[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE STATUS OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND IMPLEMENTATION IN OHIO
=======================================================================
FIELD HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
March 8, 2004 in Columbus, Ohio
__________
Serial No. 108-46
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
house
or
Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
92-410 WASHINGTON : 2004
_________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866)512-1800;
DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP,
Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio, Chairman
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin, Vice George Miller, California
Chairman Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Cass Ballenger, North Carolina Major R. Owens, New York
Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
California Lynn C. Woolsey, California
Michael N. Castle, Delaware Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Sam Johnson, Texas Carolyn McCarthy, New York
James C. Greenwood, Pennsylvania John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Charlie Norwood, Georgia Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Fred Upton, Michigan Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan David Wu, Oregon
Jim DeMint, South Carolina Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Johnny Isakson, Georgia Susan A. Davis, California
Judy Biggert, Illinois Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania Danny K. Davis, Illinois
Patrick J. Tiberi, Ohio Ed Case, Hawaii
Ric Keller, Florida Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Tom Osborne, Nebraska Denise L. Majette, Georgia
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Chris Van Hollen, Maryland
Tom Cole, Oklahoma Tim Ryan, Ohio
Jon C. Porter, Nevada Timothy H. Bishop, New York
John Kline, Minnesota
John R. Carter, Texas
Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado
Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee
Phil Gingrey, Georgia
Max Burns, Georgia
Paula Nowakowski, Staff Director
John Lawrence, Minority Staff Director
------
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 8, 2004.................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Boehner, Hon. John A., Chairman, Committee on Education and
the Workforce.............................................. 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
McCollum, Hon. Betty, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Minnesota......................................... 4
K-12 Rules/Leave Parts of NCLB Behind, Editorial
Submitted for the Record............................... 50
Ryan, Hon. Tim, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Ohio.................................................... 8
Tiberi, Hon. Patrick J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio.......................................... 6
Prepared statement of.................................... 8
Statement of Witnesses:
Fleeter, Dr. Howard, Levin, Driscoll & Fleeter, Columbus, OH. 18
Prepared statement of.................................... 23
Rebarber, Ted, President, Accountability Works, Washington,
DC......................................................... 25
Prepared statement of.................................... 29
Ross, Dr. Richard A., Superintendent, Reynoldsburg City
Schools, Reynoldsburg, OH.................................. 15
Prepared statement of.................................... 18
Tomalis, Ron, Counselor to the Secretary, U.S. Department of
Education, Washington, DC.................................. 11
Prepared statement of.................................... 14
Additional Material:
Allen, Gary L., President, Ohio Education Association, Letter
Submitted for the Record................................... 49
K-12 Rules/Leave Parts of NCLB Behind, Editorial Submitted
for the Record by Rep. McCollum............................ 50
OEA, NEA Leave Facts Behind in Attacks on Bipartisan
Education Reform, Fact Sheet Submitted for the Record...... 48
THE STATUS OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND IMPLEMENTATION IN OHIO
----------
Monday, March 8, 2004
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Columbus, Ohio
----------
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., at the
State Library of Ohio, Columbus, Ohio., Hon. John A. Boehner
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Boehner, Tiberi, McCollum, and
Ryan.
Staff Present: Amanda Farris, Professional Staff Member;
Maria Miller, Coalitions Director for Education Policy; Dave
Schnittger, Communications Director; and Joshua Holly, Director
of Media Affairs.
Chairman Boehner. Quorum being present, the Committee on
Education and the Workforce will come to order.
We're pleased to be here today to have the Committee here
and have this hearing on No Child Left Behind, the
implementation of the law. And I'm sure we'll talk about
funding and a host of other issues as well.
I want to welcome my colleagues, Mr. Tiberi, who we're in
his district and is a Member of the Committee, and two of my
colleagues, Betty McCollum, from the great state of Minnesota,
and our other colleague from Ohio, Tim Ryan, a new Member of
our Committee who represents the northeastern part of the
district--part of the state.
I'd also like to welcome this morning State Representative
Arlene Setzer, who chairs the House Education Committee here in
Ohio; Representative Bill Hartnett, who is the ranking member
of the Ohio Education Committee; and Representative Clyde Evans
and Representative Bob Gibbs. We also have Senator John Kerry
with us, Representative John Schlichter, and Representative
Kevin DeWine. We want to thank them for their interest and
thank all of you for your interest in coming today.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN A. BOEHNER, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
We're here today because we all believe that every child in
America deserves a quality education. We recognize improving
our education system is essential not only to our society, but
it's also very important to our nation's economy and
competitiveness. Even as important as our society and our
nation's competitiveness is to our long-term future. It should
be the right of every child to have a chance at a decent
education. I'd like to describe the right to an education for
all Americans as the new civil right of the 21st century.
Three years ago, President Bush brought Members of our
Committee together to write the No Child Left Behind Act. And
we produced a law that was uniquely bipartisan, considering
what the Congress has become over the last several years. And
the real goal of No Child Left Behind was to make sure that all
children have a chance to learn. The debate over whether all
children can learn, I think, is open. There's ample evidence
from one end of the country to the other that all children can
learn, but it's also clear, unfortunately, that not all
children have an opportunity to learn.
Secondly, when we look at the achievement gap that we have
in American education between advantaged students and
disadvantaged students, it remains wide, even though the
Federal Government has spent almost $300 billion to help
disadvantaged students over the last 35 years. The same kind of
achievement gap exists between white students and their
minority peers. And we know that we as a society and we as a
country can't continue successfully unless we get serious about
closing the achievement gap in American education. And so when
we look at No Child Left Behind, you'll see that we have all of
the test data broken down in subgroups, looking at white
students, minority students, limited English proficient
students, and special ed. students to make sure that these
students aren't getting lost in the school-wide averages, that
we, in fact, are going to try to make progress with all
children in America and all of these subgroups.
There's been an awful lot of talk about funding No Child
Left Behind. And someone who was in the room with the
President, Senator Kennedy, Senator Greg and Mr. Miller, my
democrat counterpart of my Committee, the commitment that we
made in those meetings was to have a significant increase in
education funding for our schools. And there's never been any
discussion in those meetings about full funding of No Child
Left Behind or any of the education programs.
And if you look back through the history, the 38-year
history of education spending on the part of the Federal
Government, never once, not one time in that entire history
were ESEA programs fully funded. Not once. During the 8 years
President Clinton was in office, there was no funding of ESEA
programs, and yet there was no criticism at all by democrats or
republicans in the Congress that it wasn't fully funded. And so
the question is, have we met our commitment in terms of
significant increases in funding for those programs contained
in Elementary and Secondary Education Act or, as we like to
call it now, No Child Left Behind. And I think that the
increases that we see--the year that the bill was signed into
law, we were spending $8.8 billion for Title I, the largest of
these programs. Last year we spent $12.3 billion, and this
year, according to the President's budget, we're hoping to
spend $13.3 billion. So you can see that we're well over a 50
percent increase in the Federal Government's commitment to
disadvantaged students.
But it's not just disadvantaged students. How about those
students who have special needs, our IDEA program, where we're
seeing a tremendous increase over the last 10 years. As a
matter of fact, if you go back to 1996, 1997, we have almost a
300 percent increase in our commitment to help those special
needs students. And if you look at just the Ohio numbers by
themselves, when the bill was signed in 2001, we were spending
about $445 million of Federal funds here in Ohio for all
programs that are in No Child Left Behind. When you look at the
numbers that are actually appropriated, the Federal Government
will spend in this fiscal school year $665 million for No Child
Left Behind programs, an increase of over 35 percent.
And so I do believe that the Federal Government is keeping
its commitment to helping our schools with the challenges that
all of them face.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Boehner follows:]
Statement of Hon. John A. Boehner, Chairman, Committee on Education and
the Workforce
Thank you all for being here this morning for this field hearing of
the House Committee on Education & the Workforce. Let me first thank
Congressman Pat Tiberi for hosting us today. Let me also welcome
another fellow Buckeye, Rep. Tim Ryan, as well as Rep. Betty McCollum
from the state of Minnesota.
We're here today because we all believe every child in America
deserves a quality education. We recognize improving our education
system is essential not only to our society, but to our nation's
economy and competitiveness as well.
Three years ago, President Bush brought the members of our
committee together to write the No Child Left Behind Act. We produced a
law that was uniquely bipartisan. We all agreed with the need to bring
accountability to federal education spending. For years, states and
school districts--pointing to rising overall student test scores--had
accepted an ever-increasing amount of federal funding even as they hid
the fact that certain groups of children were falling behind. States
and schools were able to highlight ``aggregate'' data showing most
students were making progress. But because they were required only to
report this data in the aggregate, parents and taxpayers could be kept
in the dark when some children were actually losing ground.
No Child Left Behind requires student test data to be broken down
by group and reported to the public. Achievement gaps between
disadvantaged students and their peers, once hidden from public view,
are now public knowledge. The law has shined a brilliant spotlight on
the most neglected corners of our public education system--and while we
haven't always liked what we've found staring back at us, we're better
off as a nation because we've admitted it's there and can now do
something about it.
When the President signed NCLB in Hamilton two years ago, we knew
the hardest work was still ahead. It's one thing to pass a major law;
implementing it is another. The Clinton administration discovered this
the hard way during the 1990s when it passed its education reform plan,
and ended up issuing dozens of waivers to states exempting them from
the requirements. We assumed the education establishment would dig in
and fight when it discovered President Bush was not willing to repeat
those mistakes with the implementation of No Child Left Behind. That
assumption has proved correct.
It's disappointing that instead of working with states and local
districts to implement this bipartisan law, the National Education
Association and others have tried to dismantle it. In the two years
since NCLB was signed, the President and Congress have proposed
numerous bills to give teachers and states additional help in achieving
NCLB's objectives. The House has passed legislation to reduce paperwork
requirements for special education teachers. We've passed legislation
to boost loan forgiveness for qualified teachers who agree to teach in
high poverty schools. We've passed legislation to strengthen early
childhood learning so children enter our elementary schools ready to
learn. And President and Mrs. Bush have asked us to let teachers take a
$400 tax deduction when they pay money out of their own pockets for
classroom expenses such as crayons and books.
All of these proposals have been offered to build on the 35 percent
increase in federal teacher quality funding provided to states and
schools under NCLB. But none have been enacted. Some of the teachers
and school employees I talk to in my district have never even heard a
word about these proposals from their union representatives. And that's
a shame.
What we do hear from union representatives is a lot about funding.
So let's talk about that for a moment.
Under NCLB, states have received an increase in federal education
funding that can only be described as massive. The federal government
is providing more than $1 billion annually to Ohio to implement No
Child Left Behind. This includes $661 million in fiscal year 2003 for
No Child Left Behind itself, and another $373 million in fiscal year
2003 for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). These
numbers represent large increases over what Ohio was receiving before
NCLB.
The charts you see here show these increases on a national scale.
Any way you slice it, federal spending on education has skyrocketed
since No Child Left Behind became law. The numbers go nowhere but up.
Pay particular attention to Title I spending. When you do the math,
you find Title I received a larger increase during the first two years
of the George W. Bush administration than it did under the previous
eight years combined under President Clinton.
The numbers for special education tell a similar story. As
Education Daily reported on January 8, 2004: ``If [the President's 2005
budget] request is approved, Title I spending will have increased by
about 50 percent and special education spending will have increased by
about 80 percent on his watch.''
The truth is, Congress has been increasing spending more quickly
than states can spend the money. Last year, states collectively
returned about $124 million in federal education aid to the federal
Treasury because they couldn't spend it before it expired.
No Child Left Behind isn't about spending money. It's about what we
do with the money we're already spending. It isn't about changing
funding levels; it's about changing attitudes. It's about high
standards, and recognizing all children can learn.
It is a great credit to Ohio--in particular, to Governor Taft,
Superintendent Susan Zelman, and the leaders of the Ohio General
Assembly--that instead of bowing to those who contend money can solve
the problems in our schools, the Buckeye State has taken a stand for
high standards and accountability for results. The President signed the
law in Ohio--and two years later, it's clear the President chose the
right state for that historic action.
I would like to thank everyone for attending today. I would
especially like to thank our distinguished witnesses for their
participation. I look forward to your testimony.
______
Chairman Boehner. So we're glad that you're all here. With
that, let me turn to our friend from Minnesota, Ms. McCollum.
STATEMENT OF HON. BETTY McCOLLUM, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA
Ms. McCollum. It's a pleasure to join you here today in
Ohio, Mr. Chairman. It's very fitting that I be in Ohio. It's
because of the educational start I received in Dayton, Ohio as
a kindergartner that helped me have a good foundation for
having success for the rest of my public education. That is a
success I wanted for my children as a parent and I want for all
children in America.
I'd also like to thank Mr. Tiberi for having such a
wonderful district. I plan on coming back again. There's much
to see and do here. And Congressman Ryan and I are also very
proud to be here with Congressman Ted Strickland, who also
represents a portion of Ohio.
We have some charts in front of us that show educational
funding. One of the first books I received when I started doing
debate in high school and from my college debate, How to Lie
with Statistics. There are things you can do with statistics to
make cases both ways. I would just caution people as they look
into this to ask some very serious questions about what is the
baseline funding that was used and had the funding kept up with
inflation in the past.
I believe very strongly in importance of public education.
My support for it is unwavering. It's unwavering for the
educators, administrators and school board members and parents
across the country who commit themselves to educate and improve
the future for their children. I'm a Member of Congress today,
as I said, because of the strong public education system that
gave me the opportunity to achieve my dreams, my hopes. Our
nation's democracy, prosperity and success are all built upon a
foundation of public schools and every American's right to
access a quality education. No one should ever tolerate a tax
on our public education or public school teachers who we trust
to educate and nurture our children every day.
But as Sherman knows, I voted against Leave No Child Behind
because I believe the law can be improved. Others believe
Washington has all the wisdom, the wherewithal and the right to
dictate to state legislators, school boards and parents what is
best for our 84 million children in America's public schools.
Some believe Federal mandates will improve educational
achievement for our children. They believe that Washington
knows better than parents, teachers, administrators, and
elected school board members and legislators both here in
Columbus or back in Minnesota. But I, along with others, have a
different opinion. It does not make us obstructionists because
we trust parents, teachers and school boards to determine what
is needed for our children to succeed and achieve success in
school. Some of us believe the Federal Government's role is to
be a partner, supporting states, school districts and parents
to achieve educational success based on standards that reflect
the needs and the realities of our diverse population. Today we
are likely to hear about, as we have, the billions of dollars
the Bush administration is showering upon states to meet the
public laws mandate, that 100 percent of America's children in
public schools will achieve adequate yearly progress by 2014.
By 2014, every public school attended by almost 50 million
American children will achieve the goals harsh--will achieve
either the goals set by the law or the harsh Federal penalties
that will be imposed by the law. Perfection or penalties is a
new education paradigm now in America. It is too bad that the
Federal Government can break its own promises to states, school
districts and students without a penalty. Everyone knows that
Washington does not meet its commitment to fund special
education. The Bush administration is, and I repeat, is
increasing education funding. But it's failing to make adequate
yearly progress, having already failed to provide the $26
billion to fund Leave No Child Behind that Congress said it
would in its initial signing. Should we hold state legislators,
school boards and administrators accountable? Yes, we should.
We also need to hold the White House and Congress accountable
for its funding as mandates move forward.
Last month in Minnesota, my state, a highly respected
legislative auditor, Jim Nobles, who by the way is totally
nonpartisan, put forth a grim report. Even as student test
scores for math and reading improve significantly in the
upcoming years, the report estimates that 80 percent of
Minnesota's elementary schools will fail to make adequate
yearly progress by 2014, resulting in disastrous consequences
for the public education system in my state.
A recent report prepared by the Ohio Department of
Education raises serious questions about the cost of Ohio's
taxpayers in meeting demands in this educational mandate. The
report projects an enormous cost to Ohio taxpayers. While
Washington adds $44 million in funding a year, it appears that
Ohio taxpayers by 2010 could be forced to spend an additional
$105 billion in educational costs. The report states, quote,
the projected additional cost to fully implement No Child Left
Behind will require expenditures beyond the additional Federal
dollars committed thus far.
For political reasons, defending Leave No Child Behind will
likely result in both Minnesota and Ohio reports being attacked
and criticized, but Ohio and Minnesota are not alone in raising
these concerns. A list of states that are controlled by both
democrats and republicans are protesting the law: Vermont,
Hawaii, West Virginia, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, New Mexico,
Utah, Virginia, Washington, Maine, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kentucky,
and South Dakota. These states have all voiced valid legitimate
concerns about this law, and they need to be addressed by the
Department of Education, but it needs to be addressed in public
forums and not behind closed doors with offensive name-calling
as we have witnessed in recent weeks.
The point is clear, Leave No Child Behind needs to be
fixed, and I want to work with the Chairman to fix it. Thank
you.
Chairman Boehner. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Tiberi.
STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. TIBERI, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO
Mr. Tiberi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to welcome
you and the Committee Members to Columbus, Ohio. I know the
mayor encourages you to spend as much money as you can while
you're here to help our local economy.
I am pleased to be here with you this morning, and thank
you for picking Ohio and Columbus, Ohio, to have this hearing
to talk about the landmark education reforms in No Child Left
Behind and their impact on the state of Ohio.
I'd like to thank the State Library for allowing us to use
their facilities today. I'd like to welcome all of our
witnesses this morning, particularly Dr. Ross, who is the
superintendent of the Reynoldsburg City Schools, which is
within the district that I represent.
As most of you know, No Child Left Behind, which
reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
reflects the four pillars of President Bush's education reform
agenda: accountability and testing, flexibility and local
control, funding for what works, and expanded parental options.
The legislation requires annual testing of public school
students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8, report
cards for parents on school achievement levels, improved
teacher quality requirements that ensure all students are being
taught by a highly qualified teacher, and public school choice
and supplemental service options for children in underachieving
schools.
State flexibility is a key element within NCLB. Individual
states are given the flexibility to determine a variety of
factors, including the definition of student academic
proficiency, the starting point for progress measurement, and
the amount of progress that must be made from year to year.
They also have the flexibility to develop their own test to
determine if existing teachers should be deemed highly
qualified.
In August of 2003, the Ohio General Assembly passed
legislation that laid out exactly how Ohio would utilize this
flexibility to meet the goals of No Child Left Behind. We have
some of those legislators here today who worked pretty hard on
that. As part of that legislation, the General Assembly
required the Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction to
commission a detailed financial analysis of the projected costs
of compliance with No Child Left Behind.
While I appreciate all of the hard work that Columbus-based
researchers Mr. William Driscoll and Dr. Howard Fleeter put
into this report, I am concerned about some of the findings. I
am particularly troubled by the contention that recent massive
increases that the Chairman talked about in Federal education
funding have not been adequate to allow Ohio to reach its goals
under No Child Left Behind.
President Bush and Congress have provided historic levels
of Federal education funding to help states implement No Child
Left Behind. In fact, Title I funding received a larger
combined increase during the first 2 years of President Bush's
presidency than it received in the previous 8 years combined
under President Clinton. The Republican-led Congress has also
kept special education funding among the highest education
priorities, and as a result, special education funding has more
than tripled in just 9 years.
In fact, some of the reports indicate, and some of our
colleagues have indicated to the Chairman and myself, that the
Federal Government has been increasing education spending more
quickly than some states can spend the money, raising new
questions about the claims No Child Left Behind may be under
funded. A recent analysis by the House Education and the
Workforce Committee shows that by this summer, states will have
received an average increase of 42 percent in Federal Title I
aid for disadvantaged students since enactment of No Child Left
Behind. These increases are coming even as many states still
have not drawn down the $2 billion in Title I funds that were
made available to them as far back as fiscal year 2000 before
No Child Left Behind went into effect three and a half years
ago.
As the first person in my family to have graduated from
high school, I personally know how important education and--a
quality education is to being successful. As a proud graduate
of the Columbus schools, Dr. Ross, I know what it's like to
have experienced the education of an urban school and the
difference between quality education and unquality education.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today on
information dealing with No Child Left Behind, how we can
reconcile these figures with the findings of the Ohio cost
study on No Child Left Behind. I also hope to hear about how No
Child Left Behind is benefiting Ohio's parents, its teachers
and its students. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tiberi follows:]
Statement of Hon. Patrick J. Tiberi, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio
Thank you Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be here this morning to
talk about the landmark education reforms in No Child Left Behind
(NCLB), and their impact on the state of Ohio.
I would like to thank the State Library of Ohio for allowing us to
use their facilities today. I would also like to welcome all of our
witnesses here this morning. I am particularly pleased to welcome Dr.
Dick Ross, the Superintendent of the Reynoldsburg City Schools.
As most of you know, NCLB, which reauthorized the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reflects the four pillars of President
Bush's education reform agenda: accountability and testing, flexibility
and local control, funding for what works, and expanded parental
options.
The legislation requires annual testing of public school students
in reading and math in grades 3-8, report cards for parents on school
achievement levels, improved teacher quality requirements that ensure
all students are being taught by a highly qualified teacher, and public
school choice and supplemental service options for children in
underachieving schools.
State flexibility is a key element within NCLB. Individual states
are given the flexibility to determine a variety of factors, including
the definition of student academic proficiency, the starting point for
progress measurement, and the amount of progress that must be made from
year to year. They also have the flexibility to develop their own test
to determine if existing teachers should be deemed highly qualified.
In August 2003, the Ohio General Assembly passed legislation that
laid out exactly how Ohio would utilize this flexibility to meet the
goals of NCLB. As part of that legislation, the General Assembly
required the Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction to commission a
detailed financial analysis of the projected costs of compliance with
NCLB.
While I appreciate all of the hard work that Columbus-based
researchers Mr. William Driscoll and Dr. Howard Fleeter put into this
report, I am concerned about some of the findings. I am particularly
troubled by the contention that recent massive increases in federal
education funding have not been adequate to allow Ohio to reach the
goals of NCLB.
President Bush and Congress have provided historic levels of
federal education funding to help states implement NCLB. In fact, Title
I funding received a larger combined increase during the first two
years of President Bush's presidency than it received in the previous
eight years combined under President Clinton. The Republican-led
Congress has also kept special education funding among the highest
education priorities, and as a result, special education funding has
more than tripled in just nine years.
In fact, some reports indicate that the federal government has been
increasing education spending more quickly than states can spend the
money, raising new questions about the claims that NCLB is
``underfunded.'' A recent analysis by the House Education and the
Workforce Committee shows that by this summer, states will have
received an average increase of 42% in federal Title I aid for
disadvantaged students since enactment of No Child Left Behind--and
these increases are coming even as many states still have not drawn
down $2 billion in Title I funds that were made available to them as
far back as fiscal year 2000, three and a half years ago.
I look forward to hearing more information from all of our
witnesses about how we can reconcile these figures with the findings of
the Ohio cost study on No Child Left Behind. I also hope to hear about
how NCLB is benefiting Ohio's parents, teachers and students. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
______
Chairman Boehner. Mr. Ryan.
STATEMENT OF HON. TIM RYAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM
THE STATE OF OHIO
Mr. Ryan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be in
the great state of Ohio, and I represent the city of Youngstown
and part of the city of Akron and everywhere in between. So
everyone here can thank me for Jim Tressel coming to Columbus
later.
The issue today, obviously, is the No Child Left Behind
Act, the funding and the implementation of this program.
A couple things I would like to touch upon before I get
into my formal statement. One is the issue of funding and how
funding wasn't an issue for such a long period of time, and no
one was really discussing the fact that there wasn't full
funding with the No Child Left Behind. This Committee made a
commitment, as the Chairman said, an appropriate commitment, to
say, some would say, a civil rights issue, and many of us would
agree with that. Maybe it is a civil rights issue. But when we
passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960's, you have to pay for
poll workers, you have to pay for the voting machines, you have
to pay to train your workers. There was a cost associated with
making sure that every citizen in our country had an
opportunity to exercise their franchise. And that commitment
needs to be made here, too. So if this is a civil rights issue,
we need to fund it.
Another point I would like to make, as well as we have
these discussions in Washington D.C. on a variety of other
issues, there's always this 800-pound elephant that's sitting
in the middle of the room that no one wants to talk about. It's
the tax cuts that we passed and we want to continue to pass in
the next Congress. I think we can't talk about priorities, we
can't talk about full funding the education or veterans without
addressing what our priorities are going to be as a nation. Are
they going to be these tax cuts that many would say, and I
would certainly say, are reckless at this point, or are we
going to make the proper investments in our education system. I
think that's the issue that really undergirds the whole debate
that we're having here today on No Child Left Behind. I do
believe we must stay the course on No Child Left Behind. We
must embrace it, while understanding that we have room for
growth.
The two areas I would like to emphasize that are needed
areas for growth are funding and implementation of leadership
and technical assistance. The need to fully fund the No Child
Left Behind Act is paramount to its success. Funding is what
enables our school districts to pay for teacher training and
technical assistance and professional development, pay for
salaries of highly qualified teachers, administrative costs,
implementation costs, intervention costs. All of this costs
money.
When Congress took on this task--and I commend them for
doing so, and I commend the Chairman for taking the leadership
role in this--they also took on a measure with a hefty price
tag that would be due to the states to help pay for these
mandates. Congress knew the costs and now the bills are due.
What do we say to our fellow states? Sorry, but this payment is
going to be $7.5 billion short of what we owe you.
President Bush's budget request, coupled with the
appropriations bill passed by the Republican Congress, show a
blatant disregard to keeping the commitments to ensure a high
quality education system in our country. The Republican
education spending bill provides only 4.8 percent increase for
education, the smallest dollar increase in 5 years and the
smallest percentage increase in 8 years. Less money at a time
when we have higher expectations. What does this mean? It means
nearly 5 million needy children won't get the extra academic
help and services that the law promised if the President's
budget becomes law. It means over 1 million children will find
their schoolhouse doors locked to afterschool programs if the
President's budget becomes law. It means 54,000 teachers won't
be able to participate in professional development programs if
the President's budget becomes law.
What does this mean for Ohio? Which we are going to discuss
today the study that says the cost of complying with the No
Child Left Behind will reach 1.447 billion annually, annually
in fiscal year 2010. I am aware of the many criticisms of this
report, but I would like to emphasize there may be
disagreements with whether this report overstates or
understates the price tag of No Child Left Behind, but the
common agreement is that we can and we should do more to put
the resources in place to achieve our end goal, which is
student success. The need for increased funding cannot be
underestimated. There were 220 Ohio school districts that had
issues on the March 2004 ballot, and Ohio voters approved less
than half, the lowest in the past 10 years.
I recently heard our Federal reserve chairman, Greenspan,
say providing rigorous education and ongoing training to all
members of our society is critical for the economy overall and
for individuals benefited by its changing nature. He went on to
say better education, particularly in elementary, middle and
high schools, would go a long way toward boosting the wages of
low-skilled workers and diminishing the inequality that has
become more pronounced over the last 2 years, basically saying
if we want to close this achievement gap we must make these
investments in education.
Chairman Greenspan is 100 percent right. If we do not
invest more into our education system, we will continue to lose
ground as a leader in high-skilled, high-wage jobs. The two go
hand-in-hand. Investment into education is an investment into
our economy and into the stability of our country. Our children
deserve better. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Boehner. I want to thank all my colleagues and
welcome our witnesses, and let me begin to introduce them.
Our first witness today will be Ron Tomalis. Mr. Tomalis is
a counselor to the U.S. Secretary, Department of Education.
Additionally, he serves as the chief of staff for the
secretary. Mr. Tomalis served as acting assistant secretary for
elementary and secondary education. Welcome him this morning.
Our second witness will be Dr. Richard Ross. He's currently
the superintendent of Reynoldsburg City Schools here in
Columbus, suburb of Reynoldsburg, where he has served since
1988. Pretty long time for a superintendent to stick around.
Previously he was a superintendent for several other Ohio
school districts, including Bryant City Schools and Ottawa
Schools. Dr. Ross has served as an instructor in the Department
of Education at Bowling Green State University, additionally
has received various awards including the Pioneer in Education
Award and the A Plus Breaking the Mold Award. I want to thank
Mr. Tiberi for inviting you here. Thank you for being here.
Then we're going to hear from Dr. Howard Fleeter. He is a
partner at Levin, Driscoll & Fleeter, a research firm that
focuses on public policy, education finance, and state and
local tax budgeting issues. He's served at the state and local
government level since 1990. Additionally, Dr. Fleeter worked
as an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy and
Management to Ohio State and he's a four-time recipient of the
Ohio School of Public Policy and Management Faculty of the Year
Award.
Then we're going to hear from Dr. Ted Rebarber. Mr.
Rebarber is president and founder of Accountability Works, a
nonprofit research and consulting work. Its mission is to
assist states and districts in implementing high quality
accountability systems. Previously he was cofounder and chief
executive education officer of Advantage Schools, Inc., a
charter school management company that achieved high grades and
test scores for disadvantaged students. He served in various
capacities up on Capitol Hill and the U.S. Department of
Education and the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy
students. We'd like to thank all of you for coming.
The Committee rules you have 5 minutes to make your opening
statement. We're not going to take your head off if you go
beyond that, but if you get carried away, we'll probably rein
you in a little.
Mr. Tomalis, why don't you begin.
STATEMENT OF RON TOMALIS, COUNSELOR TO THE SECRETARY, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Tomalis. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Good morning,
Members of the Committee. It's a pleasure for me to be here in
Ohio this morning.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify on behalf of the
No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush's signature education
reform legislation that is designed to bring stronger
accountability and better results to Federal education
programs, both across the Nation and here in Ohio.
A lot of myths have sprung up regarding No Child Left
Behind over the 2 years since it was signed into law. The
current election season is giving these myths a new currency.
Perhaps the biggest myth, and one that has become a significant
issue here in Ohio, is that President Bush and the Congress
have not provided sufficient funding to pay for the new law.
The truth is that when Congress passed No Child Left Behind
it also provided the largest funding increase in history for
the elementary and secondary programs that would be authorized
by the new law. The 2002 appropriations act provided an
increase of $4.6 billion, or 27 percent, for NCLB programs.
That nationwide increase was nearly matched here in Ohio, which
received an additional $119 million, or 26 percent, in the
first year of NCLB funding alone.
It is also important, though, to point out that this new
funding comes on the heels of very rapid growth in education
spending over the past 10 years.
Combined Federal, state and local spending on elementary
and secondary education grew from $280 billion in 1993, '94, to
over $500 billion over this past decade. That's a substantial
increase over 10 years. To put that in perspective, half a
trillion dollars a year on K-12 education is 125 billion a year
more than is spent on defense in our country. That's the way it
should be. Federal funding for the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act has more than kept pace with this increase,
nearly tripling over the same period. In view of these figures,
a reasonable response to charges of underfunding education
might be, what might we be talking about.
The specific figures for NCLB tell a similar story
nationwide and here in Ohio, building on a large first year
increase in 2002. Funding for NCLB is up $7 billion, or 40
percent, in just 3 years. We have provided $1.1 billion to pay
for the additional assessments that are required by law, and
the new law more than doubled the funds available to help low-
performing schools by providing nearly $500 million.
Here in Ohio, Congress has appropriated more than $1.9
billion. For fiscal year 2004, the $666 million provided to
Ohio for NCLB programs reflects an increase of $206 million, or
45 percent, over the 2001 level.
Consider just one major new requirement, the new
assessments. Ohio will receive a total of $47 million in
assessment funding before it even has to implement the new
tests, which must be in place in the '05-'06 school year.
Compare this to the previous ESEA reauthorization, which also
required testing when it was reauthorized in 1994, but there
was not a penny that was appropriated to put the assessment
into place.
This doesn't sound like an unfunded mandate to me. But you
don't have to take my word on this issue. There are some fair
and balanced studies that reach the same conclusion. I would
like to briefly summarize one study in particular for the
Committee, one that was provided by education officials from
Massachusetts. I respectfully ask the Chairman to place a copy
of it in the hearing record.
Chairman Boehner. Without objection, it's ordered.
Mr. Tomalis. The authors found that provided funding for No
Child Left Behind is adequate to pay for the marginal costs of
meeting the new law requirements at this stage of the
implementation. They also found that while funding targeted to
school improvement is short of their estimated need, other
sources of Federal funds could more than close the gap, if they
were directed to low-performing schools.
The authors then looked specifically at the growth in
Federal education funding. With the permission of the Chairman,
I would like to read their conclusions into the record.
``If this spending increase does not fully cover the fiscal
gap, it would appear to come pretty close, especially when
combined with state-level spending increases already required
under various state laws and court decisions. Given that many
states have been slow to implement the statewide assessment and
accountability systems required by NCLB, one might even argue
that in some instances Federal spending growth has overshot the
target.''
The ``overshot the target'' has particular resonance here
in Ohio, where U.S. Department of Education figures showed
that, as of last Friday, the state has yet to spend an
estimated $322 million in Federal education funds appropriated
from fiscal years 2000 through 2002. It is reasonable to ask
why some in Ohio are demanding more Federal funds when the
state has been unable to spend a significant portion of the
funds that it has already received.
My testimony suggests that it is long past time to put an
end to debates about unfunded mandates and return to the
business of implementing No Child Left Behind. As Secretary
Paige pointed out recently, critics of No Child Left Behind too
often ignore the depth of the problem in our schools. I believe
that has been true to some degree here in Ohio as well.
I know, for example, many in Ohio are concerned about the
No Child Left Behind requirement for 100 percent proficiency in
reading and math, especially since the state was previously
aiming for 75 percent proficiency. We know the NCLB goal is an
ambitious one, with only one third of Ohio's fourth-graders
currently scoring at the proficient or advanced levels in
reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and
with just two thirds of fourth-graders currently at grade level
of Ohio's own reading test.
If you consider that what we are talking about here is
bringing all students up to grade level in basic reading and
math skills, I think it is very hard to make a case for setting
our goal anywhere below 100 percent. Are Ohio's schools
successful if they have 25 percent of the graduates, one in
four graduates, without the basic skills needed for either the
workplace or for meaningful participation in our democracy?
President Bush doesn't think so, neither does Secretary Paige
or the Chairman of this Committee, and I have to say I utterly
agree with them.
In conclusion, in my view, the myth of No Child Left Behind
as an unfunded mandate simply does not stand up to scrutiny.
Even in an election year. It is a falsehood that diverts
attention from the admittedly hard work we all face in
realizing the promise of No Child Left Behind. I hope that by
helping to dispel this myth, this hearing will refocus our
attention where it needs to be: on the students of Ohio in
their classroom. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tomalis follows:]
Statement of Ron Tomalis, Counselor to the Secretary, U.S. Department
of Education, Washington, DC
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.002
------
Chairman Boehner. Dr. Ross.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD ROSS, SUPERINTENDENT, REYNOLDSBURG CITY
SCHOOLS, REYNOLDSBURG, OH
Dr. Ross. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Committee Members.
I'm here today to share with you my support for the No
Child Left Behind legislation. I'm going to speak as a school
superintendent of a suburban district here in Franklin County.
Your Committee is looking into the costs associated with No
Child Left Behind. I think this is an important question that
needs to be answered. I do believe, however, there is a more
important question, and that is, what will it cost America if
we fail to achieve the goals of No Child Left Behind?
In my opinion, being an old social studies teacher, No
Child Left Behind is the most important piece of educational
legislation since the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of
1779, which provided land for the establishments of schools in
the northwest territory here, including Ohio. At that time,
Congress set an ambitious goal of providing an opportunity for
an education of every child; in other words, universal access
to an education.
Today, with the NCLB legislation, I think Congress is
giving America a new and more ambitious goal than just
universal access, it's universal achievement. We've been
challenged to become accountable for the academic achievement
of all of our students. It is a guarantee that every child in
America will have a mastery of basic knowledge and skills that
are prerequisites for good employment and good citizenship in
this country and state. And I think to argue that--and I hear
that argument a lot--that it is not a possible goal, it's an
impossible goal, is ludicrous, as I believe we can do that.
What does this mean to our classroom teachers, our school
principals, superintendent? I believe we're finally being
required to take notice, not only of those children who are
failing to learn the basic skills and knowledge sets, but we
almost must be directing our attention toward the most talented
students we have to ensure on the other end that their learning
potential is not limited either. We are required to do that,
and we are required to make adjustments in our instructional
programs, and we must do that. We must know what works and what
doesn't work.
Many educators that I talk with discuss about not having
the resources to fill the expectations of No Child Left Behind.
It's my belief that we must therefore look at what we have and
pull the weeds from our resource garden that exists in our
schools. We must eliminate innovations and programs that are
determined to be unsuccessful. We must marshal our resources in
the manner that would be most effective in improving our
students' learning.
I also believe that the financial resources are not the
most important ingredient in this task that we have in front of
us. The most essential prerequisite for success of NCLB is that
the student, the teacher, the administrator, each and every one
of them individually believes that it's possible for them to
achieve that. Countless times I've had expectations when I was
teaching, coaching, and as principal and as superintendent,
where we have set expectations in front of our classroom
teachers, principals, students and athletes to achieve beyond
what normal people or average people would expect is possible.
You know what? Kids can do that. They can do that. These people
must believe that they do have the resources from the garden.
They have to believe that they have the skills and ability to
reduce these achievement gaps. Especially with our poor and
minority students.
Reynoldsburg--I'm not portraying to be a panacea of
anything. Just telling you that we're working hard to
accomplish that. We're a diverse, middle-class, suburban
community that has the lowest expenditure per pupil in Franklin
County in fiscal year '03. It would be easy for us to come up
with a lot of excuses. Easy. We can't because we don't have
enough resources. We can't because we have a large number of
poor students and more moving in. We can't because of the
number of minority students. We can't because of the number of
our ESL students. I think that is the very point that we're
here to talk about. We can be successful, and I think we must
be successful. We must cease using excuses and commit that this
must occur if this great country is going to provide equal
opportunity for all our children.
Now, the very people on my left and right, my question is,
what does it really cost to implement NCLB? I think it costs us
to work even harder. It will cost us more time, more
commitment. It costs more love to be able to absolutely
guarantee that all our children, every one of them, meets their
full potential. That is what it costs us.
Sometimes, in direct terms, this could be extra tutoring,
summer school. It could be before-school and after-school
programs. It possibly could be differentiated materials,
differentiated instructional techniques. There are other costs.
Will this end up costing us more dollars? Perhaps it will. I
ask myself and I ask you, what would it cost to assure that
every child learned in school without this law? My answer would
be, the cost in money, in effort, in creativity and in
commitment are exactly the same.
How can we not want high achievement for all our students?
How can we not want accountability measures that are consistent
from school to school, or effective instructional programs that
have been researched and proven to work with various
populations? Yes, how can we not want highly qualified
teachers? If we really want all our students to master basic
skills and knowledge, then the extra cost of NCLB is zero.
On the other side of the coin, if we're OK with only some
of our children learning the standard, and I want to say this
has been the history of public schools, then we probably can
actually cut costs and still call ourselves successful.
Seventy-five percent standard for excellence in Ohio would be
an example of that.
Simply stated, NCLB is the right thing to do. I'm grateful
for the President and the Congress for bringing this necessary
mandate to our national agenda to debate.
I would like to close by giving special thanks to our State
Superintendent Susan Zelman and the Ohio Board of Education for
establishing an exemplary set of academic content standards in
reading, language arts, math, science, and social studies. I
believe these standards provide every teacher, parent, child in
the state of Ohio clear guidance defining minimum performance
expectations for each and all of us. We no longer can hide
behind low standard and, worse, no standards.
The Congress and the Ohio legislature have given me and
Ohio new goals. It is now up to the school leaders,
superintendents, principals, teachers, students to discover and
create the pathways that will lead each of our students to
academic success and achievement. I appreciate the opportunity
to testify today.
Chairman Boehner. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Ross follows:]
Statement of Richard A. Ross, Superintendent, Reynoldsburg City
Schools, Reynoldsburg, OH
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.006
------
Chairman Boehner. Dr. Fleeter.
STATEMENT OF HOWARD FLEETER, PARTNER, LEVIN, DRISCOLL &
FLEETER, COLUMBUS, OH
Dr. Fleeter. Thank you, Chairman, Members of the Committee.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify. I appreciate that you
picked a location that's probably closer to where I live than
anybody else in the room.
We've got a 60-page report that there's been many
references to. I've got 5 minutes to discuss the pertinent
facts. I pledge to do the best I can in that timeframe.
Let me first say for the record that our objective here, as
Congressman Tiberi said, is to do a study for the state
Department of Education in compliance with a mandate from the
Ohio legislature to look at the cost of compliance of No Child
Left Behind. We did that. And we want to stress that what we
did was try and figure out what the cost of this law would be
and what the cost is of Ohio meeting all the mandates and
complying with it. And we're not making any judgment that says
that there's--we have a disagreement with the goals. In fact,
we agree--I agree with what Mr. Tomalis and what Dr. Ross said
about the goals, and what every one else has said, that these
are the right goals. That the Federal Government is on the
track we should have been on for many years to close the gap. I
think that we can do this and figure out how to get that done.
Whatever it costs would be money that is well worth spending
and the best investment I think our country can make.
In terms of a little background about Ohio's context,
accountability didn't come to Ohio with No Child Left Behind.
That Ohio has been rated--the last 2 years in education,
they're one of eight states to be given A for accountability
system. There's been state and local and district report cards
issued for the last 5 years here that--there have been
statewide proficiency tests for over 10 years that there's a
good accountability system in place in this state.
In terms of teacher quality, education, Ohio is one of the
top ten states in terms of improving teacher quality, and they
received a B in that area of the report card as well. That's
the good news about what Ohio's been doing.
Mr. Tomalis referred to some figures before that in terms
of the nature of scores and Ohio's percentages of passage rates
on the proficiency tests. That's the bad news, that 35 percent
of our students in the 4th and 6th grade failed the reading, 44
percent failed the math test. That's a challenge that Ohio
faces in terms of complying with the law.
The focus that we made in our study was figuring out the
marginal cost of complying with the law, in terms of what
additional dollars will it take to go beyond the accountability
system that the state has had in place. They made the reference
that Ohio's accountability system, if every district received
75 percent of their students passing these tests, they would be
rated an excellent district in this state. You can make a very
compelling argument that says that having 25 percent of your
kids fail is too low a standard. In terms of looking at the
right standard saying eliminating the achievement and having
100 percent of our kids passing this test, that's the right
standard.
In terms of what we had to cost out, there are four areas
of cost. One of them is the mandatory testing. There is
criteria for highly qualified teachers and professionals.
There's increasing the passage rates to a standard of 100
percent beyond Ohio's current standard of 75 percent, and then
there's consequences cost. The third one, getting the standard
up to 100 percent, that's where the bulk of the cost is going
to be. If you do that, then the consequences cost should go
away.
In terms of the focus of our study, looking at the cost of
compliance, we made a decision which I think is the right one
from what the legislature asked us to do is what would it take
for Ohio to comply with the standard. We're not going to cost
out what the consequence would be of failure because we want to
cost out the consequence of success.
How do we do this? The main focus of our report was looking
at what it would take to get 100 percent of our students
passing Ohio statewide proficiency tests. For that, as Dr. Ross
said, is a variety of different types of interventions that can
be done. There are aspects that don't have to do with
interventions that have to do with getting everybody on the
same page of the playbook. I have 14 years of experience in
working with this state on education funding. We have a list in
our report that has nine or ten interventions. We didn't pull
that out of thin air. We worked with personnel and staff from
the Ohio Department of Education. We had focus groups within
the district. We worked closely with the city of Columbus
Public Schools. And I thank them for their participation. We
drew that list that we have as based on those data and also
based on research and education about what types of programs
are effective in terms of getting students up to speed and
learning. The 3 years that we picked that are the 1.5 billion
roughly in our cost, 1.4 billion of that is in the area of the
interventions that are necessary to get students up to 100
percent proficiency. That's where the bulk of my comments will
be because that's where the bulk of the cost is.
The three intervention programs that we costed out, we have
a series of tables through our report. The key table is table
23. It shows that we have summer school, which is consistent
with the extended school year idea; after-school intervention,
consistent with the idea of extending the school day before
school or after school; and intensive in-school intervention.
Each one of those interventions is based on research for
the summer school program. I would direct people to the Johns
Hopkins Center for Summer Learning. They've been doing research
for many, many years looking at the learning loss that occurs
over the summer, particularly for lower social economic groups.
If you test them at the end of the school year and beginning of
the next one and compare where they're at, they're going down,
while the other groups are going--holding steady or going up.
That's a major problem. The intensive in-school intervention.
It's on the U.S. Department of Education's own web site they
have an Institute for Education Sciences that identifies
educational practices supported by evidence. They can cite that
one-on-one tutoring by qualified teachers for grades 1 to 3 is
one of the gold standard intervention approaches, and that
that's something that may be incorporated into our report very
consistent with that. In fact, we base what Columbus does on
the reading recovery model, which is one of the most well
supported intervention programs in education that I know of.
Finally, the after-school interventions is based simply on
the idea of the supplemental services which is one of the
consequences that's spelled out by No Child Left Behind. Our
logic in including that is if that was a program which the
authors of No Child Left Behind felt would be an appropriate
consequence for schools and districts that are failing, then I
think it would be an appropriate intervention so you can head
that off before they fail. So we have a basis for including
those three programs.
We also have a rationale in terms of it's one thing to
include them and you've got to attach some costs. If you don't
have a good rationale for that, you don't have a good cost
estimate. Our rationale for how we costed out the programs is
based on two fundamental economic assumptions. The first is the
premise of increasing marginal cost. This is the most
fundamental assumption in microeconomic theory. As you produce
increased units of output, each unit of output is going to cost
a little bit more, require a little bit more input. That's a
fundamental pinprick of microeconomics. It's one that no one
has disagreed with. I think the table that we have that shows
the differences in the backgrounds of students as we broke them
into their performance groups and you can see very clear
patterns that the students that are highest achieving have the
lowest percentage of economic disadvantagement, the lowest
percentage of special education, the lowest percentage of
English as a second language, and that you can see very clear
patterns as you go down the performance scale that each one of
those challenges increases, and for the lowest couple of groups
of students we have they increase to a dramatic rate.
So that's our evidence that the challenge of this, the cost
of getting the last student to clear the bar is going to become
the highest and the cost of getting the student that's closest
right now to clearing the bar is going to be the lowest.
The second premise that we used when we estimated the cost
was the idea it's almost what I called the Fram oil filter for
Ohio, the pay me now, pay me later. The idea would be that the
earlier you intervene, the more effective it would be, and the
more cost effective it would be as well. That's the idea behind
these one-on-one interventions and the reading recovery types
of programs. The earlier you start, the more effective you are.
And in our cost estimate, the $1.4 billion that we came up
with, that if you look at how that's structured, that the cost
for kindergarten and first grade is the highest, the cost for
second and third grade goes down from that, and the cost in the
out years after that of what we call sort of maintenance, once
you get kids on track--it's not an inoculation. You still need
to be doing work, but that's going to be a declining rate. That
that 1.4 billion you have is an annual cost. That's the cost--
if you look at it in two ways, it would be either the cost of
taking the student right now who's in kindergarten and serving
all those students who need the interventions over the course
of their 13 years that they're going to be in school, or you
could alternately think of that as the cost once this is up and
running, you'll have interventions for kids at all different
grade levels at any different times. You'll have some kids in
kindergarten getting interventions, second, third, fourth,
eight. So that cost is a cumulative cost for either serving the
group of students throughout the duration of their time in
school or it would be the cross-section of students at all the
grades in any given year. I've seen some people take the number
and divided it by the 130,000 students that we say need
intervention and they get a figure that's almost $11,000, and
that's an inappropriate way to think of it like that. The cost
estimate applies to more than just the group of kids in K
through third grade.
Finally, in terms of--there's more detail about how we did
the estimate. The last thing would be the cost that we attach
once we define the programs and how they work, and they're
consistent with those ideas of increasing marginal costs and
the earlier intervention being more effective than the later
intervention. We then had to attach some cost estimates. We
tried to be very conservative in how we attached those costs.
One person commenting on our report said he thought we so
severely underestimated the cost of what a teacher would be,
that they thought that it made our estimate invalid. If it's
invalid, it would be on the low side, not on the high side.
Lastly, I guess what I'd like to say, there's been
discussion about the increases in Federal money, and I want to
clarify that we're not disputing that there have been increases
in Federal money. We see those. And that the two points I would
like to make in that regard would be, first, that these
percentage increases that Mr. Boehner talked about and Mr.
Tomalis talked about, they're on a fairly low base.
Historically, Federal funding has fluctuated between five and 7
percent of total education resources in the state of Ohio. So
we made significant increases in what's the smallest component
of the funding. We're not saying that we don't appreciate those
increases. We're not saying that those increases aren't going
to make a difference. I think there's a mathematical issue that
the bar has been raised appropriately so by the Federal
Government. I think now we're going to need to get to a point
where five or 7 percent of the share of education that may have
worked when our standard was 75 percent, that's not going to
work when our standard is really 100 percent.
The last point I would like to make about that. There have
been some suggestions that we shouldn't be looking at the
increases, what we ought to be talking about is the whole pot
of money that's there. And that's a view that we disagree with.
Our premise is that the money that has been there in the past
has been part of the system which has gotten us to the point
where we have 35 percent of our kids not passing reading and 34
percent not passing math. We're taking the premise that the
money that's in the system has gotten us to where we are. And
there have been allegations that we haven't taken into account
any efficiency. We did do that on our report. There's a whole
report--I'm just about done. I appreciate your indulgence. I'm
talking as fast as I can. That we did make assumptions that
there are ways to reach that money. I think that we're at the
point where if someone can demonstrate that beyond where we are
right now, if that were to lower the cost, I think if anybody
can convince me the cost is going to be lower, I'm in favor to
that because it's going to suggest to me that we're closer to
getting in compliance with this law. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Fleeter follows:]
Statement of Howard Fleeter, Levin, Driscoll & Fleeter, Columbus, OH
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.005
------
Chairman Boehner. Mr. Rebarber.
STATEMENT OF THEODOR REBARBER, PRESIDENT, ACCOUNTABILITY WORKS,
WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Rebarber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Committee, for this opportunity to address you on this vital
topic of national significance.
The reform challenge set out in the No Child Left Behind is
not going to be easy to attain. It's going to be a challenge.
But it's the right goal at this time. I think there's consensus
among everybody on this panel that it is the right goal. Given
that, the concentration and concern that many of you and all of
us occurred among states and at the local level raised
questions. But in my mind it's understandable that when we make
that level of change in the goals, when we're saying for the
first time that we're going to educate all of our students as
opposed to just some of our students, that there will be some
change and there will be an impact.
The other major change in No Child Left Behind we had
before is the imposition of some significant accountability for
lack of success. Accountability, in our view, contains three
components: One is clear goals that are measurable; second is a
way of assessing progress and measuring whether we've attained
those goals; and, third, which we really have not had
historically, is interventions, sanctions in the cases where we
don't have success. Those interventions should be carefully
designed so that they help students. They can't just punish
students. But at the same time, there have to be some
interventions in those cases where we have persistent failure
and lack of success educating all our children. We haven't had
that before in many cases. Certainly not in the No Child or
Improving America's Schools Act, until No Child created some
significant interventions in the form of public school choice,
supplemental services and some other kinds of interventions
that are based on even more persistent failure. So it's
understandable that people are concerned, that people are
somewhat fearful of the impact of what this is going to mean.
And it's understandable that funding, which is a legitimate
question, is on the table. We think there ought to be careful
analysis. We think that this is a legitimate issue to debate.
To the credit of the Ohio state superintendent Susan
Zelman, in addition to the main study that Driscoll & Fleeter
conducted, they had ten nationally recognized groups or
individuals review that study. And it's interesting to see the
discrepancies between the reviewers. As Dr. Zelman pointed out,
several of the reviewers felt that the study was
underestimating cost, several reviewers felt that it was right
about the cost, and several reviewers felt that it was
overestimating the cost. So trying to come up with a rigorous
analysis of the cost is also a difficult challenge.
Now, given that, our organization was one of those that
reviewed the initial Ohio study. We've also reviewed cost
analysis of No Child Left Behind in other states, these kinds
of analysis states have been conducting for some time. We find
a couple of consistent flaws in many of these studies. And I
regret to stay in the Ohio study. One of them is the
assumption--and there is an assumption in the Ohio report that
significant improvements cannot be attained through
efficiencies and reallocation of resources. I could find the
quote saying that. There was an assumption that some
improvements could continue just based on trends. The major
improvements as a result of reallocation of resources,
restructuring the current system is assumed to not be possible.
There's very little evidence--there's no research provided to
support that. We think there's a wealth of evidence on the
other side suggesting that we can show significant improvements
in what we're doing today and what we're spending today. We're
not against increasing education funding. We know that the
Federal Government has increased education funding, as have
states and communities. The bulk of the increases over the last
10 years has come from states and local communities even though
the Federal Government has also increased its share. We expect
those increases to continue. We've done our own analysis in
addition to reviewing the Ohio study and we projected just
historical increases in education funding going forward for the
life of No Child Left Behind both Federal, state and local.
We found that for the specific requirements of No Child
Left Behind the additional testing, the Ohio qualified teacher
requirements, the initial data base tasks that need to be done,
that the increases in Federal funding are sufficient to pay for
those specific requirements. On the other hand, what some of
the other studies have done, including the Ohio study, is say
that now because the Federal Government has worked with states
to set these goals for general achievement, educate all
students to minimal levels in reading and math, that now the
bulk of the responsibility for funding education, particularly
any new funding, now falls to the Federal Government. One could
question the legitimacy of changing that historical role of the
Federal Government from a support to a main funding of
education. But even putting that aside, when we look at the
studies, we find very little in the way of actual evidence to
suggest that more funding for general education is truly
necessary beyond the regular increases that have occurred and
will continue to occur beyond inflation. The evidence is just
not provided. It's usually assertions. For example, not to pick
on the Ohio study, but I'm afraid that's the example here that
we've been talking about, but anyway, the Ohio study, for
example, the references to research to the Hopkins Center, to
the Federal Department of Education's listing of programs, that
wasn't present in the actual study, but even if that had been,
there was no analysis between different kinds of interventions
to determine which ones are the most cost effective. If we're
going to be prudent with taxpayer's dollars, we would expect
that a rigorous and compelling case for new funding would do
several things. First of all, it would look at how are we
spending money today. Is there evidence that that money could
be reallocated, reformed and we could get substantially better
achievement. And then if it demonstrated that the evidence
suggests that we cannot, then it would look at what are the
different types of interventions that we could add, which ones
are the most cost effective and get you the best results for
the most kids, the most limited amount of dollars. That wasn't
done. And it hasn't been done in any of these studies. So these
are significant problems.
Now, in our study, after we looked at the specific
mandates, we looked at a general achievement group. And I just
want to give you a limited number of examples of evidence we
found that we could be improving academic achievement by
reallocating our current dollars. There are many examples.
First, our country is subsidizing preservice education for
teachers through all grades. States are funding that. There's
grants to support the student portion of those fees, et cetera.
There's public dollars being spent. The research indicates, and
I can give you a particular citation, find that the
effectiveness of teachers with elementary certification, a
critical foundation that all students need, their effectiveness
is no greater in raising student achievement today than
teachers, other teachers who are on emergency certification and
who have not completed all the subsidized education courses and
so forth. That is not to say we don't have many very talented,
dedicated hard working elementary teachers. But the
certification and training they receive is of limited value.
If you ask most teachers when they walk into the classroom
after coming out of your average preservice elementary program,
do you feel you're well prepared for that first day in the
classroom, for that first year, very few teachers support the
idea that they were. In fact, there have been many studies to
show that they think they have not.
To give you a specific reason why, and I'll be wrapping
this up, the American Federation of Teachers has cited the
difference between the reading research on what works on
training, on materials, on all kinds of other things that we're
currently spending quite a bit of money on today and what
actually will work.
In closing, the challenge of our teachers, our principals,
someone who's worked at many levels in the system, that is a
very substantial challenge, working very hard, the hardest
thing I've had to do is actually step in and be a principal for
a limited period of time in an inner-city functional school
with difficult behavior, with low morale, it's tough work. But
also someone who attended an inner-city school myself, who came
into this country not speaking a word of English and with many
classmates in that school who did not have the educational
opportunities I was lucky enough to have, I think it's just
unacceptable that we not succeed. It's unacceptable that we
decide that huge amounts of funding are not necessary. And then
when those funding, that unrealistic funding is not provided,
that it's defensible that we've not succeeded with all
children. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rebarber follows:]
Statement of Ted Rebarber, President, Accountability Works, Washington,
DC
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.010
------
Chairman Boehner. We thank all the witnesses for your
testimony today. And let me agree with part of Mr. Rebarber's
opening statement that none of us ever thought this was going
to be easy. Nowhere in our 200-year history have we ever
attempted to educate all of our children. We made a lot of
nice, happy talk about it, but we've never attempted to do it.
And we knew when we passed this act that we were challenging
the status quo in a way in education that had never occurred
before. And we know that our teachers, our schools, by and
large, are doing a very good job.
And I have to say it's difficult from where I sit as a
public policymaker to ask that more be done. But as I'm fond of
saying, it's not that poor minority child's fault that they may
have lost the lucky lottery in terms of who their parents were
or what neighborhood they grew up in or what school they may
have been assigned to. Every child in America deserves to have
a chance at a good education. My colleagues have heard me talk
about my eleven brothers and sisters, and the fact that if it
weren't for my parents, you know, all of us may not have gotten
a decent education. But for those children who may not have
parents around, may not have parents engaged--we know that if
they are, there's a pretty good chance that the kids will do
well, but it's not that child's fault if their parents aren't
engaged. We, as a society, have to figure out how do we help
that child get an education.
Now, when I say this is hard, we know it's hard because in
1994 Congress passed most of what is being blamed on No Child
Left Behind. We required all states to have standards in their
subjects. We required all states to develop assessments. And we
failed. We failed miserably. Why? Because most states decided
they just weren't going to do it. And in January of 2001, when
the Bush administration took office, exactly 11 states were in
compliance with the 1994 act. Why? Because all of them got
waivers. Because it was too hard. We don't do it this way. And
I bring this up--one, we know it's hard. Two, you need to
understand the ground we've been covering over the last decade
that got us to where we got to. And today all 50 states, the
District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, are all in compliance
with the law.
And I guess I want to begin with Dr. Fleeter. I want to get
to the essence of the issue. I can take issue--I have taken
issue with some of the assumptions used in your report. But
there's one big issue here that we keep circling around and not
really getting down to the basis of it. But Ohio, apparently by
law, regulation, statute or something, decided that proficiency
of 75 percent of Ohio's school-age children was the goal. Is
that by statute? Is that by regulation.
Dr. Fleeter. I think it's by both. It came from--there's a
series of recommendations by the state Board of Education in
terms of implementing the accountability system, as far as once
the assessments were in place, what are the correct standards.
Chairman Boehner. So in your report, as I heard you say,
1.4 billion of the $1.5 billion cost eventually would be
attributed to moving the goal from 75 percent proficiency of
Ohio's school-age children to 100 percent.
Dr. Fleeter. Yes, that's correct.
Chairman Boehner. Now, how many of us think that we ought
to throw 25 percent of our kids overboard.
Dr. Fleeter. I'm hoping none.
Chairman Boehner. It won't be my kids. It won't be
anybody's kids in here. There will be some poor child somewhere
in the state who is just never going to get an education.
They're going to move from one grade to the next whether
they've learned anything or not. They'll get a diploma from
high school whether they learned anything or not. And we're
going to do what we've been doing for the last 30, 40 years. I
guess if you want to call that a mandate, I'm for it.
I have referred to my good friend Ms. McCollum in her
opening statement. She sounded like me. She sounded like this
rock conservative Republican giving the speech in the Education
Committee about 10 years ago, about Federal control of
education, mandates. Trust me. I'm dead serious.
Ms. McCollum. My mother is a Republican, so--
Chairman Boehner. I have to tell you, I was one who voted
to get rid of the Federal Department of Education, divide it to
the states and get it out of the way. I have to tell you all,
I'm a happy convert to where we are. Because without Federal
intervention, Ohio may have stepped up to the plate because it
had an accountability system, but there are a lot of other
states that would never have stepped up to the--stepped up to
help the kids in their state. And after spending $300 billion
over 37 years, it's time, I think, from the Federal Government,
that we expect some results for the money that we continue to
invest.
Now, Mr. Ross--Dr. Ross, based on my conversations with
educators from one end of the country to the other, I can
imagine that you're not the--you're not the poster child for
superintendents. You probably are. You might be the black sheep
in the family. What do you hear from your fellow colleagues in
the education business about No Child Left Behind? What do you
think the real issue is, I guess is what I'm boiling this down
to.
Dr. Ross. I hear a lot of things from my colleagues across
the state. No, I don't represent the superintendents of this
state.I speak only for myself. I think I go back to my
comments. I think that there's a belief structure among our
superintendents, teachers and principals that they really can't
get this done. There's not enough belief in themselves that
they have the skills and ability to do that. I think that's why
that's so important, because I think, as we set these
expectations and you talk about the cost differential and the
75 percent in Ohio, I happen to believe just by raising the
expectation for kids with the new content standards in Ohio,
that the performance is going to go up if we get the kids,
teachers, principals, superintendents to believe that. It's a
believability issue that they do have the skills and ability to
do that. I believe strongly in our teachers and principals
being able to accomplish that with our parents and students.
I'm amazed when teachers have low expectations for the children
and maybe the children themselves.
Chairman Boehner. Ms. McCollum.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you.
Dr. Ross, I listened to the local news this morning. Did
you have a shortage in your school district of aides available
to help in administering--those who had second language, in
administering the tests that started this week.
Dr. Ross. We have 57 different languages spoken in our
school district. I do believe we have them covered to the
extent that they're IEPs.
Ms. McCollum. For the tests being taken today, you have
enough interpreters.
Dr. Ross. That is correct.
Ms. McCollum. Mr. Tomalis, you talk about the 4.6 billion
that's being spent in education. That's for this year.
Mr. Tomalis. The increase.
Ms. McCollum. Yeah.
Mr. Tomalis. Yeah.
Ms. McCollum. And we're spending $4 billion a month in
Iraq. You were making the comment we were spending as much on
education as we are in defense.
Mr. Tomalis. No, I wasn't. I was saying--
Ms. McCollum. I thought you might want to clear that up for
the record.
Mr. Tomalis. What I said is that we spend in this nation in
K-12 education approximately $501 billion a year, which is 125
billion a year more than we spend on defense.
Ms. McCollum. Well, you might want to check with Secretary
Rumsfeld on that.
When you talk about bringing all students up to grade
level, we had a hearing last week in Washington in which I kept
hearing how flexible this law was. It was so flexible. There
weren't going to be any problems with it. We didn't need to
waive anything. It's my understanding from the discussion that
took place that the department is now looking at how it
assesses those individual students that have extreme special
needs.
Mr. Tomalis. We promulgated new regulations back in
December that addressed this issue. Those children I saw
actually on the news this morning that there was a report that
educators in Ohio are upset that children with the most
severely cognitive disabilities are going to have to be tested
at grade level. That's not the fact.
Ms. McCollum. It's not the fact now that it's been changed
by the rule.
Mr. Tomalis. It wasn't the fact with the passage of the law
as well.
Ms. McCollum. There were a lot of people who didn't read it
that way. English as a second language. I have the expectation
that the child with English as a second language, 1 year
there's an intervention in the test and the next year we're
fine.
Mr. Tomalis. What the law allows, ma'am, is that the
English as a second language child can be tested in their
native tongue for up to 3 years on a group basis. For 3 years
it can. On an individual basis for two additional years. So
that's 5 years that a child could be tested in its native
tongue.
What the department with the secretary announced within the
past month is a way of treating these children when they first
come in, those who are in the school district for less than a
year. One of the safeguards about No Child Left Behind--
Ms. McCollum. The reason why I'm asking you to bring this
up is this is precisely what a lot of us were talking about
when the law was implemented. I have my transcript from the
amendment that I offered in which I was trying to eliminate for
those states like Minnesota that had spent millions and
millions of dollars just recently implementing tests,
identifying the needs for the students and targeting those
needs that we not have enough layer of tests which are
unfunded.
And I'll go with my state auditor's numbers, because as far
as I know, the Federal Government has not released its report
with the total cost of implementing the No Child Left Behind.
We knew that there were going to be challenges as this law went
forward. And there are challenges as the law is going forward.
I don't think the Department of Education, in my opinion, has
been very supportive of those of us, whether we're parents,
teachers, administrators, elected officials at the state and
local level, bringing those to your attention. Somehow or
another we are being made to feel by comments directed toward
teachers just recently that somehow we are against all children
being educated. So I'm glad to hear your tone. I appreciate
what you're saying. But I do have some concerns.
I'm just going to put this out and whoever wants to respond
can. One of the most important issues as determining how
successful a child's going to be in education are their
parents. The Chairman just mentioned that. Whether you're poor,
whether you're rich, the way your parent is involved in your
life makes a difference. So if we have a child that's not
succeeding, as the Chairman points out, it's going to be up to
the school somehow to all of a sudden develop all that
nurturing for that child while they're in the classroom. And do
we honestly talk about the cost of providing summer school,
after-school enrichment, one-on-one tutoring, and target the
money toward the child and measure how the child's performing,
increasing their ability to learn and to meet grade standard.
Or are we going to do what we're doing right now, which the
Chairman talks about doing, which is not talking and lumping
everyone in a group.
So how important is it for our country to really invest in
the total education of that child's social capital, education,
parents having ability to raise their education level, health
care, permanent housing? How important is that? And the
superintendent's smiling because you deal with these issues all
the time. How important is that? And do we need to address that
as well as the other issues we're talking about in the
President's law No Child Left Behind, if we're not really going
to leave them behind at all.
Dr. Ross. Again, let me speak just for Reynoldsburg and
Dick Ross. We've been focusing on student improvement in
Reynoldsburg for quite a few years. It was four or 5 years ago
when we were doing our staffing awards in our school district
in allocating resources and where they would be most important
to go, the building principal who advocated she wanted a social
worker more than a classroom teacher because she wanted to deal
with some of those issues you talked about. Subsequently to
that we've had principals under the system that we do have
social workers now in each of our buildings for that purpose.
Part of it is an engagement process for parents also. So I
think sometimes in the past, as educators, they'll send them to
us and we'll take care of it. We have to engage parents. We
have to set up expectations for our parents also about what we
need to accomplish. That's why the communication standards and
economic indications for our children need to happen at an
early age and communication has to occur with the parents. We
feel that the movement with some of the help from the social
workers identifying problem areas and trying to eliminate those
have been beneficial for us as part of our individual unit.
It's one of the things we can do.
Mr. Tomalis. A couple months ago I had the very high honor
and privilege of traveling to St. Louis to an elementary
school. That school about four or 5 years ago wasn't doing too
good. It's in a very poor neighborhood, overwhelming majority
of children are African-American or Hispanic. Overwhelmingly
they are poverty children, disadvantaged children on free and
reduced lunches. They had a grade level in the elementary
school with about 15 percent of their children were on grade
level.
Within 4 years, that school had 80 percent of its children
at grade level. They didn't build a new building. They didn't
get a new grant. They didn't increase per pupil expenditures
out the wazoo. They did one thing: They changed the principal.
They changed the principal. They brought in a principal whose
mantra, she told me--very short, petite woman with a lot of
energy--was that all children could learn, she believed. And
that psyche, that mentality permeated down throughout her
faculty.
Now, the children were more difficult to teach. No doubt.
Because of the circumstances and their environment that they
came from. So they instituted certain things. They reached out
to the community a little bit more. They got the parents more
engaged. Which is what the Title I funds and other funding is
there to help do as well. But it was the leadership that played
the most important role. It wasn't the amount of money they
were spending. It was that woman who changed the lives of all
the children in that school.
Mr. Rebarber. I think the challenge that the congressman
just pointed out is real, that there are special challenges
with some students because of the background. And our
educational system unfortunately has not on the whole been
designed to succeed with those students that have those
difficult background. But there are things the educational
system can do to succeed with the great majority of those
students despite those challenges. I'll just give you a few
examples.
The point, the belief that all children can learn is
important. Then we have to get to what are specific things we
can do differently to improve these kids. I'll give you a
couple examples.
One, the reading example I gave before. Using a wide range
of reading methods, not just those that are consistently
supported by research, means that you're more dependent on
parents sitting there with the children, helping them at home
with reading, all of those kinds of things that parents can do
and many do do, including many minority parents. Many parents
don't have the time, their life is less stable, add some of the
challenges that you pointed out. So using effective methods
that are designed to work without the support or with only a
limited amount of support at home is only part of it.
Just another example. Many of these kids require special
instruction which doesn't have to be done just for these kids.
It can be done in the context of school. On how to behave in
school, how to--on all kinds of things. Their life at home is
not often sufficiently stable, time for homework. The kind of
homework that's often designed in schools requires parents to
spend hours helping their kids do their homework assignments.
It's not true in the best schools. It's not true by the best
teachers. There's a whole range of practices in our school
systems today that are designed to leave a very substantial
responsibility for the parents. Unfortunately, the situation we
have today in our society does not permit that anymore. So the
schools have to change the practices to take responsibility for
educating all kinds regardless of background. And based on my
experience, what I've seen, I'm confident that there are ways
it can be. It's not easy. But there are changes that can be
made.
Dr. Fleeter. We all would like to respond to your question.
It is a good question. It's important. I would like to point
out in our study that there's a category under our intervention
what we call academic coordination that I think would be most
consistent with what you articulated in terms of working to
make sure everybody is on the same page of the playbook and
they understand that. I think there would be some tradeoffs. I
think our costs for those services were $100 billion.
There could be some tradeoffs there if you're doing other
things that are beyond that. If you're doing something that's
changing the initial conditions that are truly when the kids
are at school, then it's going to--it's an extension of that
same argument. You can do more things earlier. You can do more
things outside the classroom. It's going to mean what you do
inside the school building is going to be less.
Ms. McCollum. I couldn't do this. You were--
Chairman Boehner. In the rest room.
Ms. McCollum. Yeah. But I wanted to submit to the Committee
a letter here from the Ohio Education Association. And a copy
of the editorial from one of my local papers in Minnesota which
reinforces that we want to amend it, not end it, the Leave No
Child Behind.
Chairman Boehner. Without objection, the documents will be
made part of the record.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Tiberi.
Mr. Tiberi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just to expand upon something you said earlier. One of the
things that I think No Child Left Behind has done is raise the
debate in education about what kids can and can't do. And
having said it earlier, I'll say it again, living in a family
where English wasn't the first language growing up and going
into an elementary school at grade 6 where my mom didn't speak
very good English because she had only been here for 7 years,
and my dad immigrated as well, thank God for them that I'm here
today because they pounded into me the importance of a quality
education. I was lucky to not only have good parents; I had
great teachers.
As some of the audience knows, many teachers that I know
were concerned about the proficiency tests. I ran against the
father of a proficiency test when I came to Congress. But I
understood a little bit about why that happened. I wasn't in
the legislature when the proficiency test was passed.
What I did see when I was going to school in Columbus--and
I graduated, Mr. Chairman, in a middle class to lower income
school, about 40, 45 percent African-American, most remaining
white--were that there were kids, both black and white, that
were socially promoted, that, quite honestly, couldn't read and
write. I was fortunate enough to have parents and some quality
teachers who pounded into me the importance of getting ahead.
And I sensed some of that in visiting Reynoldsburg.
Dr. Ross, knowing teachers and knowing principals in your
school and having been in your school--you touched on earlier
the expectation that every child has the ability to learn. How,
post No Child Left Behind--we're 2 years into it. How is the
debate--and I would argue the debate has actually made public
schools better in Ohio, and my sense is that more children are
learning. How do you see it affecting the attitude in the
Reynoldsburg City Schools.
Dr. Ross. I think in Reynoldsburg and across the country,
state--it's raging there also. But I think one--if I had a
suggestion for the Committee on an adjustment of No Child Left
Behind, because I think it's the most important component, and
a lot of credit goes to the people sitting in the audience, and
some of Bill Sanders work, I think that the issue should be
instead of looking at comparisons at growth from year to year,
grade level to grade level, maybe do that, but in addition
target individual students. Seems to me to be what I'm talking
about. I think what we have to have is a classroom teacher, a
principal that knows Johnny is going to grow a year, and if
they don't grow a year they're going to be intervening quickly.
I think the debate's going in Reynoldsburg, but I think the
issue is that teachers want kids to succeed. You think that if
we can give them the resources and the leadership at the
building level to achieve that, once they experience success,
it's contagious. We can do this. I think some of that's
happened in our district. I think we have some history to show
that.
Chairman Boehner. If the gentleman would yield.
Mr. Tiberi. I will yield to the Chairman.
Chairman Boehner. Clearly allows that type of measurement
for adequate yearly progress. It's just that most assessment
systems, as they've been set up, find it difficult to track
those students to do that measurement. But I know that there's
discussion here in Ohio and in other states moving to an
assessment system similar to that, which I do think would be a
more accurate reflection of how well the school's doing and how
well the students are doing.
Dr. Ross. Mr. Chairman, if I could just comment on that. I
think that it is--it needs to be personal between the teacher,
the principal, and the child. This is my child in my classroom
and I'm going to make sure that he or she learns this and gets
back to grade level. When it's made that personal--if it's more
nebulous, it's hidden within grade level, I think it's harder
for them to do that. I think the teacher will respond.
Mr. Rebarber. I want to enforce the idea that we should
look at the gains for individual students and value that. At
the same time, I think it's important to note that, first, the
No Child Left Behind law moves us in that direction in that
many states do not have grade-by-grade testing which is
necessary to do that. Many states know it's not required in the
law. The bill is subsequently beyond what's in the law and
planned to add that kind of value added or other kinds of
assessment as their capacity is put in place. I think No Child
is moving us forward in some ways on that. I think the only
caution I would have on that kind of system is that under that
system the common way to judge success is one child made 1
year's worth of progress. And the reality is, for all too many
children, they are far behind where they need to be. We cannot
give up. We cannot say because you are 2 years behind, you will
always stay 2 years behind. There is plenty of evidence quite
apart from one-on-one tutoring that there are cost-effective
ways to accelerate those students to get them on grade level.
If we do it in that direction, I think the targets have to be
ambitious enough that we catch up most of these kids.
Mr. Tiberi. Thank you.
Dr. Fleeter, you mentioned pointing out costs on the
Driscoll & Fleeter eleven report. Inside joke. Let me point a
couple out and get your responses to them.
Your model that you use is based on a study with respect to
special education, the concept that it would cost more
depending on the child's need. Let me challenge that a little
bit in terms of how you can determine what the cost is. On the
surface it sounds completely right. I spent a day in one of my
school systems talking to special education teachers and
administrators and going into the classroom and hearing from
them about the massive differences between different types of
children.
I'll give you two examples. One child was on a ventilator,
laying flat on his back, and will for the rest of his life.
Another child was a special education child, and they had just
found that one of the problems that she had was going to be
corrected because it was a vision problem. And so the cost
estimate for the one child wasn't going to go on as long as at
least they thought, while the other one will continue to go on.
Obviously, you have everything in between. How does your cost
model associate true cost.
Dr. Fleeter. The only way that you can deal with issues
like that--what you're saying, every kid is different. And so
the way we approached that in our report was we looked at the--
we got all the data on individual performance in grade four and
grade six on reading and math from the Ohio Department of
Education, on a student-by-student basis, without any
identifiers so that we're not violating any privacy concerns,
because we have all the data with the characteristics of these
children and their performance. And we broke--the first thing
you do is separate the kids who passed into a different pot and
the kids who failed. We looked at the kids who did not pass the
test and broke them into core tiles. You could break them into
decimals or however finally you want to grade it. You could
separate them into performance groups. We did it based on core
tiles. The table that I referred to was the one that showed if
you look at the characteristics of those students by their
performance, you see the very clear pattern that--I think for
the core tile one, that was the lowest. From the group of
failing students, about 90 percent of those kids had--they were
either economically disadvantaged or special education or
limited English proficient or combination of those. And if you
look at the highest performing group of students, it was the
students who passed at the advanced level, there were 20
percent of those kids who had any number fit into those
categories. From that you learn a couple things. One, just
because you're in one of those categories doesn't mean you
can't succeed and doesn't mean you can't succeed at a high
level.
The second thing you learn is that, again, it's the
marginal cost issue, that it's going to cost. As you go further
away from the passing score, you're dealing with kids that have
more and more issues. The only way we can do that is on some
kind of average basis. We didn't make any attempt to say here's
what you need for economic disadvantagement or what you need
for special ed. But we put our cost model together in a way
that the cost of the intervention programs would apply to all
the kids in those core tiles.
Mr. Tiberi. But why not consider every dollar was spent
prior to No Child Left Behind, every Federal dollar.
Dr. Fleeter. Because that would be intermingling the total
cost issue with the marginal cost issue. I think the point
there would be it's--if you're--you look at the dollars then
being spent right now, and our view of this is that those
dollars, Federal, state or local, that they're contributing to
the level of performance that we could look at in 2003. And so
if you have that level of performance, then we need to go and
raise that level of performance.
Our presumption there, and I think Mr. Rebarber pointed
out, that we clearly need additional work to say what is this
money being spent on, are there ways that money right now could
be spent more productively and you can do better. We made some
assumptions to assume that our core tiles students closest to
passing, those kids ought to be able to get up to speed without
additional resources. As you go further away, we made
assumptions that you're going to need to do more for the kids.
Chairman Boehner. Mr. Rebarber, quickly. We're going to go
to Mr. Rebarber.
Mr. Rebarber. I'll try to be brief. On this issue of the
last quarter, the quarter that's not mentioned apparently in
the current Ohio statute and regulations, the previous state
law, one of the assumptions in the Ohio--initial Ohio study
that we questioned is the notion that the great majority of
these students need tutoring, tutoring including the reading
recovery model, when you have one-on-one or very small one-,
two-, three-person student groups, you're going to get an
improvement effectiveness almost regardless of whether it's
reading recovery, whatever it is, almost regardless of the
dollars that are provided.
One of the considerations that I hope this Committee and
all educators consider, it's not just what's effective, what's
cost effective. There's always a limited pool of dollars,
whatever that amount is.
The one-on-one tutoring is for the great majority of that
25 percent. The evidence is that it's probably the least cost
effective of a lot of other approaches. Instead of a quarter of
our kids, the percent that probably need that, if we had
effective practices, teachers knowledgeable about their
content, et cetera, it's probably closer to one or 2 percent of
all students. There are many groups that have reviewed the
evidence on what are effective remediation approaches. Ideally,
we'd like to have one tutor or teacher for all children. But
the reality is the money isn't there. So even for that bottom
quarter, there are highly effective approaches that are not
that small and that expensive.
Chairman Boehner. Mr. Ryan.
Mr. Ryan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one comment
quickly on what Mr. Tiberi said about the student with the
vision problem. I think that is something that we've overlooked
as well. I think it speaks to the fact that education is one
component, but also making sure these young students have
adequate health care coverage. And having millions of kids
without health care is another issue that would help us achieve
the standards that we have here.
First, Mr. Rebarber, I know there's a conflict here--I
don't know if anyone else noticed--between you and Dr. Fleeter.
One of the questions--one of the issues that Dr. Fleeter
brought up was the premise--the economic premise that trying to
increase the number of outputs would cost money and therefore
increasing the number of inputs. With that premise, do you
start there as well.
Mr. Rebarber. I think you cannot just make assumptions
based on a broad premise of that kind. I think you have to
actually look at the real evidence on what it costs to educate
kids. I don't think the--in theory, it sounds fine, but if it
applies to one or 2 percent rather than 25 percent, you get
different results. That principle sounds fine in principle, but
the application is very questionable, in my judgment.
Mr. Ryan. So you're saying that we have a 75 percent level;
we want to get to 100. You're saying that it will not cost any
more per student to educate that bottom 25 percent than it
would cost to educate the other 75 percent.
Mr. Rebarber. Actually, what we're saying is that some of
the additional expenditures that are funded through No Child
Left Behind, the increases beyond previous expenditures, are
going to get us improved student achievement if they're spent
well. We identified some fairly expensive uses of those funds.
It's well known that there is a shortage of math and science
teachers at the high school level, special ed. in some areas.
We identified the costs included in our assumptions, even
though many states aren't going down this path, of completely
eliminating the differential compared to the private sector
because we know that's a particular challenge. There are some
additional expenses, and they funded those specific expenses.
As far as others beyond those new moneys, we just think the
most prudent thing to do is to look at what is the most we can
accomplish by restructuring and reallocating current
expenditures and then see where that gets us. The life of this
bill is not through 2014. There's going to be a normal period
of review of this legislation like there has been of every
other ESEA legislation. We think at this point in time there
are many things that states have not yet put in place, not just
the schools, but state policy as well to support the schools.
And we should see where those get us and then if additional
money is additional.
Mr. Ryan. So your opinion in your analysis is that it does
cost more money to educate those kids, but the increase in
revenues from the Federal Government is enough at this point to
satisfy that increase? I'm just trying to clarify.
Mr. Rebarber. I'm trying to be very specific. Our position
is that there is substantial improvements, major improvements,
not incremental improvements, that can be accomplished with the
new funding and with restructuring and reallocating current
dollars. They might be spending more in some years and less in
others. Our recommendation is that, with those projected
increases, we should see how far we can get with the problem
reforms and review whether we need more money on that.
Mr. Tomalis. May I address that for a second? My back-of-
the-envelope estimate, which basically says I did it while I
came on the plane, is that we spend on average, I believe,
about 10 to 15 billion dollars a year on professional
development. That's probably very conservative numbers. It's
probably much more than that. The question is, will we do
better by spending 15 to 20 rather than 10 to 15, or do we look
at what we're getting for the 10 to 15 billion.
I think that's one of the issues that I have with the Ohio
study, is when you talk about marginal cost, you're under the
assumption that that 10 to 15 billion expenditure is perfect.
And I take issue with that, that we aren't looking back at what
we're doing to make sure that we're doing it right.
The other thing that I think that's often lost in those
analyses is that you see around the country is nonfinancial
decisions that are made and the impact that they have on the
education of a child. I agree that the teacher is the most
important actor--outside the parent, the teacher is the most
important actor in this endeavor of education. The farther away
you get from that blackboard, the less of an impact that you
have. Those of us at the Federal level, I take--I smile a
little bit when I hear about this is a one size fits all and
how this is not a one size fits all. It could not be a one size
fits all piece of legislation when you have 15,000 different
school districts in this nation and how that impacts at the
local level.
I'll give you one example. Prior to my job in the Federal
Government, I was in the superintendent of Philadelphia's
office one time. Philadelphia is not known to be a star as far
as academic achievement was concerned. We had a conversation
about staffing and getting quality teachers in the classroom. A
decision that was made in Philadelphia between the school board
of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia teachers union, and it's
very common in many urban districts, says, in essence, that as
teachers become more and more senior, they get to choose the
schools at which they teach in. That in and of itself is a
decision collectively made at the local level between those two
entities.
What does that do? Human nature is such that as I become
more of a senior teacher, I tend to go to areas that are less
difficult for me, my environment is much less difficult for me,
except the blessed soles that stick it out in those tough
schools. But what happens is that those children who are the
most in need of the most experienced teachers in those
circumstances get the green teachers and the rookie teachers.
Now, that wasn't figured into the Ohio study about some of
these decisions that are made at the local level that do not
impact a dollar at all. But what would happen if you had an
agreement in place that said the need that is the greatest, our
most experienced teachers will go. What would that do about
changing the educational foundation? These are some of the
conversations as we continue. I talked before, 10 years from
now we'll probably be spending a trillion dollars a year on K-
12 education. As we go forward, we have to look at more than
financial issues.
Mr. Ryan. I understand your point, but at the same time,
you can take a situation like that and say you're going to have
to pay that senior teacher more to go back into a more
difficult--
Mr. Tomalis. The teacher would have earned the same under
the contract whether they're at the more difficult school or
easier school.
Mr. Ryan. I don't think you can say that, though. I don't
think, sitting here, we can say that if we change that
particular aspect of the system that you're talking about--and
yes, it may save us more, but it may cost us more money to do
that.
Mr. Tomalis. I agree. I think No Child Left Behind
represents certain circumstances where you do give more pay to
teachers in higher demand areas. You give merit pay or
differential pay. Unfortunately--and this is another problem I
have, is that they don't look at that solution as a viable
solution.
Dr. Fleeter. I just want to say I agree with the point that
Mr. Tomalis made about distribution of the teachers. I want to
point out that we've done--for the last 2 years, we've done a
study for the Ohio Department of Education and the State Board
of Education that looked at the teacher conditions of teacher
supply and demand. One of the things that we found is that the
turnover and attrition rate in teachers is different across
different types of districts. It's most pronounced in the urban
and rural poor districts. There's--part of the aspect of what
Mr. Tomalis said is that you have fewer experienced teachers in
the places where you need them most. So I think that--I agree
completely that there are ways to realign that, but I don't
think it would be costly to do that because we need to come up
with a way to get the teachers staying in places that we need
them. So within the district there is an allocation issue that
occurs, but there's another allocation issue that's occurring
across different districts.
Mr. Ryan. If we can get to 100 percent without spending a
dime more, we're all for it. I think we're all realistic in the
fact that we say we have to make these investments.
Dr. Fleeter, one of the criticisms for your report, which I
thank you for doing, just because being the first guy to stick
your head out of the fox hole is a dangerous proposition to
begin with.
Dr. Fleeter. More dangerous than I thought.
Mr. Ryan. I appreciate your courage. One of the criticisms
was the fact that in your analysis you did not--I guess cheap
is not a good word, but find the most efficient way to
intervene, the most cost-effective intervention. And your
critics say that you didn't look at all the different options.
Can you explain to us, one, is why you didn't do that, and two,
is do you feel that the techniques like the one-on-one tutoring
are in a normal range that other means of intervention would
cost about the same.
Dr. Fleeter. Two different questions there. I think the
first one, in terms of the cost effectiveness, that's partly
related to the issue of can we do more with the dollars that we
have right now. I agree that one of the things we need to do is
get a much better understanding of what's going on currently
and are there things that can be changed and we don't know that
at this point. From what we did in terms of putting together
our cost model--we say this a number of times in our paper,
that our model with the interventions is a model to determine
the cost and determine at the statewide level and we based it
on consultation with the Ohio Department of Education and
practitioners. Just to give an example in Columbus that they
do--we come in and ask a district like Columbus which is a
larger district, which has lots of issues in terms of student
achievement, what is it that you're doing, what is it that
you're doing that's working. They're doing a variety of these
programs. They've got after-school tutoring. They've got the
one-on-one intervention. They've got the summer school option.
They do evaluations of every one of these studies so they can
document and understand what's working. I was impressed to see
the knowledge and understanding of the practices that it has.
The problem is that they don't have the funding in order to do
this for all the kids that need it.
Just to give you an example. We live in Columbus. My two
kids go to a Columbus public school. In their reading recovery
one-on-one intervention, they can do four kids in each grade.
It works. But their need would be to do much more than that as
well. I think, again, if someone can document to me that what
we have here is that we've put more cost into something that's
less cost effective in something else, I would welcome to see
that documentation. I'm not convinced to the extent that Mr.
Rebarber is that we have that yet. If we've done something to
overestimate it, then we're in better shape than I think. The
main idea--we came up with a reasonable cost model that has
those range of options.
Chairman Boehner. Rarely will you ever see a congressional
hearing where the Chairman's being as lenient as I have been
today with all of my colleagues and our witnesses. Are there
any follow-up questions.
Mr. Tiberi. Chairman, thank you for your indulgence. Just
to continue along the line of what Representative Ryan talked
about. I appreciate the Chairman's willingness to give me a
little leeway here. On this cost issue on the analysis, let me
just pull one thing out of the report, following up on his
questioning. You make the assumption under professional
development that every instance of professional development a
teacher's going to have to improve him or herself is going to
cause the cost to the local school district of a qualified
substitute. Why make that assumption? Why can't a teacher if
it's permitted under the bargaining agreement or negotiate with
the school allow the teacher to do professional development on
an in-service day or weekend or after school? Why make the
assumption it's going to be during school hours.
Dr. Fleeter. That's a good question. I think part of that--
when I focus grouped with the treasurers, that one was one of
the issues that they articulated. One of the--obvious to me to
say why can't you do some stuff over the summer when you have
teachers who have time on their hands to do that, and they
pointed out an issue--there's a timing issue of when the funds
need to be allocated and when they can be spent. As far as when
you can do this, there are in-service days that are in the
system right now, and I think what you're talking about is sort
of we look at that as an opportunity cost issue. If you're
going to add in-service days, it's going to be at the expense
of saying, OK, there's going to be less classroom time than
there is right now. We look at that and I say that's a wash to
do it that way. You're going to have five in-service days. The
kids aren't there. That's five less days they're in the
classroom getting education. We can do this on the weekend.
That would be the one area we can do that.
Mr. Tiberi. You would agree that there's a cost associated
with your assumption that may not be there.
Dr. Fleeter. It would be to the extent that there could be
some ways you could add some of that. I will note one criticism
on the professional development that we underestimated the
amount that you needed by half.
Mr. Tiberi. Thank you.
Chairman Boehner. Mr. Ryan. Anything.
Mr. Ryan. One or two quick ones.
Chairman Boehner. Oh, I heard that quick ones. All right.
Mr. Ryan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do appreciate it, but
I think this is a great discussion that we're having here.
One comment that I'd like to make, Mr. Tomalis talked about
the principal in St. Louis got her students to 80 percent. I
would argue that and be in full support. And we all know the
value of great teachers and great principals to get a school to
a certain level. What I think we can't forget is she got them
to 80 percent. We need to get them to 100 percent.
Mr. Tomalis. She's not quitting.
Mr. Ryan. I'm sure she's not quitting. I think she would
probably say as well at some point, to get from 80 to 100,
she's going to need more resources to do that.
One question that I heard a lot about this $6 billion and
unspent education funds. And for those of us who are new to
this Committee, can you explain to us--because I know states
have 27 months in which to spend the money, and I'm hearing a
lot of different angles to this. Is that money--is that $6
billion already committed to programs we have in place now?
Because the spin that--I'm understanding that that's new money,
but my understanding is it's already committed money.
Mr. Tomalis. Annually the Congress appropriates dollars in
its various programs to the states, not just education but
across the board, and saying to those states here's your pot of
money this year to spend. When states have an obligation--I
mean states in the generic sense, not the department or any one
entity. When they have an obligation against that, they draw
the money down against that obligation. They take the money.
Usually it comes in the form of salaries. Most Title I moneys
are in the form of salaries or expenses. They don't draw it
down until they have that obligation. What the $6 billion says
is that there are no obligations against that dollar at that
time. So Congress appropriated the money in years past and they
haven't had an obligation up against that money at that time.
That's what it simply means. This year we appropriated--or you
appropriated an additional 12, 13 billion dollars, and so then
they're going to draw down that money. Once they're done
drawing down that money--that money goes back to the year 2000
that's been sitting in the Federal treasury waiting to be drawn
down.
Mr. Ryan. Can that money be drawn down for the new mandates
that have been imposed.
Mr. Tomalis. It's part of Title I. It goes to pay for the
implementation of ESEA and other programs. There's also IDEA
money that is sitting there waiting to be drawn down as well.
Chairman Boehner. And Title I funds and funds for--the fund
that was created to help schools in need of improvement, that
money has been sitting there as well.
Mr. Tomalis. And it's not to say that the money isn't
necessary. The money is necessary. The question is, how quickly
do they need to get the money. You're now going to go back and
you're debating another 12, 13 billion dollars. What we've
seen, interestingly, when we raised this issue as the amount of
money that's in the Federal treasury, the acceleration of the
draw-down has been tremendous. That you've seen when it wasn't
part of the public discussion this money was sitting there.
When it became part of the public discussion, draw-down has
accelerated quite a bit.
Mr. Ryan. Help me out here. So that money in--did you say
2000, 2002.
Mr. Tomalis. Between 2000--I believe it's 2000, 2001. I'll
verify that. Through last year. It's not current year money. We
have the additional 12 or so this year to spend as well.
Mr. Ryan. One final question to Dr. Ross. I feel like I
left you out. You didn't seem too disappointed. Some of the
findings that were talked about today, especially by Mr.
Rebarber, that additional Federal funding is not needed to
improve student achievement. I know you talked a lot about
attitude and focus within the school district. In your own
experience with your own school district, do you have enough
money.
Dr. Ross. One of the things I spoke about in my comments
was I think superintendents, boards of education need to look
at the resources they have available to them and we need to be
measuring the activities that we're using and spending those
funds on. I think that would be the first thing we do before we
should be asking for more additional money. I think we can
effectively use our resources more effectively than we have in
the past if we base it on analysis. But that all happening, I
think you make the decision, if we're effectively using our
resources, yes. But I don't think we've done the first yet.
Chairman Boehner. Let me thank my colleagues for coming
today and thank our witnesses for their excellent testimony. I
think we shed quite a bit of light on No Child Left Behind.
I think there's one point that I'd like to make. And that
is that I don't know if we know how to educate all of our
children. We don't know how we're going to accomplish this
goal. I think it's rather difficult to describe or try to
ascribe a number to how much it's going to cost. But I've often
said the most important thing about No Child Left Behind is
that it's going to cause a debate in every community in
America. That debate has been underway. It is underway. And
it's a debate that our citizens need to have about whether
we're going to educate all of our kids, how are we going to do
it, and how much is it going to cost. This is an important
conversation as we get a foothold into the 21st century that
will have a tremendous impact on the society of tomorrow. So
thank you all for coming.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]
OEA, NEA, Leave Facts Behind in Attacks on Bipartisan Education Reform,
Fact Sheet Submitted for the Record
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.011
Letter from Gary L. Allen, President, Ohio Education Association,
Submitted for the Record
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.012
K-12 Rules/Leave Parts of NCLB Behind, Editorial Submitted for the
Record by Rep. Betty McCollum
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 92410.013