some
questions and discussion with you, if I can.
Ms. Ladner. Sure.
Senator Brownback. General Becton, thank you for joining us
on the Subcommittee. You have had a tough task placed on you,
and a short time frame in which to do it, but the kids deserve
a lot. I know you are trying to deliver that. I look forward to
your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF GENERAL JULIUS W. BECTON, JR.,\1\ SUPERINTENDENT,
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS; ACCOMPANIED BY ARLENE
ACKERMAN, CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICER
General Becton. Thank you, Senator Brownback. You have my
prepared statement. I will just make a few key remarks from
that statement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of General Becton appears in the
Appendix on page 120.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We thank you for providing us the opportunity to update you
on the progress of our efforts to reform the District of
Columbia Public Schools.
The title of this hearing, ``Lessons Learned,'' is
appropriate because this has certainly been a learning process
for all of us. I am happy to share some of those lessons with
you today.
I have with me, by the way, in addition to Ms. Ackerman, my
chief finance officer, Ed Stephenson. I also have with me our
procurement director, Karen Chambers, and general counsel and
other staffers, and I am sure I will have to rely upon them for
some responses to some of the questions, if I may.
Senator Brownback. Yes, sir.
General Becton. You have heard the challenges we faced when
we arrived in November of 1996, and I repeat only this portion.
According to the Control Board, by virtually every measure of
performance, the Public School system failed to provide a
quality education for all children and a safe environment in
which to learn. The system was broken in fundamental ways, and
the public had lost confidence in the schools. These long
standing problems were created over decades, and they cannot be
erased overnight.
Perhaps I should mention here that this was probably the
first lesson learned for me. People are impatient. The public,
the City Council, and even the Congress seemed to expect almost
immediate progress, sometimes forgetting just how long it took
us to get to the point that we are in.
I, too, have been frustrated by the rate of progress, but I
know how far we have come. We have made progress in the
relatively short period this administration has been in place.
We have focused on making improvement in three core areas, and
you mentioned those, academic achievement, personal and
financial management, and facilities.
I am pleased to report that we have made real progress in
all three areas. We have learned quite a few lessons along the
way.
In academics, we have taken dramatic steps to begin
improving student achievement. We have brought on board a
highly qualified chief academic officer who came to the
District with a clear plan and a proven track record. Arlene
Ackerman, our chief academic officer, is here with me today,
and I would like to introduce her and have her join me up here.
Senator Brownback. Ms. Ackerman, please join us.
General Becton. She has reminded me that she has a 2:30
appointment with the Secretary of Education. I think that is
correct.
Senator Brownback. Well, that can wait. Tell him you were
in front of the Senate.
General Becton. OK. Ms. Ackerman has developed content
standards that clearly define what students should know and be
able to do. She is implementing promotion gates to end the
practice of moving students on, even if they are not performing
at grade level.
We are planning a massive summer school program that Dr.
Ladner has already mentioned for students who tested below
basic and hope to be promoted this fall. We expect up to 20,000
students, or 1 out of 4 of our students, to participate.
These are, indeed, dramatic steps, and, yet, while parents
have been largely supportive of our efforts, some observers had
criticized us for not moving more quickly on the academic
front. Once again, I learned a lesson. We should have brought
Ms. Ackerman on board in November 1996 as opposed to September
of last year, after a nationwide search.
My friend, Paul Vallas, who heads up the reform effort in
Chicago on which our efforts were modeled, brought 40
professionals with him when he took over. I had one. Paul
Vallas had the support of the mayor, the City agencies, and the
City Council. I had none of these. Mr. Vallas had the luxury of
taking over Chicago Public Schools in July. He had 2 months to
prepare for his first academic year. I was appointed after the
school year began. Here in the District, we had to do something
akin to rebuilding an airplane in mid-flight. We cannot always
set the rules of the game; nevertheless, we are moving forward.
In the area of personnel and financial management, we have
made progress as well. We balanced our budget in fiscal year
1997 for the first time in 5 years. We downsized the
organization and shifted personnel out of the central office
into the schools. It has been a slow and difficult process. We
have had to work with historic data that is unreliable. We are
dependent upon dysfunctional data management systems, and we
are tied to a City payroll system which is slow and arduous.
I will now turn to facilities. As you know, this
administration inherited a massive facilities problem,
estimated to be about $2 billion by GSA. Routine maintenance of
our schools have been neglected for years.
When we arrived, there was no long-term capital plan in
place, and school maintenance had been contracted out to a
private vendor under an arrangement that we judged to be costly
and inefficient. As you know, fire code violations were
abundant.
We drafted a long-range capital plan in time to meet the
congressional deadline. We voted to close 11 schools. We began
disposing of surplus property that had previously been allowed
to stand empty for decades.
We repaired or replaced over 60 roofs. We did not patch, as
people had done in previous years. In fact, we fixed roofs this
summer that had been patched countless times before. We did not
just put on a new roof. We also did the deferred maintenance
that was necessary to ensure that those new roofs would last.
As the GAO noted, we had to do this work to get long-term
warranties we wanted. Those warranties protected the public's
investment.
As the GAO said, these were not ordinary roof jobs. In many
cases, we did major upper building repair, to repair damage
caused by years of deferred maintenance. In addition, we worked
on numerous different types of roofs, some of which are much
more expensive than the basic flat roof you usually find in the
suburban areas.
We did this work on a compressed time schedule driven by
the court order, which meant higher labor costs. Were the GSA-
managed projects completed at a lower cost? Yes, but the GSA
projects were far less complicated, and they were done in a
much more reasonable time frame. In my view, GAO fully
understands the circumstances under which we worked, and it
does not believe that we overspent on the projects, given those
circumstances.
Could the process be improved? Yes. Did we learn from our
mistakes? Yes. Have we made changes as a result? Yes. For
example, we now have set up a new document control process to
ensure that contract files are well maintained and can easily
be audited.
I do hope, however, that we do not lose sight of the
progress that we have made last summer. Under extremely
difficult circumstances, the public got a quality product for
its investment. Children in almost one-half of our schools are
warmer and drier than they were before we did the work.
This is a real movement forward, and I am proud of the
dedicated staff and competent contractors who made it happen.
In this respect, I have several letters from the contractors I
will pass on to the Subcommittee for your review at some later
date.\1\
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\1\ The letters submitted by General Becton appear in the Appendix
on page 124.
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Senator Brownback. I am pleased to have those.
General Becton. I will take care of that.
In closing, I would again like to invite you to visit any
of our schools as soon as possible.
Also, Ms. Ackerman would like to meet with you and discuss
with you her detailed plans for academic improvement. I hope
that such a meeting can be arranged as soon as possible, sir.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am prepared to
respond to your questions.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, General.
Again, there is a troubling set of facts that have come
forward, and I just want to go right at those.
On the school repair issue, you have both been here and
heard the testimony. Mr. Cotton stated--and I asked him twice
about this--that the circumstantial evidence of fraud had
occurred in the D.C. School repair.
I do not know, Dr. Ladner, if this would be best to direct
to you or to General Becton, but what steps are you taking
specifically to make sure that does not happen in the future?
And then I want to address the line of questioning also, then,
to look back at what steps we take to make sure that we catch
any perpetrators of fraud on the D.C. Schools.
Ms. Ladner. I will answer part of it, and General Becton
can answer the rest.
Assuming there was fraud, assuming the IG finds that to be
the case, because the Authority has no proof at this time that
there is fraud, then the first thing, order of business, is
that we have placed or are in the process of placing
procurement functions under the chief procurement officer for
the City. I think centralized functions here will provide a lot
more scrutiny.
Senator Brownback. When will that be completed by?
Ms. Ladner. I will have to get that information back to
you, but it is in process now.
Senator Brownback. So that, we will not have the situation
where you can just have a procurement officer put it out on
short-notice bids and then----
Ms. Ladner. Not at all, sir, because part of what happened
with some of the change orders last summer was, if you recall,
we were also in court dealing with Fire Code violations, and if
the Fire Department went to inspect a site where a roof had
been put on a building, even though all of these buildings had
been inspected prior to the roof being put on, the judge
ordered--gave a blanket order that all schools be reinspected,
even though they had previously been cleared of Fire Code
violations.
So that, a violation could be as small as--fix it within 5
minutes or it could be something major, but all of these were
things that fed into the change order.
I do not think we are dealing here--I have seen no evidence
that we are dealing with--what do they call it in the
industry?--low-balling a figure of a roof at a considerably low
level and then coming back with a change order in order to get
the bid.
Senator Brownback. There did not appear to be any low balls
here to me.
Ms. Ladner. No.
Senator Brownback. I am not positive of this, but----
Ms. Ladner. The point I am trying to make here is that
there is--I have scrutinized these documents very carefully
several times, and I did not see any evidence here or any of my
other discussion with people in the school system that we were
getting a lot of change orders. I think GAO found--was within
the scope of about what? $3 million or so----
General Becton. Yes.
Ms. Ladner [continuing]. Total change orders in what they
examined, about $3 million. So that is not millions and
millions. You would never want any change orders, but for a job
of this size, I would not consider that amount to be out of the
ordinary.
Senator Brownback. Are you going to be pursuing this
aggressively?
Ms. Ladner. Absolutely. We have had many--I mean, our staff
have had many meetings with Mr. Cotton. I know Mr. Cotton from
having heard his report. Our board has--we have had good
working relations with him, and as I said, we met with him in
executive session. I think that the allegations that are being
made here today are a lot stronger than those we heard. So it
has taken me a little by surprise.
Senator Brownback. I think we have to pursue this
aggressively, and we have to put the systems in place in the
future you do not allow, as he describe, the opportunity to
occur so freely and easily.
As you heard me pose to him, we were in an emergency type
of situation. School was 3 weeks late in getting opened up. We
were in a very difficult box, but at the same time, you can
still maintain systems that do not allow the opportunities as
frequently or as easily for fraud to occur.
Ms. Ladner. I agree with you totally. Our view was that
despite the emergency situation that it was still necessary to
be able to document the files, and that it was not an either/or
situation. I can reassure you that this kind of situation will
not occur again.
We also made inquiries and were told that the files were
being documented.
Senator Brownback. General Becton.
General Becton. Thank you, sir.
First, I have heard the extent of Mr. Cotton's remarks
about the fraud for the first time. The report that I read, and
the briefing I heard, said that the potential for fraud
existed. I did not hear anything stronger than that until I sat
here in this building today.
Change orders were less than 5 percent. I am told in
industry, that is a natural thing. I am not an engineer, but
that is what I have been told by our people.
We have relocated and reorganized our procurement unit,
even before it goes over to the City. We did that sometime ago.
We have a new director. We have five individuals with
contracting experience.
The program offices have been briefed on procurement office
procedures and we have stressed to them that only a contract
officer can award a contract or authorize a change order. I
believe we are taking the steps to preclude what I heard today
may have been the case.
Senator Brownback. And we will be following up with you on
those systems approach and the changes of systems.
General Becton, this fall, school will start on time?
General Becton. School will start on September 1. I have
every expectation of that. There has been some discussion that
DCPS should go with the rest of the area, and wait until after
Labor Day to begin the new school year. In my view, if I were
to authorize beginning school after Labor Day, I may just as
well leave town.
Ms. Ladner. I think so.
Senator Brownback. September 1?
General Becton. September 1. And by the way, that date was
picked by the elected School Board when it announced the 5-year
plan about 3 years ago.
Senator Brownback. Are there any factors out there that
loom that may put that date off for----
General Becton. The only reason, sir, that we were 3 weeks
late before, was because we had a judge who said we cannot open
schools at the same time we were replacing roofs. That is the
only reason we were late.
Senator Brownback. But you do not have that sort of
circumstance----
General Becton. We do not have a judge this time.
Senator Brownback. Right. You do not know who files
lawsuits when; that they might allege something, somewhere, but
you do not know of any circumstances that exist to date that
would draw that opening date past----
General Becton. I do not know of any circumstances that
exist.
Senator Brownback [continuing]. September 1?
General Becton. September 1 is the date that was selected,
and we will be opening our schools on September 1.
Senator Brownback. You are going to have a heavy load this
summer, too. Apparently, you are going to have 15,000 to
20,000, did you say, students?
General Becton. That is correct.
Senator Brownback. And these are students that have not
passed--that you are not passing for social reasons, and so
they have to take summer school or----
General Becton. I am not saying for social reasons.
Ms. Ladner. Those are for academic reasons.
General Becton. If you do not mind, I will let Arlene
answer, please.
Ms. Ackerman. Actually, it is a combination. We will not
know until we administer the test in the spring--but we know we
have a substantial number of students who are scoring below
basic in either reading and math or in both reading and math.
What we are trying to provide in the summer school is an
opportunity for all of those students to sharpen those skills.
Senator Brownback. OK. An opportunity or a requirement?
Ms. Ackerman. A requirement for some, an opportunity for
others who will be passed on. What we are trying to do is use
summer school as an intervention strategy for students who have
shown us that they need remediation in either one or the other
of these two core subject areas.
For many of our students, about 12,000 students, they will
be going as a requirement because they have scored below basic
in both reading and mathematics.
Senator Brownback. At what level? Is this throughout public
education or which students?
Ms. Ackerman. It is grades 1 through 11, and 12th graders
can go for Carnegie units.
Senator Brownback. So you anticipate you will have
approximately 12,000 students that will be required to attend
summer sessions?
Ms. Ackerman. And that is based on last spring's test
scores which, by the way, are really baseline scores. It is the
first time we had administered that test system-wide.
Given the strategies that we have already put in place to
improve student performance, I do not anticipate that we will
have that many, but we have planned for up to 20,000 children,
based on last spring's results.
Senator Brownback. Let me turn your attention to these test
results, of which I am certain all of you were concerned at the
low performance level that existed, and, particularly, the two
high schools that did not have a single student in the 10th-
grade scoring at math competency. I thought it was appalling.
Now, are these what you anticipated to date, and where can
we see these numbers going to in the spring and next year?
Ms. Ackerman. I would anticipate that you will see the
numbers of students who are scoring below basic to decrease,
the number of students who are scoring at basic to increase,
and the number of students scoring at proficient and advanced
levels also to increase.
We have really focused our attention this year in all of
our schools on academic achievement. All of our schools have
school improvement plans. We have identified our students who
are scoring below basic in reading and math. We have put in
place after school, before school and in-school, tutoring
programs. We have focused our corporate and community partners
on reading. So there are major strategies that we have put in
place that I think will improve these test scores this spring.
I am confident that will happen.
Senator Brownback. What are your objectives for these test
changes this year, this spring? What are you saying? What is
your objective for getting these results improved?
Ms. Ackerman. Well, the objective is that every school will
show improvement in these scores.
Senator Brownback. How much improvement?
Ms. Ackerman. What we have said is that all schools must
show improvement for our students. In our schools where chronic
under-achievement has been a problem, there is a problem, they
have a 10-percent target that they must meet.
There are 23 schools of those schools that are in--we call
them targeted assistance schools. These are schools that have
shown us some real serious deficiencies in terms of student
achievement, and we did put in place a target for them.
Senator Brownback. For instance, the two high schools that
had zero students scoring at basic level in math at the 10th
grade, what is the objective, the stated objective for that
high school performance measures?
Ms. Ackerman. We have met with all of our schools. Based on
those meetings and the test scores, we have identified now a
new set of schools that we know need extra assistance. We have
identified them as new targeted assistance schools. We are
working with those schools, and to develop plans for
improvement for each of them. We are putting in, again,
strategies to help these students improve. We are putting more
staff in these schools, and we are providing targeted
professional development for these teachers.
Senator Brownback. I understand the general, but I want you
to take me through specifically what is the objective for
those----
Ms. Ackerman. The objective is that they will----
Senator Brownback [continuing]. Two high schools, and what
is the specific plan of how we get there.
Ms. Ackerman. I believe that you have to look at this on
multiple levels. You have to provide professional development.
You have to have an instructional program that is tailored to
meet the needs of those students who are scoring below basic,
and then you have to set some targets for performance. At this
time, our targets for the targeted assistance schools are 10
percent.
This new set of schools was just identified this year.
Senator Brownback. Let me be specific with that. Then those
two high schools that had zero math competence, math at basic
competency levels, your objective this spring is for them to
have 10 percent of their students at basic math grade level?
Ms. Ackerman. No. Our objective for our targeted assistance
schools is that they will improve their overall test scores by
10 percent.
Senator Brownback. So everybody's test scores will go up 10
percent.
Ms. Ackerman. We are looking at the overall scores, in
those schools; the overall school scores should improve by 10
percent.
Senator Brownback. What happens if they do not?
Ms. Ackerman. For those schools that were newly
identified--and those two high schools were not in the original
cohort of schools--they have 2 years to improve. All schools
get 2 years to improve. The 23 schools that were identified
last year will be reviewed at the end of this spring as
targeted assistance schools. They must show improvement at the
end of this school year or they will be reconstituted.
Those schools that have been newly identified have 2 years
or two test score periods to improve, counting this year and
next June. The two high schools you mentioned are in the second
group. They are receiving major interventions now.
Senator Brownback. So that, if those test results do not go
up this year----
Ms. Ackerman. We will look at reconstitution for those
schools, the first 23. We will be looking at those schools.
Senator Brownback. When you say reconstitution----
Ms. Ackerman. It means starting over again, looking at
those schools, identifying new staff, new principals, and
starting over with research-based design models that have
proven track records for student achievement.
Senator Brownback. So that some of the principals may be
removed if these test results do not go up?
Ms. Ackerman. In those schools, yes. The entire staff will
have to reapply for their jobs. The whole schools will be
emptied out.
Senator Brownback. I am a little concerned, if I understand
this correctly. You are saying 2 years to improve 10 percent.
Is that correct?
Ms. Ackerman. Each year.
Senator Brownback. Each year, 10 percent.
Ms. Ackerman. Right.
Senator Brownback. So we are up 20 percent----
Ms. Ackerman. Right.
Senator Brownback [continuing]. Over 2 years.
Ms. Ackerman. That is a minimum.
Senator Brownback. That seems a minimum to me. In looking
at these results, if you have got these up 20 percent, we are
still not at national averages, and we are doing that over a
period of 2 years----
Ms. Ackerman. Right.
Senator Brownback [continuing]. And that does not seem to
me to be fair to the D.C. Schools.
Ms. Ackerman. Given the fact that we----
Senator Brownback. Why not set a higher target and a
stronger objective for them?
Ms. Ackerman. I do think you have to set a reasonable
target, and I think, given the fact that school did not open
on-time, given the fact that basic infrastructures were not in
place, that if you look at what other districts are doing, what
we are doing is reasonable. In fact, if you look at Chicago,
they have not set targets at all. They have only said that
schools have to improve. We have set targets that schools have
to improve by a certain amount, especially the schools where we
have expressed some real concern.
I think that we have to put in place some infrastructures
that were not there in the past. We did not have system-wide
standards. We did not have alignment between the standard and
the curriculum. Last spring was the first time we had given
this test (the Standford-9 Achievement Test). Before that, we
had used the same test for the period of 9 years, so we were
not even getting good data.
We did not provide professional development for teachers,
and require them to go. With all of those things we are now
putting in place, I think that we can then begin to set the
targets higher, but this year, it was at 10 percent, given all
of those factors for those schools that we have identified as
needing immediate support.
Senator Brownback. If a student does not score at basic
competency level, then will they be required to go to summer--
--
Ms. Ackerman. If they score below basic, in reading and
mathematics, they have to go to summer school.
Senator Brownback. And this is 1st through 11th grades?
Ms. Ackerman. For 1st through 11th.
Senator Brownback. Well, I would urge you to up the goal.
Maybe it is because I have kids that this seems so precious and
so important and so critical that it happens in a timely
manner.
I realize we can all talk about, well, a year, 2 years,
these things will happen, but, my goodness, I mean, each of
those children, each year they peg through the system, if they
do not get it now, they are not going to get it.
Ms. Ackerman. Well, Mr. Chairman, I want you to know that I
have spent 29 years as a teacher and in education. It is my
life. And I certainly do understand setting clear expectations
and high expectations.
I do, though, need to tell you, in the 29 years that I have
been in this business, I have never seen a system so broken.
You have to put in place those infrastructures that I talked
about--both the personnel and the financial management systems
to support schools and what we are putting in place on the
academic side. I believe there are reasonable expectations to
start, and I believe that we can ratchet the standards higher
in the future.
Senator Brownback. I do not think you are fast enough. I
really do not. This is not good enough for us as a nation. Look
at the number, 61 percent of our 10th graders are not scoring
at math competency in the Nation.
Ms. Ackerman. I did not say I was satisfied with that. I
do, though, believe we have a clear plan for improvement.
Senator Brownback. Well, I understand that, but you had
basically said that then--General Becton, you have been on
board since September of when?
General Becton. Sixteen months. I came in November 1996.
Senator Brownback. November 1996. That was 2 years from
now----
General Becton. No, that is not what--I do not think she
said that, sir.
Senator Brownback. OK. Then I want to get it straight what
we are saying.
General Becton. The targeted assistance schools for the 2
years that----
Ms. Ackerman. Right. Those schools----
Senator Brownback. Wait. Let me make my question clearer.
Ms. Ackerman. OK.
Senator Brownback. At what point in time will we be at
national--at basically, roughly national levels on math and
reading in the D.C. Public Schools?
Ms. Ackerman. My goal is to have that within the next 3
years, but I think it depends upon the grade level.
At our 1st grade, we start at the national average. So we
are already there. We would have to look at it grade by grade,
and at some grade levels, we are certainly closer to that than
others.
Given this very clear focus on student achievement, I think
you will see us get there in some grades a lot quicker because
we are closer to the national average. As I said, at the 1st
grade, we are there. I think you will see us improve at every
level.
Senator Brownback. So, 3 years from now, we will be at the
national average?
Ms. Ackerman. My goal is to get us there within that 3-year
period, by the year 2000.
Senator Brownback. General Becton, you will have been on
board then 4 years and some months and we will get to the
national average at that point.
General Becton. Not really because we go away June of 2000.
We have until the year 2000, June, before we turn it back over
to the elected officials.
Senator Brownback. So we do not even have a plan while you
are in office for us to get to national averages.
General Becton. Sir, I do not have the numbers in front of
me, but we can get the numbers for you.
We are a member of the 50 urban area schools. You will not
find any, to the best of my knowledge, of those 50 urban
schools that are at the national average. We are trying to be a
model. We are all working towards that goal, but when you have
kids in the 10th and 11th grades who have had a social
promotion, who can graduate as they did last year and read at
the 6th-grade level with a diploma in their hand, it is going
to take more than 2 years to get that child up to speed.
Senator Brownback. But we do not even have a plan in place
to get us to national average, and I realize what you are
talking about.
General Becton. We do have a plan.
Senator Brownback. Well, no, you are saying you go out of
existence by 2000, and we are not going to get there for 3
years yet from this point.
Ms. Ackerman. No, we have a very clear academic plan that
included standards, professional development, and clear
guidelines for promotion. It is very clear.
Senator Brownback. Let me put it one other way, then.
Ms. Ackerman. OK
Senator Brownback. Will we be at national average by the
time General Becton's job has concluded?
Ms. Ackerman. That is our goal.
Senator Brownback. Thank you. I will accept that.
We have got to do this, and I know I am haranguing on you,
General Becton. It is just that this is tough----
General Becton. But I would like to have the necessary time
to----
Senator Brownback [continuing]. And we need to set that
objective. If we do not set that objective, we will never hit
it.
General Becton. Can we have time to explain the plan that
Arlene has? I do not think this is the place to do it, but we
would be more than happy to set down and go over, step by step,
how we propose to do it.
Ms. Ackerman. And, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that
being at national average would not be my ultimate goal. It
would be above the national average----
Senator Brownback. Absolutely.
Ms. Ackerman [continuing]. Because I would like to see us
exemplary.
Senator Brownback. Absolutely.
Ms. Ackerman. And exemplary is above the national average.
Senator Brownback. And that is what has concerned me about
this dialogue here, I did not think we really were even looking
at trying to and setting that as a goal. I realize you set that
as a goal and if you do not make it people say you fail, but if
you do not even set it as a goal, we are not going to get
anywhere close to it. You have got to set that.
Ms. Ackerman. The new vision is to be exemplary. You cannot
be exemplary if you are just average.
Senator Brownback. And we have got to have the plan to do
that. Dr. Ladner.
Ms. Ladner. I was simply going to say that we should
separate the two issues here. One is that when the emergency--
state of emergency was declared in the schools, the financial
authority set a sunset provision, so that these schools would
in 2\1/2\ years return back over to the elected school board
and so on, but the second factor here is that the education of
the children and the goals that are set by the educators will
continue, and we are not placing some timetable on--or at least
these two factors are not consistent.
I am not saying that we are going to stop making the
progress when General Becton leaves. We are saying that what we
brought the emergency team in to do was to do the turnaround,
fix what Ms. Ackerman just called the most irretrievably
broken--I used ``irretrievable'' as my term--broken system that
she has worked in for 29 years, and do all those things for it
that will lay the groundwork so that the progress can be made
rapid and continuous. We fully expect that to continue no
matter who is at the help of the schools.
I would think that this community would demand, after
General Becton's team is no longer there, accountability from a
top-ranked educator who will continue to make sure that we
become an exemplary school.
Senator Brownback. Well, thank you. I will look forward to
meeting with you, Ms. Ackerman, to talk about this. Since we
met the first time around, I have continued to be very
concerned about the lack of performance taking place, and I do
not think we are moving rapidly enough, and I hope that you
feel similarly that we have to move more rapidly not only in
the academic results, and we have not talked to General Becton
today, but also about the safety issues within the schools.
Actually, do you have a comment about how that has occurred
here lately?
General Becton. Yes, I have.
Senator Brownback. Because the numbers that I cited are
very troubling as well.
General Becton. The data we have shows that reports of
violent crimes in the categories of simple assault, sexual
assault, and fighting have increased over the past 2 years,
while reports of assaults with a deadly weapon have occurred at
about the same rate.\1\
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\1\ Letter from General Becton appears in the Appendix on page 134.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, there are two factors that impact these numbers.
First, as an administration, we have said to school staff that
all incidents must be reported. In the past, I think we can
clearly show that some principals did not report incidents in
their schools because they believed those reports would ``look
bad'' on their records. This is no longer the case. Therefore,
while more incidents are being reported, it does not
necessarily follow that more incidents are occurring.
In addition, as you know, we installed new metal detectors
in many of our schools during this period. Previously, schools
did not have metal detectors or the metal detectors did not
work well. This new security technology is helping us to pick
up weapons that previously may have gotten into the schools
unnoticed. Therefore, our numbers for weapons possession have
gone up over the period. However, I view this as positive
indication that our methods of identifying weapons and
confiscating them are working.
Over the past 2 years, by increasing incident reporting
rates and enhancing technology, we have essentially established
a legitimate baseline for security. It is my hope and
expectation that we will see a decrease from that baseline in
the coming years.
Senator Brownback. The figures I have show a huge number of
violent incidences taking place, 1,600, I think that we had
reported.
General Becton. I do not recognize that number, except the
1,600 I remember was Fire Code abated, but that is not what you
are talking about.
We have 197 knives, 8 cans of pepper spray, firearms, those
things that we have identified specifically, and we can give
you a chart of all of those kinds of weapons that we have
identified.\2\
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\2\ Chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 133.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator Brownback. Good, because the students and the
teachers have to feel safe, as you noted previously.
General Becton. I understand that clearly.
Senator Brownback. Well, thank you. There will be a
continued review in the U.S. Senate on D.C. Public Schools. You
have seen various different proposals come forward from Senator
Lieberman and myself on charter schools and their expansion,
and on vouchers for low-income parents.
I know that there had been a private voucher program where
1,000 voucher scholarships were offered, and this is according
to an article today in the Washington Post. Over 7,500
applicants, about a tenth of the total of Public School
enrollment, enrolled for those, and we will see those efforts
continue as we try to provide additional options, and I would
like to think competition, too, for you that will help further
spur on growth and improvement in those test results because
that is what we are all after.
General Becton. We encourage charter schools because they
do bring about competition.
Senator Brownback. I hope you will encourage vouchers, too,
here sometime, General Becton. You and I have been around about
that a few times.
General Becton. Why don't we have a referendum for the
City, let them figure it out?
Senator Brownback. Well, it seems like 7,500 parents have
sure voted here on these scholarships, but I appreciate your
input.
I hope we can meet. I am glad that you have set a goal to
at least get at national standards by the year 2000 because I
think we have to at least do that, and we should do much, much
better.
Thank you very much.
General Becton. Thank you, sir.
Senator Brownback. Our final panel presentation will be a
parent of D.C. Public School students. Taalib-Din Uqdah is the
presenter, and we would welcome you to the panel.
Mr. Uqdah, thank you very much for joining us today.
TESTIMONY OF TAALIB-DIN UQDAH, PARENT OF D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOL
STUDENTS
Mr. Uqdah. Yes, sir. I thank you for having me here as
well. I would like to at least take a few minutes to introduce
myself to you. I do not come with any commas behind my name. So
I am not a bureaucratic official. However, I am a businessman
here in the District of Columbia. I have been self-employed for
at least the last 24 years.
I am 45 years old, and I am a native Washingtonian. I am
also the custodial parent of my niece who is a 1st grader, 6
years old, and my nephew, who is a 6th grader, 11 years old, at
Shepherd Elementary School here in the District of Columbia.
I think the greatest distinction that I have in sitting
before you is that I am a product of the D.C. Public School
system. So I am able to testify as an expert witness, as it
were, on what I knew the system to be.
I considered the system at that particular time to be a
success, and I am basing that on my own personal success as a
businessman here in the District of Columbia. I did not go past
the 12th grade. I graduated from Eastern High School in 1970.
However, I do feel that my education in the District of
Columbia prepared me for life.
My business, I started with $500 and a 4-year lease on
someone else's building. Today, I employ 14 people. I own my
own building that has a value of over $400,000, even in a bad
market, and I have consistently grossed nearly a half-a-million
dollars a year for the last 10 of the 18 years that I have been
in this business in particular.
The bottom line is, sir, that I am not a burden on society.
I do, however, have to advise this Subcommittee, or at least
advise you, that what was the norm for me is no longer the
case.
I do not like what is happening today, nor do I feel the
confidence in the present system to educate my two children.
Despite my own parents' constant insistence that I
personally attend college, I chose not to do so. In fact,
everything that I learned within the D.C. Public School system,
I actually learned by the time I had finished junior high
school because I went to a progressive junior high school at
that time where they were giving us progressive college
preparatory courses. So, by the time I went to high school, all
I had was the same books, but just different teachers. At that
particular time, the system did not have a high school to move
us on to the next level.
We did not have the luxury of a Banniker High School or a
Duke Ellington, which are a couple of the schools in the
District of Columbia that have been set aside for students that
have high academic achievement or to achieve higher levels of
excellence in the arts.
However, we were truly like the generations having preceded
us in that we were the children our parents were raising in
order to save America. Now I find that we have to raise the
consciousness of America in order to save our children.
I believe within the present Public School system, there is
a lack of commitment, compassion, professionalism, and a
general feeling of distrust amongst for and towards
administrators. The D.C. Public School system has no connection
with reality, no connections with the day-to-day struggles we
make as parents, willing to sacrifice everything for the
education of our children. Even if they do not appreciate it,
it is what we must do or regret later not having done it.
Those impositions to make decisions in the best interest of
the students and their parents do not. They have made them in
the best interest of the administration, choosing instead to
protect the system and their employment status within it, not
to rock the boat or the proverbial apple cart that they do not
want to upset. That is why PTA meetings are held only once a
month, on a week night at the most inopportune time for
parents, with single parents bringing up a child or children
alone, where parents with children at two or three different
schools or grade levels find it impossible to participate at
all, where information is scarce, sporadic, and in many cases
slow in coming, if at all.
I, like many parents, believe it is by design. For the less
we know, the less likely it is that the natives will become
restless. So important telephone numbers that we need to know
as parents, numbers that will help us through the system's
bureaucratic maze, is a well-kept secret, doled out if at all
once a year at a strategic PTA meeting and not printed for all
of us to know and understand the process, where policies and
rules are learned on an incidental or need-to-know basis, but
not common knowledge amongst the majority of parents.
This is why our present Public School system is
experimental with a heavy emphasis on socialization and not
academics, with a grading system of proficient and in process
and not the typical alphanumeric system we are accustomed to.
This is why the focus of attention is now on test and
testing procedures and not a comprehensive knowledge-based
approach. Teachers have been threatened with termination, non-
promotion, or some form of discipline should their charges fail
to perform adequately on the upcoming performance test in
April. So the focus on educating children, is not what we can
teach them, but how can we prepare them to pass the test.
This is why today's administrative educators will support a
pre-K and Kindergarten curriculum of inventive spelling,
allowing children to purposely misspell words in order not to
stifle their creative writing skills, or while within the D.C.
Public School system, emphasis is not placed on reading until
the 1st grade where students are expected to read, but they are
not taught in the pre-K or Kindergarten curriculums, and
phonics is not only discouraged as a learning tool, but with
many experienced teachers, snuck into the curriculum.
This is why when you bring these concerns to teachers and
administrators, they defend or make excuses for the present
system, rather than embrace your recommendations or
suggestions. They leave you feeling that your way is the old
way, and it really did not work for you. You only think it did.
These new methods are now considered to be not the best
way, but the way, and if you do not like it, perhaps you should
put your child in a private school, as my wife was instructed
to do by one of Amber's pre-K teachers, but the truth of the
matter is, it has not only become the best way because someone
has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in making it that
way, and now that they are reaping the rewards of that
investment, all the reports, all the studies, and all the
surveys done by public and private companies who have a vested
interest in selling their teaching methods to a beleaguered
public system like ours have shown that this is now the best
way to educate our children and we buy into it blindly.
Administrators know it is experimental. Parents think their
children are being educated, not experimented upon, but we are
stuck with it. The administration first becomes defensive, then
committed to it, not because it is the best, but because they
own it.
Now the onus is put on us as parents to act as teachers,
and the schools only reinforce what we provide, when my
understanding and those of others has always been that the
system would educate our children and we as parents would only
reinforce what they have acquired during the course of the day.
Everything has now been turned around.
Our children have become business decisions, a brokered
commodity to be traded on the open market for poverty and
ignorance, hopelessness and despair, drug addiction and
nonperformance, vegetative states of ignorance and walking
social misfits, for the latest in designer fashion, hip-hop
culture, and various doses of entertainment drugs, be it
cocaine and marijuana or hard stuff like sports television,
video, video games, etc.
So what do we do? I have made certain recommendations, for
example, that we require uniforms for pre-K through 12th grade,
but with a different approach. Let the kids design the
uniforms. Let them travel to the Carolinas and pick out the
fabric, set the production schedules, the shows to display
their wares, the accounting system to bill parents who cannot
afford the cost of uniforms. The students can set a Goodwill-
type store that take clothing in for younger children or
graduates who have outgrown the clothes, set up embroidery
machines for children who may want uniforms with a personal
touch. They will learn by doing.
And I have made other recommendations as well. In the
interest of time, I will not repeat them.
However, if we can only find someone in this system with
half a brain, recommendations like these would work, and the
same could be said of any of the other trade services or retail
industries in America. It would encourage kids to go to college
who want more out of life, and for those who do not, what is
the worst that will happen? They will have an experience of a
lifetime and a skill they can take anywhere in the world and
earn a living. It is a win-win situation for everyone. It does
not reduce or diminish academics. In fact, I would submit to
you that it only enhances it. It makes academics practical. It
can teach math, history, science, economics, and English all at
once. It makes education exciting for young minds.
We can then walk away from this process and know that we
have done the best for our children to prepare for the coming
century; that, if nothing else, we have created individuals who
may or may not be high academic achievers, but the one thing
they are not is a burden on society, and isn't that what it is
all about?
I thank you, and if you have any questions, I would be glad
to answer.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Mr. Uqdah, for your
testimony.
You have two children in the D.C. Public Schools?
Mr. Uqdah. Yes, I do.
Senator Brownback. What grades are they in?
Mr. Uqdah. First and 6th.
Senator Brownback. And your 6th grader has been in the D.C.
Schools the whole way?
Mr. Uqdah. He has actually been in since the 3rd grade. He
came down from Providence, Rhode Island, after 1st and 2nd
grade.
Senator Brownback. So he has been in the school system for
3 years, then?
Mr. Uqdah. Well, this is his fourth year.
Senator Brownback. Going on the fourth year?
Mr. Uqdah. Yes, sir.
Senator Brownback. Does he feel safe in the school?
Mr. Uqdah. Safe, I would tell you yes.
Senator Brownback. Does your daughter feel safe in the 1st
grade?
Mr. Uqdah. Safety at this particular school is not a major
issue.
I have questioned some of the disciplinary actions in which
the principal has taken whenever there have been physical
altercations which have taken place in the school.
I quite honestly do not know what the policy is on any
force or any discipline problems, and you only really find out
what they are at the point that the discipline is either meted
out or the point the altercation actually occurs, but Shepherd
is not a school that is equipped, nor do I feel it needs to be
equipped, with metal detectors or anything of that nature.
It does have a security guard that is posted at the school
from at least 8:30 in the morning until close of school in the
evening.
Senator Brownback. What if you were offered the option of a
private school voucher? Do you think that is a good proposal or
not?
Mr. Uqdah. Without question. And if I could, I would like
to at least elaborate on it for a moment.
Senator Brownback. Please.
Mr. Uqdah. Prior to school vouchers being somewhat popular
in today's political vernacular, I only recognized it as poor
quality of education and being a tax-paying citizen who pays
more than my fair share of taxes by virtue of the fact that I
am a businessman in addition to being a homeowner and a D.C.
resident. I felt as though the education system was not
providing the type of education for my children that I felt
would be commensurate with the amount of taxes that I was
paying. So I have always looked for a way to be able to improve
that by having an option, as you are saying, to be able to put
them in a private school.
Here lately, I have learned that what I have attempted to
do is known as a school voucher. I just quite honestly did not
have that type of definition for what I was looking to do
within the D.C. Government, period, and I have testified before
the City Council on this very thing, but I was not calling it a
school voucher. I was only looking for a better way to have my
tax dollars spent on education.
Senator Brownback. Let me ask you, as a parent, you talked
about the inability or the difficulty of being able to get the
necessary telephone numbers to contact people and the PTA
meetings not being regularly called. What are your avenues to
express your ideas within the D.C. Public Schools?
Mr. Uqdah. Forums like this, me calling up one of the
parents of another classmate or they calling me. We are just
kind of bouncing things off of each other.
I did not come here with any illusions that my testimony
was going to make a difference. Quite honestly, with you, I
believe that I am only here to hear myself talk. I do not think
that anything that I am saying before you or any of the
administrators or the principals or the teachers who I have
talked to for years about these problems are really going to
make a difference.
Senator Brownback. What do they say to you?
Mr. Uqdah. For the most part, based on personal
conversations that I have had with them, I feel comfortable in
telling you that there are going to be many parents, including
myself, that plan on putting one, if not both of their
children, in private school next year, whether there are
vouchers or not.
Senator Brownback. But tell me what do the administrators
and the teachers say to you when you express the sort of
concerns----
Mr. Uqdah. Well, basically, what they do is they tell me
that that was the old way; that there are new systems now in
place.
I mean, this whole idea of inventive spelling, I have never
heard to that. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever
heard of.
Or, when my children come home with a report card and the
grade is ``proficient'' or ``in process,'' I mean, what does
that mean? I do not even know what that means. So I go in with
questions, but I come away feeling as if I do not have any
answers. So I continue to beat away at this process, and I do
that by calling up private schools and asking them to send me
applications for their schools, to allow me to come by and
visit, because I am at the end. I do not know what else to do.
There have been at least two moves in the District of
Columbia to pass vouchers. My only objections to the vouchers
as this Congress has tried to pass them is that they have only
been limited to poor people. I have got a big problem with
that--not you personally, but what is being suggested is that I
go out and become homeless, and then all of these things will
be available to me, and that is not the way the system should
work.
Yes, it is going to be a sacrifice for me and other parents
to be able to afford to send our children to private school,
but it is a sacrifice that we are willing to make. I have
talked to other parents, and they feel the same way.
I have been warned, as it were, not to bash the District of
Columbia, but you cannot bash anything that is already broken.
Bashing something is if I go out to your brand-new car and I
hit it with a baseball bat, but if you have already got a dent
in it, there is nothing I can do to make it any worse.
So, when I hear people make certain comments, when I read
in the paper that retired general has now quit--he has got
close to $200,000 of my money, and he quit whining because he
could not get my support. He quit because he could not get
public support, but he walked away with his salary, a $30,000
signing bonus, and a $38,000 performance bonus? That is
ridiculous. That is what has got me down here. That is what has
got me intense about this.
I am not angry. I am just intense because it is not making
any sense to me, because I have to go back home and I have to
look my two children in the eye and try to explain to them why
it is that I am down here testifying before a Senate committee
about their education.
What bothers me is I am a product of this very system, and
I did not turn out so bad. There is no number in front of my
chest. I am not a member of any penal institution. I do not
have a police record, but I graduated from these same schools.
I had a skills class that taught me how to take notes. I do not
see that in the system anymore.
I mean, how do you have a system that requires a 1st grader
to know how to read, but they are not taught how to read in
pre-K or Kindergarten?
They have got a system in pre-K and Kindergarten now that
requires the teacher, requires them under the academic system,
to set aside 2 hours for socialization. Well, I am not sending
my children to school for a United Nations experience. They can
get that at home. That is why I have neighbors. That is why
they have classmates, where they can go for a socialization
process. I do not want my child off in a corner somewhere
taking--in a kitchen pretending like she is cooking. She has
got a kitchen at home. I am not sending her to school for that.
I am sending her to school to learn, and that it is my
responsibility as a parent to reinforce whatever it is she has
learned when she comes home, but when she comes home, she
brings home assignments by example, where she is learning how
to tell time. She is learning right now the hour time and the
half-hour time. I see the process that the teacher is beginning
to take her through, and then she comes home and she is
learning 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. It is like a rhyme for
children. I certainly remember it.
But then the next time she comes home, she is learning
coins. So I go to the teacher and I ask her what is happening
here. She was learning time 1 day and coins the next day. What
I am finding out is these teachers--her teacher like many other
teachers have a curriculum that they have to get through in
order to deal with this test by April. So, if they have a list
of 40 things that they have to do, they want to be able to say
to their principal, ``I did those 40 things,'' whether or not
the student learned anything. That is not important. That is
not the issue. The issue is, ``Did you get through these 40
things?'' ``Yes, I did,'' and that is the problem that I am
having.
I would rather for my child to learn 25 of those things
adequately, proficiently, and know it backwards and forward,
ready to move on to the next grade level, than to know that 40
items have been covered simply so that she can do better on
this test. That is the problem.
Senator Brownback. I wish the school officials had stayed
here to hear you testify.
Mr. Uqdah. Now it is a feel-good process. I understand
that. I know why the room cleared out.
Senator Brownback. Well, it may be for you, but I wish that
they had been here to hear it, and I hope there are some people
here from the schools that can hear that testimony that you are
putting forward because I think a lot of it makes a lot of
sense that you are putting forward. Thank you for coming in.
Mr. Uqdah. Thank you for having me, sir.
Senator Brownback. You give us your views from somebody
that is a parent in the system, and I think as you can detect
from where we are at today, we are trying to get the system
improving in a quick order and trying to get it better for your
kids before they graduate through it in a system that in many
respects is far more harmful to them than it is helpful.
Mr. Uqdah. Yes, sir.
Senator Brownback. We are trying to change that.
Mr. Uqdah. I hope so.
Senator Brownback. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you all for joining us.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:01 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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