[Senate Hearing 109-426]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 109-426
ROUNDTABLE ON COMPETITIVENESS: BUILDING AND FILLING THE PIPELINE
=======================================================================
HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS
__________
FEBRUARY 16, 2006
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming, Chairman
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
WILLIAM H. FRIST, Tennessee CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee TOM HARKIN, Iowa
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia JAMES M. JEFFORDS, Vermont
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada PATTY MURRAY, Washington
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah JACK REED, Rhode Island
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
Katherine Brunett McGuire, Staff Director
J. Michael Myers, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2006
Page
Enzi, Hon. Michael B., Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, opening statement......................... 1
Riddile, Mel, Ph.D., principal, J.E.B. Stuart High School,
Fairfax County Public Schools, Falls Church, VA................ 5
Willner, Robin, vice president, IBM Global Community Initiatives,
Armonk, NY..................................................... 5
Varner, Edna, former principal, Hamilton County Schools,
Chattanooga, TN................................................ 6
Ajax, Erick, vice president, E.J. Ajax and Sons, Inc.,
Minneapolis, MN................................................ 7
Bzdack, Michael, Ph.D., director of corporate contributions,
Johnson and Johnson, Inc., New Brunswick, NJ................... 8
Day, Sandra, magnet school administrator, Omaha Public Schools,
NE............................................................. 9
Langston, Carrie, teacher, Wyoming Writing Project, Chugwater, WY 10
Prepared statement........................................... 11
Schwarz, Eric, president and CEO, Citizen Schools, Boston, MA.... 12
Bailey, Bob, National Science Foundation, grant project manager,
Central Virginia Community College, Lynchburg, VA.............. 13
Freeney, Reygan, a doctoral candidate, University of Iowa, Iowa
City, IA....................................................... 14
Layzell, Tom, Ph.D., president, Council of Postsecondary
Education, Frankfort, KY....................................... 15
Morningstar, Mary, Ph.D., associate professor, University of
Kansas, Department of Special Education, Lawrence, KS.......... 17
Shelton, Jim, executive director, Education Division, Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, Washington, DC....................... 19
Brooks-Crocker, Wanda, NDE certification administrator,
Framatome, ANP, Inc., and Areva and Siemens Company, Lynchburg,
VA............................................................. 20
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Prepared statement of Senator Kennedy........................ 35
Letter from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education,
Thomas Layzell............................................. 36
ROUNDTABLE ON COMPETITIVENESS: BUILDING AND FILLING THE PIPELINE
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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2006
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
Room SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Michael B.
Enzi [chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Senators Enzi, Alexander, and Ensign.
Opening Statement of Chairman Enzi
The Chairman. Good morning. I am going to go ahead and
start. We will have a little interruption around 10:30 for a
vote. We will try and keep the roundtable going and gathering
the information.
I want to thank Ranking Member Senator Kennedy for his
participation and availability and allowing this kind of a new
system of gathering information, which is a roundtable.
Normally, we have hearings, and sometimes hearings become very
divisive. They are designed that way. We are having a
roundtable, which we think is designed to gather information.
We don't think we are unique, but we are unusual in that we try
and gather information before we do a bill.
[Laughter.]
So I would like to welcome you to today's roundtable, which
is on competitiveness, which is building and filling the
pipeline. We have already made some provisions for college, but
we are very worried about birth through 12th grade. We have a
Head Start bill that has already passed committee that will
take care of some of the birth to kindergarten, but we are very
concerned about the kindergarten through 12th grade. We are
even concerned about the complacency among Americans, thinking
that maybe we are okay in those areas. So we are very fortunate
today to have this outstanding group of individuals to talk to
us about high school as a critical piece of the competitiveness
pipeline.
Last week, the HELP Committee kicked off its consideration
of the competitiveness agenda with the Secretary of Education,
Margaret Spellings, and she talked about the President's
American Competitiveness Initiative and the critical role that
education plays in addressing the challenges of a global
economy. We all know that knowledge is the key to our ability
to compete and lead. She emphasized the need to support
creativity and entrepreneurial talent while making high schools
more rigorous. Teachers must be prepared to help students
achieve.
She used the word ``pocket protector skills'' that will
ensure that America's students are the best in the world, that
they speak the language of success and that, as an economy, we
get more than a passing grade. As the Senator's only
accountant, I look forward to pocket protectors being cool--
[laughter]--which my kids assure me they never were.
Throughout the discussion with Secretary Spellings, one
theme consistently emerged, and that is unless more students
complete high school on time, prepared for postsecondary
education or the workforce, we won't have enough people in the
pipeline to take the challenging and rigorous coursework that
will produce the mathematicians, the scientists, the engineers,
the technicians, or the researchers that we need.
By 2010, two-thirds of the 7 million worker gap will be a
skilled worker shortage. That is unacceptable. Without an
educated workforce, we will certainly lose our preeminence in
the world to developing nations that are quickly growing,
educating their citizens, and innovating at a much faster rate
than we are. A student who takes just one remedial reading
course in college is eight times less likely to graduate than a
student who is fully prepared for college. At a time when most
jobs will require some postsecondary education, we have to
focus on how to graduate more students on time with less need
to repeat basic reading and math courses and a greater
likelihood of success in college and the workplace.
To be competitive in a global economy, we must ensure
coordination and accountability in our education and workforce
programs across all the agencies, departments, and levels of
government, and it goes across 207 programs and 13 different
agencies. We must ensure that everyone has an opportunity to
achieve academically and achieve the critical skills they need
to succeed regardless of their background.
To stay in the competitiveness race and to win it, we must
ensure that school is never out and learning is never over.
It is no secret that institutions of higher education and
employers have expressed their dissatisfaction with the level
of preparation of our high school graduates and their need for
remediation in order to do college work or to participate in
the workforce. Each year, taxpayers pay in excess of $1 billion
to provide remedial education to students at our public
universities and community colleges. Businesses report spending
even more to address the lack of literacy and basic skills of
our entry-level workers.
Let me share a few facts that speak to the seriousness of
the issue. American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of the 29
developed nations in mathematics, literacy, and problem solving
on the most recent international assessment. Reading
proficiency among 12th graders has declined to the point where
just over one-third of them are even considered proficient
readers. Nearly one-third of entering college freshmen need at
least one remedial course. The United States has the highest
college enrollment rates, but a college completion rate lower
than most developed countries in the world.
And in this decade, 40 percent of job growth will be in
jobs requiring postsecondary education, with those jobs
requiring associate degrees growing the fastest. Eighty percent
of jobs require postsecondary education or the equivalent, yet
only 52 percent of Americans over the age of 25 have achieved
that level of education, which leads us to why we are here
today.
We are here to listen and learn from the participants about
what is working in our high schools, about how secondary and
postsecondary partnerships can be strengthened, and about how
our students can be better prepared for the challenges and
opportunities they have beyond high school. By taking this
opportunity to strengthen and focus our education and our
training systems on ensuring the knowledge and skills that we
as individuals and the Nation need, we are assuring that
America's students will be the best in the world. They are. We
want that to continue. We want them to speak the language of
success, and we want our country to get more than a passing
grade.
I want to thank all of you for being here today, your
willingness to share your experiences and your insight. We have
a rather limited forum. We want to get a lot of information. In
fact, we want to get more information from you than you will be
able to give during this forum, so I want to remind you that as
people are making comments, feel free to make some notes and
share those with us later, as well. We will keep the record
open for 10 days for additional thoughts that you might have.
We want this to be the beginning of the stimulation of
ideas, not the end of all. There may be some questions that
come as a result. We have a number of staff people from people
on the committee and they may have some questions that they
would like to follow up on in regard to answers that you have
given, and I would hope that you would participate that way, as
well. That is the way that we can get the most out of the
limited time that we have to be able to do these things.
We will have Senator Kennedy give a statement when he is
here. We will interrupt the proceedings to do that.
I mentioned this is a roundtable format, so it allows a
little more discussion than a typical Senate hearing. The
purpose of the roundtable is to hear the variety of viewpoints
on the roles of schools, institutions of higher education,
businesses building the pipeline of educated and skilled
workers.
Now, we have requested that participants not make any
official oral opening statements. We will be happy to have the
opening statements in written form to make a part of the record
today and we will review all of those, but that saves a lot of
time, and as you are commenting on these things, as concise as
you can be on it will allow more viewpoints, as well.
If any of you would like to answer a question or comment on
one made by your colleagues, if you would stand your name tag
on its side, my staff will try and help keep track of the order
in which those happen so that we can get to them in order.
Again, we do request that you limit your statement or your
responses and would hope that those would stay under 2 minutes.
I will begin with the introduction of witnesses. Again, I
feel extremely fortunate that you have been willing to take the
time out of your day and your careers to be able to do this.
All of you are experts in your respective areas. I will go
through the participants in alphabetical order.
We have Erick Ajax, the Vice President of E.J. Ajax and
Sons, Inc., of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Bob Bailey, the National Science Foundation Grant Project
Manager of Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg,
Virginia.
We have Wanda Brooks-Crocker, the NDE Certification
Administrator for Framatome ANP, Inc., an AREVA and Siemens
Company, of Lynchburg, Virginia.
We have Michael Bzdack, Ph.D., Director of Corporate
Contributions of Johnson and Johnson, Inc., New Brunswick, New
Jersey.
We have Sandy Day, the Magnet School Administrator of the
Omaha Public Schools in Omaha, Nebraska.
We have Reygan Freeney, a doctoral candidate, University of
Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, a former Upward Bound math-science
teacher.
Carrie Langston is very special to me. She is a Wyoming
Writing Project teacher from Chugwater, Wyoming. How many here
know where Chugwater, Wyoming is?
[Laughter.]
It is not our biggest city, but I would like to take a
moment to do a special welcome to Ms. Langston. My daughter was
the principal of Chugwater School, so I have heard a lot about
the good work that is being done there and I welcome and thank
you for being with us today.
We have Mr. Tom Layzell, also a Ph.D., President of the
Council of Postsecondary Education from Frankfort, Kentucky.
Mary Morningstar, also a doctor, Associate Professor,
University of Kansas, Department of Special Education in
Lawrence, Kansas.
We have Mel Riddile, a doctor, Principal of the J.E.B.
Stuart High School in Fairfax County Public Schools from Falls
Church, Virginia.
Eric Schwarz, the President and CEO of Citizen Schools in
Boston, Massachusetts.
We have Jim Shelton, the Executive Director of the
Education Division of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in
Washington, DC.
We have Edna Varner, the former Principal of Hamilton
County Schools in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
And we have Robin Willner, the Vice President of IBM Global
Community Initiatives in Armonk, New York. IBM has Transition
to Teaching initiatives in North Carolina and New York.
We are pleased at the start of the roundtable to also have
Senator Ensign and Senator Alexander. Do either of you want to
make a quick comment?
Senator Ensign. I am pleased to be here.
The Chairman. Likewise.
[Laughter.]
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we will be following
up on the role of education in global economy. We provided two
questions for you to consider that will help us frame today's
conversation, and today we want to focus specifically on high
school and what needs to be done to increase high school
graduation, preparedness for postsecondary education, and to
decrease the need for remediation.
The first question that we asked was, what are some of the
strategies that have been proven effective at helping all
students complete high school with the knowledge and skills
needed to pursue postsecondary education and enter the 21st
century workforce? With all of this talent here--Dr. Riddile.
STATEMENT OF MEL RIDDILE, PH.D., PRINCIPAL, J.E.B. STUART HIGH
SCHOOL, FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS, FALLS CHURCH, VA
Mr. Riddile. I am a high school principal and I am not shy.
[Laughter.]
In terms of competitiveness on an international level, I
could say that our school, despite having 70 percent of our
students speak English as a second language, high levels of
poverty, mobility, and all the risk factors, including gang
activity in our area, our students consistently out-perform
students on international tests as measured by the
International Baccalaureate Program. Our students exceed 80
percent pass rates, and the international average is about 70
percent and those students go to selective schools, private
schools around the country--I mean, around the world.
We do that in a simple way. We said to the President when
he visited and delivered his high school reform speech at our
school last year, we spell hope ``R-E-A-D.'' The great
equalizer, and I think the key to raise achievement levels of
our students is to emphasize literacy K through 12. It is not
just a high school issue, it is an issue for all students in
all grades.
Literacy actually helps students perform consistently
higher on standardized tests and gives them the ability to do
just about anything in our school. If you look at students who
aren't performing, they consistently have low reading levels.
If we want to continue to perpetuate a servant class in our
society, all we have to do is continue to do what we have been
doing, and that is stop teaching reading at the 3rd grade and
that will ensure that we have students falling through the
cracks or falling off the bus or whatever way you want to
describe it.
So I would say that if you look at our ELL students, our
special education students, our emphasize on literacy enables
them to perform and consistently out-perform other students on
State and national tests.
The Chairman. Ms. Willner.
STATEMENT OF ROBIN WILLNER, VICE PRESIDENT, IBM GLOBAL
COMMUNITY INITIATIVES, ARMONK, NY
Ms. Willner. Good morning. First of all, thank you for
having us here. This, I know, is going to be an exciting
conversation.
Clearly, reading is important, but as you mentioned before,
math and science, engineering, the stem careers are critical
for preparing an innovation society. I know that everyone here
in the Senate and in Congress has been hearing from business.
IBM was privileged to bring the National Innovation Initiative
forward last year and you have been hearing about our concerns.
At IBM, we wanted to also be part of the solution and we
started Transition to Teaching, which you mentioned earlier. We
are investing in IBM-ers to encourage them to consider second
careers as teachers. We will only have great high schools when
we have great teachers, and that takes investment, that takes
preparation.
At IBM, we have thousands of people who have those pocket
protector skills. We want to make sure that they also take all
the skills they learned in coaching and leading teams and being
adventurers, learn how to be great teachers and go into our
schools. So we are providing financial incentives, $15,000 per
participant to cover their tuition, their related costs, and
also to give them a stipend. We want IBM-ers to take up to 4
months of a leave of absence and really go into schools, spend
time teaching, so that when they are ready to become a full-
time teacher and be the only adult in that room responsible,
they are going to be prepared, they are going to be terrific,
they are going to know their match and science, and they are
going to know how to teach.
So we just launched this initiative and we are very excited
about the opportunity to be working all over the country. We
actually are focusing on New York and North Carolina, where we
have a large number of folks, but we do have applicants from
Tennessee. We do have applicants from Texas, Minnesota,
Vermont, you know, IBM is everywhere in this country and we
have folks who would love to become teachers everywhere in this
country.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Varner.
STATEMENT OF EDNA VARNER, FORMER PRINCIPAL, HAMILTON COUNTY
SCHOOLS, CHATTANOOGA, TN
Ms. Varner. When I was introduced, I was introduced as the
former high school principal, and that is true, but I do want
you to know I am not out to pasture.
[Laughter.]
Currently, I am working with principals. I am an advisor to
the Hamilton County School District and Public Education
Foundation, and I also work as a Leadership Associate with the
National Literacy Initiative.
We also want high expectations for students, but in our
district, what we found is that while we all really believe in
high expectations for students, we had different definitions of
``high'' for different students. We actually had different
ceilings for different students and we were working hard to
help them reach those different high expectations.
One of the most important things we have done, and it has
been difficult, is that we decided 2 years ago to have a single
diploma and a single set of graduation requirements. If you
look at the Web site, it will say a single path, but it is not
a single path at all. It is really many paths to a single
diploma, and what that diploma offers is not just postsecondary
education, but that diploma is designed to make sure students
are eligible for all of the opportunities available to them,
and for some of them, that is going on to a 4-year college. For
some, it is going on to a 2-year college. For some, it is going
on to the workforce and continuing to learn. For some, it is
going to the military. But the goal is to have them graduate
eligible for every opportunity possible.
Now, that is a tall order for a district, and the work we
have been doing since our board passed that, and like I said,
that was difficult because our students have struggled even
with the different ceilings and the greatest fear was that our
struggling students will struggle even more if we raise the
bar. Well, that is not what is happening. What is happening is
what many of us have always believed, and that is that
struggling students want rigor, too, but they need to know the
skills that will help them to be successful even when the
curriculum is more rigorous.
So what we have been about the business of doing is working
through four goals. One of those is personalization, and we
started this with a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to
redesign our high schools. One of them is personalization, and
it is not just becoming buddies with students. There is a
reason for getting to know students, and it is getting to know
what students need in order to succeed with a rigorous
curriculum.
Then the other goal is flexibility, and that is trying to
make sure our schools fit the needs of students instead of
trying to make students fit the needs of schools.
The other is rigorous curriculum and understanding what
rigor really means, and what rigor means when you want to
graduate all students eligible for all of the opportunities
available to them.
And then the other is professional learning, because it
requires a different kind of teacher, a different kind of
principal, and a different kind of school district to graduate
students who are eligible for all of the opportunities
available to them.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Ajax.
STATEMENT OF ERICK AJAX, VICE PRESIDENT OF E.J. AJAX AND SONS,
INC., MINNEAPOLIS, MN
Mr. Ajax. Thank you, Senator Enzi. I am pleased to be here
this morning. I am a manufacturer. I hire the people that come
out of our educational institutions, and I have to say that our
world in manufacturing is simply getting rocked with intense
global competition and India and China, Internet auctions on an
ongoing basis, a low-cost race to the bottom. But I am happy to
say that we are winning.
It is something that our employees--we have added 25
percent growth to our employees in the last year. We have been
able to put down the best month in the 60-year history of our
company. For the last 15 years, we have invested 5 percent of
our total payroll in professional development and education of
each and every one of our employees. We continually have to
reinvent ourselves as our competition changes. And we really
believe that it is a lifelong cycle of learning and continual
improvement.
We really think Minnesota has a unique program where the
private sector started a $1.5 billion endowment fund and a
foundation to fund early childhood development to help
subsidize our Head Start program. We have 20,000 low-income
students, or not students, but children that simply only about
10,000 are those are funded by the Head Start program. This
endowment, when we have it fully funded, will have 100 percent
participation.
We believe in involvement with the business community and
our colleges. We have had some phenomenal partnerships that we
have been able to develop with the Minnesota Department of
Labor and Industry and have very solid success, and again,
providing that ongoing training for not only incumbent
employees, but also entry-level. In the past 6 months, we have
worked with a program through the Center for Workforce Success
in the National Association of Manufacturers and several
foundations where we have actually graduated 60 low-income, at-
risk individuals through a training program at a local
technical college, and more than 40 of those have found work
and are on career ladders in our industry. So it truly is a
team effort.
One last thing I would like to mention, we have had a lot
of success with experimental learning, with a Junior
Achievement program. We have a Battlebots program where we
built, the manufacturing sector has built a competition dome
for robots that students build. We have had a lot of success
with EarthWorks, a science program, a hands-on program. the
Junior Achievement exchange city has been very, very successful
for us, as well. So we have some good things going on in
education and industry in cooperation in the State of
Minnesota. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Bzdack.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL BZDACK, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, CORPORATE
CONTRIBUTIONS, JOHNSON AND JOHNSON, INC., NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ
Mr. Bzdack. Echoing what Mr. Ajax just said, the hands-on
experience, we have found in our programs is very valuable. But
before I talk about that, I wanted to just mention that there
is an incredible amount of evidence already out there in
programs that work, and many of us are out looking to create
new programs when there are measured programs that have already
proven success. So I think I am going to stress that over and
over, that there are some great models out there already and
they just need to be scaled up.
From our experience, we have found that the magic
ingredients to these community partnerships that increase
student achievement are the participation of higher education,
the participation of the businesses in the community, and the
employee engagement. I mean, that seems like a simple formula,
but it boils down to children exposed to the real world and
real people and those people that do those jobs. This again
sounds simple, but if it is done over time and a minimum of a
3-year period, we found that we have evidence that we can
improve student achievement and college readiness for these
students.
We often say when we begin a program in a community that
college is like going to the moon and the workplace is like
going to Mars, so our whole goal is to break down those
barriers and demystify both experiences. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Day.
STATEMENT OF SANDRA DAY, MAGNET SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR, OMAHA
PUBLIC SCHOOLS, NE
Ms. Day. Thank you. I wanted to start my comments just by
clarifying a little bit about what magnet schools are so we are
all on the same page. Magnet schools are public schools of
choice that offer a really innovative array of curriculum
offerings that are not offered at the neighborhood school so
that parents will opt, choose to send their child to a
different neighborhood. This becomes a very important and
effective integrative tool for the Omaha Public Schools.
We have learned that not only does a curriculum have to
look different, it has to be delivered in a different way, and
that is one of the things that the Omaha Public Schools for 25
years now, working with the Council of Great City Schools and
Magnet Schools of America, have developed some really terrific
strategies, and one of them is and has been echoed here already
and that is engagement of the learner, be that child engaged at
pre-K or all the way through 12th grade. It is engagement of
the learner.
How do you know what they are interested in? Well, we have
developed something that we call the Approaches to Learning
Survey. In the fall of every year in grades 2 through 12, which
are magnet grades, we deliver this survey to students and it
asks them to self-assess, do I learn best with hands-on
experiences? Do I learn best from auditory learning? Do I learn
best from reading?
And so from that information--it is literally just a
survey--the teachers are able to come together in a team
teaching situation. We do a lot of looping, and I am not going
to take the time to define those, they are in the record that I
have submitted for today, and some of the teaming at the
various grade levels from kindergarten all the way through 9th
grade and 10th grade, the teachers sit down at a common time
plan and they look at which students are interested in hands-on
issues that relate to science.
And so as a teaching staff, you tailor the lesson to the
students' learning style. You wouldn't see in a magnet school,
and I do want to stress that these are strategic plans at
magnet schools. They are not at all 80 of the Omaha Public
Schools, only the 15 that are magnet schools. The key is to
know the learner, find out what their interests are, tailor the
lessons to them, and you will have an engaged student.
I would like to also say that one of the things that is
unique about magnet curriculum is it has something that--we
built in something that we call extra value standards, and
those are additional sets of standards that lay on top of the
regular State standards. They are typically community
involvement-based, and I want to give you an example of that.
We have instituted in one of our high schools, Omaha North High
School, that is a math, science, and engineering magnet school,
a program called Project Lead the Way. It is a pre-engineering
program. I see lots of heads shaking around the table. The key
to this particular program is taking an in existence math and
science curriculum, math and technology, and lay over the top
of it a very engaging, hands-on, stimulating, very rigorous
pre-engineering program.
There are students in North High School that I am talking
about in grades 9 through 12 who have--this particular program
has specifically changed the diversity of who comes out the
other side of this particular pipeline. It is no longer
typically your extremely bright white male students. The
statistics on this particular course draw is amazing. We have
got approximately 30 percent women involved in this and 30
percent minority students involved in this program.
And the piece that is the capstone piece, which is the
community involvement piece, the students design or redesign a
particular issue in the community that is a problem. For
example, one of our nonmagnet students, or nonmagnet schools,
Boyd Elementary--actually, where my own children went to
school--had a very, very unsafe off-loading and parking area in
the front of their building. The students in the engineering
design and development course went to the school several times
and worked with the community engineers that are part of the
advisory committee, worked with people at the university,
worked with architects out in public business to design a safe
off-loading area for these students.
That was about 2 years ago. The PTA in that building is
working very hard to get the funds together. They are working
with city planning to actually implement that project, and that
is an example of what an extra value standard project might
look like. Typically, these projects are a year or so in the
making at that level. But the key, we feel, truly is engagement
of the student at every level.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Langston.
STATEMENT OF CARRIE LANGSTON, TEACHER, WYOMING WRITING PROJECT,
CHUGWATER, WY
Ms. Langston. Keeping my comments to 2 minutes should be
really easy because that is the attention span of most of my
classes--[laughter]--so I will try not to talk too fast, but I
feel so passionately about what I want to share today. I am
grateful and excited to hear that IBM and business communities
are becoming involved in the education process and bringing in
teachers. I am excited to hear that someone still thinks we
need to teach them to read, even past the 3rd grade. We have
principals here who are dedicated to making this system work
better.
Perhaps the most meaningful thing I have heard so far is
that there are models that do work, that we have some research,
we have something to show you that will say, this will help
engage kids. This will help kids work and learn and stay
involved in the process.
I have been very fortunate to be involved with the National
Writing Project and the Wyoming Writing Project for nearly 20
years now, more actively in the last 3 to 4 years, and I have
found by taking this situation where we take kids where they
are, find what their interests are as the magnet schools are
talking about, tailor that situation to reading and writing and
addressing literacy so they can make the connections between
their math classroom and reading their math textbook and
applying, using higher-level thinking skills to work across the
curriculum. We are finding that we are having real success.
I could tell you about a lot of students. I could tell you
about a lot of facts. But the bottom line is that we have got
to find a way, and I would suggest that this model whereby we
give students an opportunity to explore their thoughts and
generate ideas, write them down, share them with colleagues in
a situation much like this, do some revision, do some writing
until they have something that is excellent and publish that
just even for the classroom is where the students are learning
to make the connections and the meaningful connections between
their writing, their reading, their math, their science, their
social studies, their special education.
Some of my best writing and best products are coming from
special education, and it takes a commitment from the teacher
and well-trained teachers, but we have to provide the kids
something that is theirs, something that is truly, truly
meaningful to them. I am finding that through the model of the
Writing Project, through teaching other teachers how to use
this in the classroom, through networking with our universities
and our business community, that we are finding a way to get
these students who seem to not care, some of the parents who
seem to not value education, truly engaged, and I am happy to
be able to share that with you today.
Prepared Statement of Carrie Langston
I am honored to participate in the roundtable discussion of the
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
entitled ``Competitiveness: Building and Filling the Pipeline.'' The
issues we are addressing today in the context of our Nation are the
same issues I address nearly every day in my classroom.
If our goal is to find strategies to motivate, engage, and enable
our young people to reach their full potential, and to raise the
academic bar while recognizing individual gifts and talents, I am
delighted to share what I have learned in a variety of settings working
with diverse ages and ability levels.
The National Writing Project as an Effective Strategy to Benefit
Teachers and Students
I first became involved with our local site of the National Writing
Project 20 years ago. Participating in the Wyoming Writing Project
summer institute was a life-changing experience for me. I learned that
my students would achieve more if they had the opportunity to use a
process that includes generating ideas, sharing them with others,
revising, proofreading, and finally, when the writing is of excellent
quality, publishing. I learned to emphasize the content of the writing
and the clear presentation of that content. I learned that academic
success depends on learning to write well, and also on learning to use
writing as a tool for problem solving and for understanding complex
information in other subject areas.
I was able to apply the substance of the institute in my classroom.
I found without exception that with the processes of writing I could
reach students of all skill levels, challenge them to become personally
responsible for their own learning, teach them to strive for
excellence, and provide them the opportunity and tools to be
successful.
The National Writing Project also provides me with a key tool: a
network of teachers across the country with whom I can collaborate on a
variety of projects. I am proud to be one of the 100,000 teachers a
year who are ``in the trenches,'' working daily to bring not only
literacy, but the application of higher-level thinking skills to
students and to my colleagues who teach social studies, math, science,
business, foreign language, and special education.
In fact, the skill of writing is as critical to a scientist, a
mathematician, or an engineer as it is to an English teacher. Improving
writing in all disciplines contributes to solving the pipeline problem,
ensuring that more high school graduates will have the motivation and
skills to succeed in the STEM fields. For this reason, the writing
project workshops we conduct are for all teachers.
Making a Difference Student by Student
Working in partnership with their universities, writing project
teacher-leaders are tackling the demands of the 21st century in their
local areas. I could share with you hundreds of stories about students
I have worked with in rural schools in Wyoming, young people at a
residential treatment center for troubled youth, and even adults who
are seeking to finish their high school studies. But perhaps the story
of Kelly represents all of them in some way. Kelly was expelled from
the largest high school in our district because of his drug use,
defiance, and assorted personal issues. Sporting a number of tattoos
and piercings, he enrolled at Chugwater High School where I teach
English. Through the process of writing, sharing with classmates,
revising, and finally producing publishable pieces, Kelly found that he
could make his life ``make sense.'' He told me that he was able to
connect the dots between school and his ``real life'' and to make
connections between various classes. He also found a way to connect
with the best parts of himself, because writing helps us to recognize
and develop our own voice, our own humanity. Kelly will be graduating
in May with a 3.4 GPA and plans to continue his education at a
community college.
Equipping students with ways to invest in their own learning,
motivating them to continue education after high school, and helping
them choose a path to excellence is a daunting task. Learning to write
has provided that path for my students. The writing project has given
me the knowledge and confidence to teach writing effectively and the
professional standing to help other teachers do the same.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Schwarz.
STATEMENT OF ERIC SCHWARZ, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CITIZEN SCHOOLS,
BOSTON, MA
Mr. Schwarz. Thank you for the opportunity to share with
you. I am Eric Schwarz. I lead Citizen Schools, which is a
network of after-school programs operating with middle school
kids and kids bridging into high school in Massachusetts,
California, Texas, New Jersey, and as of next year, North
Carolina.
I think you well framed the challenge of the high high
school dropout rate as well as the challenge of too many young
people not having the 21st century skills they need in the
workforce and for college even if they finish high school. I
think the two solutions I would like to propose are, one, more
time, and two, more people engaged in young people's lives
during the critical middle school and sort of early high school
years.
We do that at Citizen Schools through an apprentice model
in the after-school hours where we recruit volunteers who are
lawyers, business people, architects, chefs, and challenge them
to spend one afternoon a week with a team of kids making
amazing things, and the kids get a chance to work with
engineers from IBM, architects from the finest firms in the
country, Web designers to build useful products for their
school and for their community. It is a mentorship program, but
mentorship with a purpose and a chance for kids to build high-
level skills and get a taste of the joys of work and get a
taste of the relevance of the things that they are learning in
school, as well.
I think it is important to add time to do this, because the
school day is already so squeezed. What we are seeing in
schools around the country where we partner is the schools are
forced more and more to focus on the basics and focus on basic
math and basic reading, and the extracurriculars and more
hands-on learning activities that many kids need to thrive and
others have mentioned are being squeezed out of the school day.
After school provides a great opportunity to build those
skills and build 21st century skills. Our model allows them to
do it both through apprenticeships as well as through academic
coaching and leadership development led by a young staff of
educators.
And then our real focus on how do you get kids when they
are still in middle school dreaming about college and thinking
about college and bringing them--we bring our youth leaders to
10 college campuses in that year and use that as a window into
the high school choice.
And the last thing I would emphasize is the importance of
high school choice in building an educated consumer who is an
8th grader who realizes the implications of the track they get
on in high school, the courses they take, and the choices they
make, and getting those young people when they are 12 or 13 and
haven't yet mentally dropped out to realize the path to high
school, to college, and to the workforce is critical.
We have done a major evaluation--we are in the middle of
it--led by folks in Washington, Policy Studies Associates. So
far, what it is showing is really encouraging, that kids in
Citizen Schools as against a comparison group are out-
performing their peers on six out of seven academic indicators
back in middle school. They are getting by more than a two-to-
one margin into college-track high schools as against a
comparison group. Even though they are in more rigorous high
schools, they are outperforming their peers significantly in
math and English in their freshman year and they are getting to
10th grade on time, which is the best early indicator of high
school completion on time at much higher rates.
So I think more focus on time and getting extra people,
citizen teachers, we call them, into education.
Senator Ensign. [Presiding]. Good.
Mr. Bailey.
STATEMENT OF BOB BAILEY, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, GRANT
PROJECT MANAGER, CENTRAL VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, LYNCHBURG,
VA
Mr. Bailey. Thank you. We are all very, very fond of the
pipeline metaphor, so I am going to play with that a little bit
with my comments. If you have a pipeline and you are losing--if
you have a leak or if you are losing pressure behind it, the
first place you go look are at the transition points because
that is typically where it happens. Even more so, if you build
a pipeline and leave a six-foot gap, or a six-inch gap, between
the transition points, the only thing that gets through is the
material moving very fast and the rest of it falls on the
floor, and that is what happens in the education system.
The transition points are critical from grade to grade,
from elementary school to middle school, middle school to high
school, high school to college. Each transition can be more
intimidating to the student and more likely to make them say,
that is it.
And so one of the things that we have been involved with, I
have seen other organizations involved with, is incorporating
activities from the next level into the previous level so that
students get a flavor of it. They find out that they can do the
work, they are more likely to move on.
The same transition exists from the education to the
workplace. It seems intimidating and overwhelming, don't think
you can take it. If you can integrate work-based learning
activities, internships, youth apprenticeships into the
educational pipeline, that transition to the workplace becomes
a lot easier.
Senator Ensign. Very good.
Ms. Freeney.
STATEMENT OF REYGAN FREENEY, A DOCTORAL CANDIDATE, UNIVERSITY
OF IOWA, IOWA CITY, IA
Ms. Freeney. Good morning. I am glad to be here. I come
today wearing many hats. I want to talk about being one of the
students who was a participant in one of these pipeline
programs. Coming from the environment that I came from--I am
from Iowa. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, poor area, poor
schools, and I was able to participate in a program that
provided me with the necessary tools to be able to make that
transition, to first of all graduate from high school, then
make that transition easily into college and to succeed in
college, not walk through, but excel because of a lot of the
tools that I learned because of my experience through the
Upward Bound programs.
Coming from the 8th grade and a single-parent home where my
mom worked menial jobs just to try to make things, you know,
try to make things happen for her kids, she had no idea about
college. She wanted me to go and I wanted to go, but she had no
idea what was entailed in that process. And being a participant
of a program that worked with students who were very similar to
me, you know, and sitting in class, a lot of times you don't
know the circumstances of a student. And we talk about engaging
these students, but a lot of times, students are worried about
their day-to-day needs.
And so this program gave me an opportunity to get away from
my day-to-day needs and to see other students much like myself
who had interests like I did and want to achieve and succeed.
And so this program gave me tools on the things that I needed.
It gave me an opportunity to see other college students,
students who came from similar situations like myself, and it
gave me an opportunity to mentor these students and also an
opportunity to meet college professors. It lowered the barrier
for me to know what it will take to be a college student, and
college was not just for students unlike myself.
And so I made that bridge. I crossed that bridge and I saw
the valuable impact on mentoring, relationships, and seeing
that a scientist is just not an old guy with white hair with a
lab coat.
[Laughter.]
It also gave me the opportunity to see that it is not a
dark or cloudy field, but there are areas, a variety of areas
that are real world applicable. And so being able to see and
gain a research experience through the Women in Science and
Engineering program and the Upward Bound program, it gave me a
lot of tools that I needed in order to succeed. And so I saw
the value in how the program impacted my life because not only
did it give me a way out, it gave me a way in. It gave me a way
in to influence other students.
And so I saw the value of the program, and so after I
obtained my master's degree in chemistry, a little poor girl
from Waterloo, Iowa, I decided to go and work for the program.
And so I have worked for a few years and I, too, had a chance
to change the lives of students and to open the door for
students who were--some of our students were great students and
some of our students were mediocre students. I had a student in
my program who, if you talked to her, she is very intelligent,
but when it came down to taking exams, she didn't do so well.
We had her tested and we found out that she had dyslexia. This
girl will be graduating in a year in nursing.
So we have the tools. We have programs that currently exist
that can help students, and this is not just one success story.
I am not just one success story. There are many stories like
mine.
And I want to say also, and I will be brief, but
understanding the role that it is a pipeline. I think it is
very important to have the colleges and universities involved
with the high school and also having business professionals, I
mean, businesses engaged in colleges and universities. If you
want to change our workforce and make sure that we have the
opportunity to fill in these gaps that we see, I think it is
necessary to look at some of the tools that we currently have
in place and go from there.
And I do have information that I will submit for the
record, so thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Layzell.
STATEMENT OF TOM LAYZELL, PH.D., PRESIDENT, COUNCIL OF
POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, FRANKFORT, KY
Mr. Layzell. Thank you. I agree with everything that has
been said. I just want to add maybe a couple of different
perspectives from the postsecondary education standpoint.
I think we have done our students a disservice in this
country in the past several years by ignoring the fact that the
world has moved to a place where, I don't care what you want to
do, as has already been said, you are going to go to work, you
are going to go in the military, you are going to go to
postsecondary, you need that rigorous curriculum in high school
and even grades below that.
So we are very supportive of this movement toward a single
rigorous curriculum. I think, as has been said, the students
will live up to the expectations we have of them.
A couple other things I think are important for all of us
is to remember something that was said over 30 years ago by a
man named Bud Hutchinson, that this really is all one system
that we are talking about here. We happen to come into it at
different points along the way, but we have got to make that a
reality, that colleges and universities and the K-12 system
understand that we are all linked together. We cannot build a
strong postsecondary system on the back of a weak K-12 system.
They cannot succeed if we have a weak postsecondary system. We
have to have a lot more interchange, interaction, inter-
relationship, collaboration between the two systems.
A couple other things that I think are important. We have
mentioned teachers and teacher preparation in passing. That is
a huge challenge for all of us, to make sure that those of us
in postsecondary education are preparing the teachers to teach
in today's classrooms and there is some evidence that we are
not.
Educational leadership programs are crucial. You cannot
have a strong school without strong principals or strong
superintendents. Again, that largely falls in our bailiwick in
postsecondary education, to make sure that our educational
leadership programs are, in fact, attuned to the realities of
today.
We have got to have better induction programs for young
teachers. We lose too many young teachers in the first 2 or 3
years of their teaching experience, and I am a father of one of
those young teachers that left the profession very quickly
because I think we didn't do the kind of training, the
induction that was necessary for her and for many others like
her.
I had the opportunity to attend the National Governors
Association summit on the high school about a year ago now.
There were kind of two general themes that came out of that
conference that were troubling. These came from Governors, for
the most part. They either said their citizens in their State
were complacent about the quality of their educational system,
or, on the other side, they were cynical that anything could be
done, and those are--the convergence of those two themes is
pretty ominous for all of us, I think.
And I think there are too many people yet today, certainly
we have encountered this in Kentucky in my short period of time
there, that do not understand some of the statistics that you
cited, Mr. Chairman, at the beginning about the need for how
many jobs in today's economy need postsecondary education, the
importance of training for the workforce essentially the same
way that you train for postsecondary education. We have got to
get that message out.
As has already been said, there is a number of programs,
initiatives, studies that have been done that I think show us a
way to go and we just need to pay some attention to the
evidence in front of our faces. Thank you.
The Chairman. [Presiding]. Thank you. I want to thank my
colleagues. They have to run and vote. That is what I just got
back from doing. Both of them have some outstanding bills that
deal with competitiveness and getting us from here to there, so
would you like to say anything before you leave to vote?
Senator Ensign. Yes, I appreciate it, Mr. Chairman, simply
because I have to preside in the chair from 11:00 to 12:00, so
I won't be able to continue to participate. I appreciate you
holding this hearing and just wanted to raise one point. I
think all of us recognize the need for more of our kids to be
motivated to learn math and science. I was over with Margaret
Spellings this morning having a little coffee with her and we
discussed how we identified the problems our kids had with
reading, why our kids weren't learning to read, and the debates
surrounding whole language and phonics. We recognized the
problem and we did good studies to fix it.
But we don't have studies to tell us why our kids aren't
learning math and sciences. You know, there are some theories
out there, but the problem hasn't been totally dissected. Are
students just not motivated like they used to be motivated? Is
it teaching techniques? Is it parents that aren't helping
motivate our kids or are not putting enough importance on
learning math and science? Is it teacher competence? Is it a
combination of things?
The bottom line is we have to find the things that seem to
be working, and find what was causing the problem in the first
place. As it was mentioned, we have to spend more time teaching
core subjects. It could be that one of the reasons we have to
spend more time teaching core subjects to students is because
teachers maybe aren't teaching the way that we used to teach.
We used to learn math and science in the same amount of time
and still have time for P.E. and still have time for other
important subjects. We have to ask ourselves some fundamental
questions to effectively solve this problem.
So the direction you are taking this committee is exactly
right, holding these types of roundtables, and I appreciate
your leadership on this and thank you to everyone
participating.
The Chairman. Thank you. What a flood of ideas we have
already had, and I appreciate it.
Dr. Morningstar.
STATEMENT OF MARY MORNINGSTAR, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR,
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL EDUCATION,
LAWRENCE, KS
Ms. Morningstar. First, I want to just thank you for
including me in this discussion. I was thrilled that the focus
on students with disabilities at the secondary level was
included. I want to start--so I want to acknowledge the
inclusion to participate.
I want to start just by giving you a few statistics,
briefly. I think the most recent report out of the National
Council on Educational Statistics is that 64 percent of high
school students attend some form of a postsecondary setting.
Their expectation is a lot higher. I think it is around 82
percent of students expect to attend college.
For students with disabilities, the most recent research
coming out of the second wave of a national longitudinal study,
a 10-year study on high school outcomes for students with
disabilities is that 32 percent of students identified with a
disability go on to a postsecondary setting, not quite at the
same rate. Now, interestingly, it is double what it was 10
years ago, and so the question you have to ask is what has
changed?
Certainly, some might think, well, kids with disabilities
can't go on to college, but clearly, the research is showing
that that is not the case. What has changed is that there are
high expectations that students with disabilities participate
in rigorous coursework with the accommodations that they need
and the instructional techniques that meet their learning
differences.
I was very pleased to hear Ms. Varner talk about the
ceilings, the differentiated ceilings, and I bet one of the
lowest ones at one time was for students who were in the
resource room classrooms. If we all have the same expectations
for those students, we know they can be successful.
I think, Ms. Day, you talked a lot about multiple
approaches to learning, your survey on how kids learn best. In
our field, we call that adaptive pedagogy, that we have
teachers who have expertise in individualized learning, and one
of the most recent sort of research-based practices that have
come out of the field of disability is universal design for
learning. I think many of you may be familiar with a concept of
the universal design. The curb cuts in front of the Senate are
a good example. They were designed for access for disability,
but they are available to all of us. And universal design for
learning at its core essentially says we have multiple ways to
represent the text or the content, the knowledge base, multiple
means of expressing it, and multiple means of engagement. So a
lot of you have talked about that level of engagement.
What I still hear, and my focus within higher student
learning is around teacher preparation, well, we are preparing
teachers using similar concepts. We are calling them different
things. And what we haven't done successfully, particularly at
the secondary level, is work together. So we still have
separate educational systems that need to start merging so we
have better partnerships with the general educators who have
innovative practices and they are using our practices.
One other practice that I will mention, and I think I will
save the issue of wearing two hats, both disability as well as
teacher preparation, I will save my teacher prep for the second
question about what we need to do next, but one of the probably
biggest successes that we have seen within the field of
disability in the last years is assistive technology. It is
interesting, it hasn't come up yet in discussion around science
and math because it comes out of the computer industry. So
assistive technology primarily has been designed for students
with disabilities.
I had a conversation with Ms. Willner right before where
she was talking about what IBM has done in terms of making Web
sites accessible using a variety of computer software and
computer hardware available for people who are visually
impaired. So they can't read the screen. They can hear it
instead. The computer reads the screen for them.
Well, I immediately started talking with her about the
advantages of that for a variety of individuals, not just
people who are blind, so kids with learning disabilities, when
they have access to that technology, they, too, read better.
Their reading scores, the research on the reading programs that
use universal design and assistive technology have shown large
increases in reading skills for all kids, not just students
with disabilities, but any low reader can show improvement with
the assistive technology that is designed.
The other thing that I just might mention in the
discussion--well, actually, I will touch on what you have
talked about in terms of your mentoring program with Upward
Bound. Again, what we are seeing within the field of
disability, that where we have mentoring programs, National
Science Foundation funds regional centers called Access for
STEM, so it is to provide additional support, probably very
similar to Upward Bound and the TRIO programs, additional
support, college fairs, ongoing support from high school
through college specifically designed for students with
disabilities so that we are promoting their involvement in the
STEM career paths.
Again, from my perspective, I think we should be jointly
proceeding so that we are not doing our thing over here while
IBM is doing their thing over here, but we need to start
building those bridges and collaborating between the knowledge
base that we all can bring to the table. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Shelton.
STATEMENT OF JIM SHELTON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EDUCATION
DIVISION, BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Shelton. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I agree with so
much of what has been said today that I just want to offer a
few framing comments.
The first is that I think it is important for us to keep in
mind that when we talk about the competitiveness of our
country, we actually have two goals at the high school level we
have to achieve. One is the obvious one of actually getting
more kids college ready so they can enter the workforce, the
knowledge economy as we normally describe it. But I would
submit that increasing our graduation rates nationally and
reducing our drop-out rates is also a very important part of
our ability as a country and, therefore, our competitiveness. I
think it is very important for us to make sure that when you
use definitions of what works, that we are very focused on
recognizing that those two goals need to be tied together and
that there is an inherent tension.
The second thing is that, as you have heard, there are
many, many very important parts to strategies for making school
successful and for making systems of school successful at
graduating their students college ready, and the one thing I
want to point out is that it is not either/or. It is and/both.
The places where I see success in my work with the Gates
Foundation are the places that keep in mind that it is about
expectations, that it is about preparation, that it is about
awareness and information, that it is about understandings for
students of affordability, because if they don't know that they
can afford to go, then why bother? And networks and support and
how they get the time and resources they need to be successful
with these new demands that we are placing on them.
One of the things that we have to keep in mind is, in fact,
we are actually trying to do what is unprecedented. The idea
that the systems and resources that we used before, something
is now different about the students because they are not being
successful, is actually not so accurate. What is accurate is
that we are trying to get many more students than have ever had
access to the kinds of curriculum, to the kinds of
opportunities that we need them to have access to, that we need
new strategies, that we need much more holistic environments
that are going to address the needs of all the students.
So I am going to come back to something that Ms. Varner
said, because she laid out four goals and I have tended to find
them all the same in all the schools that I see that are really
successful. Common, high expectations identified in the
standards with accountability for that performance
specifically, actually especially in reading, writing, and
mathematics. The others are very important, we need those
problem solving skills in all of the areas, but the
accountability for performance regardless of what pathway the
student goes through in reading, writing, and math is very
important.
The second thing is the creation of school environments,
whatever they look like--I am used to very structured school
environments with traditional academic tracks. Since doing this
work, I have found schools that are highly rigorous that have
no classes. They do all of their work through projects in
school and life internships out in the field.
They have great relationships with their students. All
great schools know how to create great relationships between
the adults and the students in the building, the students with
each other in the building, and most importantly, actually, the
adults in the building so they can work together to problem
solve around the needs of the students.
And then finally, the relevance, so kids know why this
matters. As all the teachers in the room and all the principals
in the room know, the worst thing you want to hear when you
walk into a classroom is, what am I ever going to use this for?
We have to make those connections for students so that they
understand how what they are learning in the classrooms is
going to be connected to the real world, and then the best
cases we can show them how that is going to happen.
The challenges of integrating these things, making them all
happen at one time with the systems and capacity and the policy
challenges that we have today is a complicated set of
solutions. So it is going to take time and it is going to take
joint effort, and so I am really happy to hear Dr.
Morningstar's commentary about us working together. There is
lots of individual effort going on. We need to figure out how
to pull it together in a cohesive period of change. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you. And for our last speaker on
question number one, Ms. Brooks-Crocker.
STATEMENT OF WANDA BROOKS-CROCKER, NDE CERTIFICATION
ADMINISTRATOR, FRAMATOME ANP, INC., AN AREVA AND SIEMENS
COMPANY, LYNCHBURG, VA
Ms. Brooks-Crocker. First of all, thank you for having us
here today. I work in a very specialized field. It is
nondestructive testing. I don't know how many of you may have
heard something about nondestructive testing in your life, but
I know when I got into it, I came into it completely by
accident. I worked for a company called Babcock and Wilcox and
a group moved into the building that did this type of testing,
and guess what, it is the thing that keeps our infrastructures
safe. It is transportation, railroads, airplanes, nuclear power
plants, and that is the field that I work in, is nuclear power.
Since this is such a specialized field, it is not talked
about a lot in the curriculums that exist right now. There have
been a few initiatives locally. The company that I work for,
AREVA, Framatome ANP, has put into place some summer academies
where middle school students come in and they get some exposure
to nuclear power and nondestructive testing, robotics, and then
at the internship level, we have some students that come in,
high school-age, and they work about 6 weeks with us. The
summer academy is a week-long thing. Recently, the local
community college, since we are a big employer in that area,
they contacted us about putting in a program. We have a work-
study program that is now about 3 years in existence and been
very successful.
We are faced with other challenges in our industry, of
course, because the workload tends to happen in very concise
periods of time in the spring and fall, so that leaves some
other challenges probably for another type of discussion.
And most recently, the local high school, after the
community college had this work-study program, the local high
school came to us and said, can you do something for us, so
they are now starting their second year of nondestructive
testing. We have realized through this evolution that at the
high school level, they need more than just high school
graduation to go into this type of a work environment, so the
local community college and the high school are working very
closely together to develop a high school introductory level to
four different areas in nuclear technologies, and then from
there they can decide which one they want to focus on and go to
the local community college and get further education.
So it is definitely an area, I have heard many of you talk
about the business and business leaders and educators need to
work together. The educators need to know what the needs of the
world are, you know, what do our students need to learn,
especially in these specialized areas?
So I thank you for holding this roundtable discussion today
and look forward to more things happening here, so thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you. I am going to move on to the
second question. I will have everybody put their name tags
down. I apologize for you not having a chance to respond again,
and some of you were fairly early in the discussion, so there
are other things brought up that you need to respond to and I
hope that you will jot those down and share them with us in
writing, because some of the best ideas are actually the ones
that come after somebody else said something, and we need
those.
That question was kind of on strategies we can use, and I
am always impressed with the volume of information that we get
from these, the ideas that just ripple through there. And, of
course, one of the reasons is because we invite outstanding
people to these roundtables to provide that information.
The second question deals with partnerships, and what I
noticed was that it is pretty hard to separate strategies from
partnerships.
[Laughter.]
And I am sure that will be the case on the second question,
as well, but I think it is working well. We want to talk now
about strong partnerships among high schools, postsecondary
institutions, businesses, and government which are essential to
making the high school experience beneficial for all students.
Any information you have on the respective roles of each
partner and what can be done to start these partnerships and
then to facilitate communication and coordination so that the
partnerships work out, any experiences you have had with that
that you think might have some universal application.
Part of what we have found is that there are a lot of great
ideas around this country, but most of the people don't know
about them and it is pretty hard to implement them if you don't
know about them. So part of our role is to help communicate
those, and again, you are invited here because we knew that you
had real information on this sort of thing.
We will begin the discussion on the second question. Before
you put up your name tags--[laughter]--I want to remind you
about the 2 minutes. I did notice that as the further we went
into it, the longer the 2 minutes got--[laughter]--because
there were so many more things to react on. But what this is is
kind of a contest on ideas rather than an explanation of the
ideas, because we will be getting back to you to get more of
the detail on the ideas. So if you can kind of hold it to 2
minutes, I would appreciate it. Dr. Layzell.
Mr. Layzell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to just
briefly outline the approach that has been taken in Kentucky,
because I think it does have applicability for other States.
The policy challenge, as you and others have noted, is how
do you attack these problems in a way that is not dependent
upon the individual personalities of a particular school
district or a particular university? Is there a way you can do
this, and I think there is.
In its reform legislation, which is now 8-plus years old in
Kentucky, they turned the usual approach on its head and they
said, look, we want to focus on the needs of Kentucky, not on
the needs of the educational providers. We want the educational
providers to help us meet those needs. And they created a
concept called the Public Agenda. Later, they added adult
education to postsecondary education's portfolio and instructed
us in statute that we were responsible to work with the K-12
schools because of a recognition of things that already have
been said here about the importance of the two systems to each
other.
From that overall policy framework, we created a State-
level P-16 council, which involves K-12, higher education,
business, labor, adult education, all the partners that you
would want involved in a collaborative discussion of how do you
attack the educational problems that are facing you, and in our
face, it was very low levels of educational attainment in
Kentucky. We have since created local P-16 councils throughout
the State. There are about 21 of them now.
I think this structure, which provides the opportunity for
conversations among the various actors involved and has led to
some really innovative approaches in a number of areas is a
structure that could well be emulated around the country. There
is nothing unique about it and it is not unique to Kentucky.
They just happened to do it first. I would certainly think--I
would certainly commend this to other people's attention
because it is a way to force the various parties to deal
collectively with these problems. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Varner.
Ms. Varner. Oh, I was second. I won!
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Good work.
Ms. Varner. Thank you. I want to talk a little about the
partnerships that have really made a difference in Chattanooga.
When I talked about the high ceiling and the single diploma,
that actually came out of collaboration with our business
partners who were saying what we should have already known, and
I guess we knew, that it is not just the students who are
graduating and going to college that need high-level thinking
skills. The students that are going straight to the workforce.
So while, as I said, that would have been a difficult feat, we
had the business community with us.
For our students who go to college, we had what is
happening, I am sure, around the country, they will get to
college and then they drop out the first year. They are either
in remedial courses or, as you said, never get through and they
just don't make it. We have sat down with our local
universities and looked at the students who are succeeding and
trying to look back to see, what is their history? What
happened that may have contributed to their success and then
what is not happening?
In our district now, all seniors, regardless of how clever
they are in getting all of their course requirements in, they
have to take math because we were really struggling there. And
so during your senior year, because what we learned is that
kids who take a year off from math don't do as well when they
get to college, so you are taking math in your senior year and
folks understand that.
In both our magnets and our academies, we have really
strong partnerships with our magnet schools. We have, for
example, the museum magnet, and you were talking about some of
the things that kids have to give up when they are struggling
with their poor subjects. What we have found is providing that
context for kids to do what adults do, and that is pursue their
passions and interest.
So one of our magnet schools, for example, is the museum
magnet. Kids have the same high requirements. They have to pass
the same end-of-course tests. They have the same set of
standards. But they learn through that context. Our academies,
the curriculum is developed in collaboration with our business
partners.
One of our schools has a medical academy. The CEO said, I
am no dummy. I am investing my time, my financial resources
because we need doctors and nurses in Chattanooga. And so the
curriculum is being developed jointly.
Our construction academy at one of our schools, East Ridge
High School, is one of the most successful, and kids who are
taken in the construction academy are outscoring their peers in
traditional math on traditional tests. But it is providing that
context and it is because we are developing, not just doing the
business day and the business people in the schools for a day,
but developing strong relationships with them, with our Chamber
of Commerce, with local attractions, with communication, and
that is one of the things that is really making the difference.
That is what is allowing us, I think, those contacts and
those partnerships, to have a single diploma and have our
graduations go up, our graduation rate go up, our dropout rate
go down.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Ajax.
Mr. Ajax. Thank you. I would like to share a similar
successful partnership that we have been able to develop in
Minneapolis, and that is we, 17 years ago realized that 70
percent of the students coming out of high school were not
obtaining a high school degree, and we also know that in the
manufacturing sector, that for every college degree and every
engineer, we need between seven and ten technicians, and these
are high-skill, high-wage, high-demand occupations. These are
men and women that can be tool and die makers and electricians
and earning between $40,000 and $70,000 a year.
So we have worked with several of the Minneapolis public
schools, the at-risk schools in particular, and over the last
17 years, we have put 800 students through a mentoring program
and an internship program and one-on-one attention, and we work
with the students and their parents and explain that you can
have a free ride. Your entire education is paid for. You will
have a 2-year technical degree. You will have the opportunity
to go on to a 4-year degree if you choose. All of your
education is paid for. You will enter a 4-year apprenticeship
training program with 8,000 hours of on-the-job training, 144
hours worth of additional professional development every year
after that, and you will graduate from your apprenticeship
program while you are being paid and you will be making between
$40,000 and $60,000 a year without any student debt or any
student loans.
I am happy to say that of the 800 students through the YCAP
program, more than 92 percent of these at-risk youth have
graduated from high school. Most of them did go on to
postsecondary education. Some of them went on to a 4-year
degree. But what I would like to recognize is we need to think
about and focus on the 70 percent of the students that will not
have a 4-year degree, and there is almost a social prejudice
that exists with educators and students and parents, where we
look down our nose at someone that does not have a 4-year
degree. My son has to have a 4-year degree, absolutely. There
is no other choice.
Well, we think there are some other choices and we need to
work harder as business and industry and promote some of the
opportunities that are available other than a 4-year degree.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Morningstar.
Ms. Morningstar. Thank you. There are several things I
could talk about. I think what I will focus my 2 minutes on
this time is the role that I see within higher education and
teacher training, and I know that teacher education and schools
of education don't always get the best rap and I think that
some of that is because there may not be a good understanding
of what we are doing and how we are changing our practices in
training teachers.
I know now I have an advantage because I am faculty in the
number one department of special education among public
universities in the country, so we take very seriously our role
in teacher education for special educators, and we take very
seriously the importance of the current legislation around
high-quality teachers.
What we are starting to see is that, well, number one, we
understand that schools are different and we have our students
out in those schools on a regular basis, so it is not like we
are not aware of the current context within which high schools
operate, and in fact, my program at the secondary special
education and the transition to adulthood, which is my area of
expertise in training teachers, they learn about secondary
school context first and then the role of specialized
instruction, their role within that as a special education
teacher with some individualized, specialized skills.
And what we are seeing from current legislation, I think is
a good thing. It is hard for us, you know, the shift from the
way we used to teach, pull-out model, resource room teachers
teaching science and math for a variety of kids, that model has
got to end and we are helping those teachers move into a push-
in model of services, where they are eco-teaching in science
classes and the kids with disabilities are in those science
classes.
My perspective is for students who do need specialized
attention and perhaps not within a regular science class,
science teachers still need to be providing that instruction
with the support of the intensive work that special educators
can do in those alternative settings. I would hold to the focus
that we feel very strongly about our role in preparing the best
teachers for tomorrow, getting that word out.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Freeney.
Ms. Freeney. I will be brief. I will keep it under 2
minutes. And what I do need to say is that I think it is very
necessary to offer supplemental programs. I don't think we
are--it is not an isolated case. It is not just high school, it
is not just college, and it is not just the business community.
I think it is necessary to provide supplemental programs both
for teachers and for students. I think allowing teachers to
work jointly with colleges and universities and also industry
provides them an opportunity to obtain additional training and
receive materials and also provide some--for them to obtain
some additional instructional support in which they can
transfer into their classroom.
I also believe that it is necessary for the students to
have access to this opportunity which allows the students to
receive, one, a real-world experience, hands-on training, and
also to see that the loop between what they are learning inside
the classroom has application outside of the doors. And I think
that there are several programs in place that will provide a
great role model for this, and I just really want to stress the
point that we are not in this alone. And so an
interdisciplinary approach to both student learning and teacher
learning and teaching will provide assistance.
The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Schwarz.
Mr. Schwarz. Thank you. I am seeing some wonderful themes
emerging around high expectations, the importance of
transitions, customized learning in school and out of school,
the importance of mentors.
I wanted to mention three additional partners that aren't
explicitly mentioned in the lists you went through but I think
are maybe implicit, but call them out. One is parents, and we
are thinking through how community groups can engage parents
very powerfully as a full partner in their kids' learning. We
think it is critical, and we think that after-school programs,
citizen schools and others have the unique opportunity to play
a bridging role, connecting to the school teachers during the
day and the parents in the later afternoon and evening and
bringing them together.
I was in Redwood City, California, last week and heard from
a single parent of three middle school girls in our program and
she talked about the transition and just what it meant like to
be a parent and to have the support of an after-school program
that was reinforcing things and values that she believed in
during the school day and how it had kind of lifted a weight
off of her shoulders. And then she contrasted when she was a
kid and had been to a fire station and briefly wanted to become
a firefighter, was told, you can't do that, you are a girl,
contrasted that with the positive reinforcement that her three
girls were getting in our program.
Second is kids. I don't think we are going to get out of
the gap that we have and the challenges we have if we don't
challenge kids to be really producers and take responsibility
for their own education. The apprenticeship model, at its best,
really challenges young people to produce for their community.
So rather than just being a passive recipient of education,
they are out there producing, and we have young people working
with Fidelity Financial Advisors, as one example, coaching
their older brothers and sisters on college access and college
savings and learning how to share those skills in a way that
really brings meaning and brings useful information to their
broader community.
Third, I think, is philanthropy. I think there is a big
role that private philanthropy can play as a partner with K-12
education and with government in scaling what works. I flew
down this morning from a conference in upstate New York with a
number of philanthropists and social entrepreneurs, and many
people in that community are very interested in partnering in
new ways with government to take stuff that is proven to work
and bring it to new communities and additional children. Thank
you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Willner.
Ms. Willner. Thank you. I am going to quickly touch on two
things that were said earlier to underscore them and then talk
a little bit specifically about partnerships.
First of all, thanks to Jim Shelton for mentioning that we
don't want to go back to some supposed golden age. We all had a
great time in school when we were young, but it wasn't the
golden age. Those schools were good for the time. They achieved
the goals that were set before them. They will not meet the
needs we have today. We have much higher expectations.
Just the breadth of human learning and understanding is so
much larger than it was before, our expectations for students,
and as well as the fact that, as Jim mentioned, we now expect
every student to get through high school. It is not okay to
skip high school. It is not okay to drop out. As was said
earlier, it is not even okay anymore not to go to postsecondary
school. We need schools for tomorrow that will train our
children to live in the innovation economy.
If we only focus on--the second issue I want to raise, and
it was my colleague from J&J mentioned this, the need for
hands-on skills, the need for problem-based kinds of activities
in the schools, very, very important. Rote learning is not
enough. We will, if we just focus again on the pocket cover
skills and we teach all of our children to use slide rules,
they are not going to innovate for the future. They are going
to get left behind. We need them to focus on problems, and it
is a two-fer.
Problem-based learning is a great thing because it is a
great bargain. It is a two-fer. It engages children in real-
life problems and experiences that are relevant to their lives,
that excite them, and it teaches them the skills that they will
need in the workplace to work collaboratively, to address
problems, to uncover patterns, and to communicate those
solutions to others. So we need problem-based skills.
I want to talk a little bit about partnership, and I don't
think I have time for my top 10 list of things that partners
should try to do, but I will give you my top four or five. No.
1--maybe number one, two, and three, actually--is listen. If
you want to have a good partnership, everybody has to listen.
Everybody is shaking their heads. That is a good sign. We have
to listen to each other. We have to really agree not to just be
in the same room, not to have side-by-side players. We have
seen the little children that really don't listen and engage
with each other.
The second very important piece of advice I would give to
partners is have some humility. As folks from the private
sector, we can't walk into schools and say we are more
efficient. We are the private sector, we know how to make this
happen. Frankly, my colleagues from the school side, you can't
just tell us, we are the education professionals. Just give us
the money. Let us all have some humility and work together.
Third, we need to get rid of jargon. You all know what I
mean. There is a certain language that is used in the education
spheres and the private sector certainly has it, as well. I
have worked on both sides of the aisle and everybody is great
at creating new jargon. There is even a little jargon on
Capitol Hill sometimes, so you know what I mean.
[Laughter.]
And finally, innovation. We come together to find new ways
to do things. Let us not just try to find ways to do more of
the same. Let us not do the same thing faster, more often. You
know what, if it doesn't work and we do it faster and more
often, we will just fail sooner. So let us try to work together
to innovate.
And the last thing I want to mention just in terms of
ventures, and we can provide you with some more of the
partnerships that we have, but I am thrilled to hear about the
citizen skills. IBM has about 8,000 folks who are online
mentors. I actually live in New York and I mentor a young 4th
grader in Las Vegas, and last year, I mentored a student in
North Carolina.
And also, we have beginning on Sunday, for those of you who
may not know, it is National Engineers Week, so last year, just
from IBM, we worked directly over the course of National
Engineers Week with 200,000 high school and middle school
students, and we are just one company out of the dozens and
dozens that participate in National Engineers Week. We are all
geared up for this coming week. We are going to have activities
in virtually every city in America at our plant site. We have
to make that the start of partnerships that go forward, not
just 1 day, but it is a great example of something we can build
on.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Riddile.
Mr. Riddile. Thank you. In your opening statement, you made
a profound statement, that is, schools are always open,
learning never stops. And underlying that is the idea that,
given time, all students can learn. Now, in the old school, we
said all students can learn, but today we understand that we
want all students to encounter complex subject matter. They may
take more time to do that.
I am constantly battling elitists who contend that if
students take one more day to learn a subject, somehow, they
are a failure. If we continue to hold time as a constant, we
are going to continue to have what we had in the past. That is
the bell curve of performance, and the bell curve in the
knowledge age is not acceptable to anyone.
So recognizing that some students may take more time and
that time now is a variable and not a constant brings up my
point of our most important partnerships. Now, our school has
partnerships with 4-year colleges, community colleges, Rotary
Clubs, service organizations, businesses, and we have had
award-winning partnerships. But our most important partnership
is with our own feeder schools, middle and elementary schools,
that ensure that the time students spend in school, during that
time, no student falls behind and that there is a safety net
for all students.
So instead of focusing outside, the solution is really
inside, and the answer has always been right in front of us. If
we really believe that given time, all students can learn, and
we develop a continuum of professionals who continually provide
services that every students need. Now, we may need to compress
more learning time for some students, after-school programs,
summer programs. Our school, for example, we get a creative
calendar, college-like calendar. We are able to get 5\1/2\
years of schooling in 4 calendar years for some students. All
students don't need more time. But unless we look at time now
as a variable, we will continue to get what we have gotten.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Ms. Day.
Ms. Day. Thank you. This definitely, and Sandy Day excluded
on this one, but this definitely just falls--the whole morning
falls under the category of, wow, great minds think alike,
because it is interesting listening to Dr. Morningstar's
adaptive pedagogy as our approaches to learning and Mr.
Bailey's pipeline is our pathway, and getting back to magnet
schools, magnet schools are aligned in those transitional
pathways and that is exactly what you are also talking about,
looking inside what we are doing to see how we can adjust,
refine, and fine-tune what it is that we are pushing through
our pathway.
I want to tell you that one of the things that is critical
to pathway organization, so, for example, if I am talking about
one of our schools that has the theme of economics, we have an
elementary magnet school called Conestoga. Students receive the
economic extra value curriculum in grades 2 through 6. Then
they move on to R.M. Magnet [ph.] and receive extra value
curriculum in economics there, and then on to high school and
then on to the community.
And what we do with that, of course, is we pull those
teachers together over the summer so the teachers get year-
round school, not the students in Omaha Magnet Schools, because
they have to take a look at what they are delivering. And if we
are not sending to the middle school students who truly
understand what is expected, let us say, out of that economics
curriculum, then we are failing them and we are building it
into our system.
So I just want you to know that magnet schools have it easy
when it comes to building these advisory boards that assist
them with transitions through because they have a theme, but
actually, any school could develop a theme. It really is
incumbent upon the principal to come up with, let us say, a
vision quest and determine what this regular neighborhood
elementary is finding important in terms of how to encompass
the life-long learning that are trying to envelop for their
students, have professional development through the summer and
make sure that part of that professional development involves
partnering with the universities.
Omaha is lucky enough to have Metro Community College as
well as the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Dr. Layzell
talked a lot about our chancellor, who is--that is where that K
through 16 component came from. One of our magnet themes in one
of our schools is a university partnership. We have planned a
pathway that is K through 16.
And one set theme is developing partnerships with whatever
higher level of institutional learning you have in your
community. That is when you start building the business
partnerships, and I agree 100 percent with what Ms. Willner is
saying about the top five or six and she has got ten. One thing
I would add that is working very well in our construction
academy is invest those advisory board members. Make them be
invested, and one of the best ways is to make sure they put up
an internship, paid or unpaid, between the junior or senior
year to really get those kids out into, and what I am
particularly thinking of is our construction academy, and I am
so glad that you mentioned it, Ms. Varner.
She is our model in Omaha Public Schools. We developed a
construction academy that takes up the junior level and there
is regular junior English class, math class, a technology
class, and a construction laboratory, and the way they are able
to make those achievement gains. We have students with 11
percent achievement gains from last year to this year in
mathematics and the way they are doing it is through learning
algebra. It goes right back to what is relevant to them. They
are not just learning an algebraic equation, they are actually
having to figure out the size of the drywall that is supposed
to go on the wall that they are building in their construction
class.
That is what keeps them engaged. That is what keeps them
attuned to their learning, and then if you promise them that
paid or--in our case, paid, thank goodness, thank you very much
Peter Hewitt Construction--paid internship over the summer
between the junior and senior year, they actually put some of
those skills to work.
I echo exactly Mr. Schwarz. You need to have parents,
teachers, students involved in that advisory board, because if
we are not listening to what they have to say, then, again, we
are doing them a disservice. But I will tell you what, great
minds do think alike. It is amazing to listen to what is
happening across the country and seeing that Omaha, Nebraska,
is not far behind.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Shelton.
Mr. Shelton. Thank you. Four specific kinds of partnership
really quickly. Partnerships around alignment, so universities
working with the local school system to make sure that they
actually align the exit standards from high school to the
entrance standards for college. In particular, some places have
actually gone so far as to make available the placement exams
for especially the English language, arts, and mathematics in
the high schools so the kids can put together individualized
plans for how they are going to make sure they are ready by the
time they graduate if they were not already.
The same thing, actually, on the industry side, so industry
partners working with the school systems to make sure that the
career and technology programs that they offer actually lead to
an industry certification, tying it to things like internships
and apprenticeship programs so those very specific things that
we actually make sure that we are connecting kids to pathways
that are going to be meaningful for them when they graduate.
Third is actually partnerships around data, and there are a
bunch of different kinds that matter. One is actually making
sure that the data allows for information sharing about
students from school to school and from school system to school
system in close proximity, so that when a kid makes a
transition from elementary into middle school or changes middle
schools in the middle of the year or changes high schools in
the middle of the year, the information about what they have
accomplished and what they need makes it to them almost
immediately.
Just as importantly, though, information sharing between
agencies, so when a kid comes back from the criminal justice
system, what happens in terms of their records as they come
back into the school system and how do we know that that kid
needs services? When a student is in the foster care system,
how do we make sure that the school system is aware of the
challenges that students faces and that the services we are
providing for those students in those different agencies
actually meet up to actually serve the students well. I can't
tell you how many different places I go where four different
agencies are touching the student and a family and none of them
know.
The last thing I will talk about is a very special kind of
partnership called an early college high school. It is a
partnership, a very specific partnership between a high school
and a college where, in fact, you blend the institutions, the
objective being that you are actually going to graduate kids
from school with about 60 credit hours or an associate's
degree. And this is not an elitist program, this is a program
that takes kids who oftentimes are not thinking that they are
college bound and making college accessible to them in two
ways.
One is, as soon as they are ready, it introduces them to
college-level work and lets them know that they can actually do
that. The second thing is if you actually accumulate enough
credit hours, it reduces the cost of college, and so therefore
you are making college accessible both in terms of the
expectations, but also addressing the affordability issues. I
am done.
The Chairman. Thank you. I have got to say, on almost all
of these, I have got a lot of questions I would like to ask to
follow up to get more information, but there is not a lot of
time at this particular time, but we will get that other
information.
Ms. Langston.
Ms. Langston. I would like to address specifically two
kinds of partnership, one related to, when you said there are a
lot of great ideas out there, but it is kind of hard to get on
board when we don't know what they are. So I think in the
educational community, we really need to address a lot of
communication and partnership within that institution, so
within school districts, within States, and now at the national
level, to find ways to partner one with the other, and this has
got to cross curriculum lines.
It is not math or science or English or reading. It is we
need to read and write so we can go on and explore math and
science. You need to read so you can get the input of the
information, and you need to write well so that you can express
yourself and take that on out to the business community. And so
insofar as partnering, we need to do that on a professional
level, one with each other.
And then the second thing is that we really truly need to
partner with our parents, and there are a variety of ways to do
that, especially in Wyoming because there are great distances
and very small communities and not a lot of population. It is
easy to feel isolated, and a lot of our parents feel very, very
isolated.
Once again, one way that I have been able to address that
issue through the Writing Project is to invite parents in to
participate in writing journals back and forth with their kids
so they can see what their kids are doing, back and forth among
parents in the community, and with the students and the
teachers, just to set up a dialogue. No one has to be right or
wrong, it is just a sharing of information. And as we develop
that trust, then there is a way to proceed with that to develop
true partnership.
If I have 15 seconds left, we don't have a lot of
opportunity to partner with business since we have one
convenience store and one rest stop. However--
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Don't forget your brother, though.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Langston. Oh, that is right. Truly, that is in a
trailer, I want you to know.
[Laughter.]
I am glad to know IBM in New York will partner with a
student in Wyoming, where business people across the Nation and
the technology now to make that a reality for these people. So
I am just very, very encouraged and very grateful to have been
able to have heard what you have had to share. Thank you so
much.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Bailey.
Mr. Bailey. I will be very brief. Productive partnerships
occur first and foremost when the partners sit down and agree
upon--explicitly agree upon a common set of outcomes. Quite
often, that doesn't happen. When it doesn't happen, the best
case scenario is you get lucky. The worst case scenario is you
waste a lot of time and a lot of money and you end up with a
lot of very frustrated people.
So if you are talking about entering partnerships, I would
have to say you have to be encouraged to listen, but beyond
listening, actually discuss, come to an agreement on a common
set of dialogue, not dictate your outcomes on the other
parties. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Bzdack.
Mr. Bzdack. Yes. Picking up where my colleague Robin
Willner left off, there are five attributes of partnerships,
but first of all, as a company, as a corporation, as a small
business, as a large business, you have two choices and they
are parallel. You can do your own initiative or you can join a
coalition, and I think that there are a lot of strong models
for stakeholders. It is business coalitions that work, and we
have stolen many ideas from North Carolina, Texas, and
Kentucky.
So those need to be looked at closely, and the five
attributes of the successful partnerships is that they have the
power to convene all stakeholders; they listen; they act as
true collaborators; they put their own agendas aside; they
focus on evidence, as I said earlier. And the other power, the
hidden power that we have as corporations is that we can
leverage the power of our own employees, and that is at the
very top level and at the very bottom level. And who are our
employees? They are parents, they are school board members,
they are voters, they are taxpayers, and many of our employees
serve on the boards of colleges and universities and nonprofits
in our communities, so there is tremendous power.
And my final comment is that there is incredible potential
among the corporations in this country to collaborate in the
communities where they have a presence. We have talked about
it, but we haven't done it.
The Chairman. Thank you. And again, we conclude with Ms.
Brooks-Crocker.
Ms. Brooks-Crocker. Yes. The best for last, right?
[Laughter.]
Again, my comments are coming from a specialized background
and that sort of thing. One of the questions is what are the
roles of the partners, and as the business partner, I would
like to say these things, I think, are important. Visibility,
of utmost importance. We have noticed a big difference when we
send people out to that school to actually work with the kids
on learning this nondestructive testing. It is a very hands-on
thing. They tend to like it quite a bit in the high school and
community college levels. And what Ms. Willner said about being
engaged, I mean, you have to be engaged with those students.
The next thing is assisting with curriculum development.
Since it is a specialized area, it is essential to making the
program concrete.
And also, teacher education. One thing that we have talked
about for this year is having some workshops in the summer
where all the teachers, not just those teaching nondestructive
testing, but all the teachers can learn something about it and
incorporate it into their classes--little small bits and
pieces, but that way, it will trickle down to the younger
grades and that sort of thing.
And last, actually assisting with instruction. A lot of our
workforce is 40 to 65 years old, 38 to 65, something like that,
so we are all kind of looking at retirement in the not too
distant future and I think that is an excellent resource for
assisting with the actual teaching of nondestructive testing in
particular, because it is one of those areas that it is easier
to teach if you have actually been there and done that.
So I would just like to offer that those things, I think,
are important for the business partner. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you. I want to thank all of you for
participating. I am hoping that your help will not end at this
moment but will continue on through some additional comments
that you may have had based on what others may have said, or
ideas that you may have gotten, or ideas that you already had
that you didn't get a chance to share.
I like having a roundtable as opposed to a hearing. Many of
you may not have been at a hearing. Hearing is an oxymoron.
[Laughter.]
We invite in and it is kind of a Republicans versus
Democrats atmosphere where each of us get to invite some
witnesses and then the part that we hear is the part that we
like from the witnesses that we invited. We spend our time,
instead of listening, trying to come up with questions that we
can either ask the others to embarrass them or ours to continue
to emphasize our point.
The participation is about the same, but with this kind of
a format, we get a lot of ideas. What I was writing down were--
sometimes it wasn't what you said, it was an idea that I got
because of what you said. A lot of times, it was some phrasing
that you used, which I will use in the future. The Senate rule
is the first two times, we have to attribute it.
[Laughter.]
Often not observed.
[Laughter.]
You have just been a font of information. I go back to
Wyoming most weekends and drive around the State and do kind of
one-on-one polls on how we are doing out here. I have got to
say, though, that even in my travels back there, a lot of what
I get to hear is what doesn't work, and so I appreciate these
roundtables where we get to hear what does work. That is really
what we want to duplicate. But a lot of times, we already know
what doesn't work and a lot of times it is through a lot of
repetition. Sometimes, that is what it takes for us, too.
But this has just been extremely helpful and we will keep
the record open longer, both so that you can contribute and so
that staff members here that have questions they want to have
followed up on, and so that my questions can be followed up on,
as well.
So I really appreciate the participation. I think the last
time that we had a real surge in education in the country was
when Sputnik was launched, which will be 50 years ago next
year. The engineers and scientists and innovators that came out
of that, we have been living on for a long time. Now, we have
got to make sure that the surge keeps going for our country to
have the kind of competitiveness that we have grown used to and
so that the next generation of kids can have the same benefits
as the previous generations of kids.
I really appreciate all that you are doing to make that
happen. Thank you for being here today.
That concludes the roundtable.
[Additional material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Prepared Statement of Senator Kennedy
I commend Chairman Enzi for convening today's roundtable on
education reform in our middle and high schools, and I thank
each of the participants for joining us.
As a White Paper commissioned by the 2005 National
Education Summit on High Schools stated, ``High schools are now
the front line in America's battle to remain competitive on the
increasingly competitive economic stage.'' Our concern is
obvious.
Education is the key to the Nation's competitive strength
in the coming decades, and the key is rusty. We're falling
behind other countries. Our schools are still competitive
internationally through 4th grade, but by the end of elementary
school, we're losing out. Of 100 students in 9th grade, only 68
will graduate from high school in 4 years, and only 40 of them
will enroll in college, and only 18 will graduate from college
in 6 years. Germany, France and Japan do far better, and our
college graduation rates would be even less competitive if we
compared the rates for 8th grade students.
Fortunately, strategies are available to reverse these
downward trends and enable American students to excel
academically again. We can encourage States to align high
school courses with college expectations, and give students the
support they need to succeed in their coursework. Doing so will
also reduce the $2 billion a year we spend on remedial
education.
We can upgrade standards and revitalize curriculums so that
students can take more rigorous courses and learn the skills
they need to do well in them. We can improve the training of
teachers who teach those courses. We can advise students
earlier about the classes they select, so that they understand
the role of the courses they take or don't take on their future
opportunities. We can offer more help earlier to students who
struggle with reading and math, and other academic courses.
Seasoned school principals and teachers know that it takes
a strategy of prevention--not just intervention--to reduce the
high dropout rate. We in Congress can learn from them as well.
Sixty-five percent of today's jobs require some
postsecondary education and all estimates show that figure will
continue to rise. Entry level jobs increasingly require skills
in literacy, communication, and technology. Employers expect
employees--even recent high school graduates--to analyze
information and solve problems in the workplace. At a minimum,
we should require every high school program to teach these
skills to acceptable standards.
We've sent each of you several questions to consider for
today's discussion. We're especially interested in learning
more about the strategies that have built the pockets of
excellence that exist in middle schools and high schools today.
We'd like your thoughts on how to apply proven practices more
widely, so that States and local school districts can improve
the participation of all students in effective academic and
technical coursework.
We look forward to your ideas in these areas, and we thank
you for joining us this morning.
Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education,
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601,
March 2, 2006.
Ms. Lisa Schunk,
Einstein Fellow,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, D.C. 20510.
Dear Ms. Schunk: Thank you for the opportunity to participate in
the February 16 roundtable discussion on ``Competitiveness: Building
and Filling the Pipeline.'' Our reform agenda in Kentucky highlights
that very issue. I am submitting my remarks and some additional
materials, as requested, into the record.
Kentucky's education reform is built on a comprehensive legislative
foundation that drives funding and strategic initiatives. In 1990,
Kentucky was among the first States to embark on groundbreaking
standards-based reform in K-12 education. In 1997, the Kentucky General
Assembly passed the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act.
This legislation called for improving the standard of living and
quality of life of all Kentuckians by creating an adequately funded,
seamless system of education so that Kentuckians would meet or exceed
the national average in educational attainment by 2020. In 2000,
additional legislation set the stage for restructuring adult education
and channeling it into the postsecondary system. Kentucky was unique in
the Nation in creating a structure that focused adult education on
attracting undereducated adults back into the education system to
prepare and enroll them in college. Kentucky's P-16 pipeline
strategically includes both traditional P-12 and nontraditional adult
students. Most recently, the Kentucky Innovation Act of 2000 formalized
in legislation the role of postsecondary education in expanding the
capacity for knowledge-driven research and development in Kentucky to
attract businesses, create jobs, and prepare a skilled workforce for a
globally competitive, 21st century economy.
From this policy framework, which continues to drive funding and
strategic initiatives, the Council on Postsecondary Education
(Kentucky's postsecondary education coordinating board) has developed,
in forums and meetings with constituencies across the Commonwealth, a
``Public Agenda for Higher Education'' that includes an accountability
system organized around five questions. These five questions focus
postsecondary education on outcomes (``key indicators'') that will
produce better lives for Kentuckians and address the goals for
postsecondary reform http://cpe.ky.gov/planning/strategic/default.htm.
Are more Kentuckians ready for postsecondary education?
Is Kentucky postsecondary education affordable for its
citizens?
Do more Kentuckians have certificates and degrees?
Are college graduates prepared for life and work in
Kentucky?
Are Kentucky's people, communities, and economy
benefiting?
The first of the five questions is of particular interest for this
roundtable discussion. Kentucky's postsecondary institutions are held
accountable for their role in ensuring the preparation of traditional
and adult students for college. Although it has taken time, the public
agenda has shifted the conversation in Kentucky beyond the ``blame
game,'' where each level of education blames its failures on the
inadequacies of the preceding level (e.g., employers blame colleges,
which blame high schools, which blame middle schools, which blame
elementary schools, which blame families). Through a variety of
strategies over nearly a decade, Kentucky's education leaders are
coming to understand that no part of the system can truly succeed if
another fails.
Kentucky's P-16 agenda to build our educational pipeline has
encompassed several initiatives.
A State P-16 Council was established in 1999 as a
voluntary collaboration between the P-12 Kentucky Board of Education
and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Today, the P-16
Council includes representatives from all education sectors, the
State's financial aid agency, government, and the private sector. The
P-16 Council has focused on alignment of standards and assessment
across the system, teacher quality, and strategies that support the
transition of traditional and adult students upward through the system.
Twenty-one local P-l6 councils have been created throughout the State
under the guidance of the State council to provide grassroots support
for the P-16 agenda.
In 2000, the State launched ``Go Higher Kentucky,'' a
highly successful college access marketing campaign, to address
cultural barriers to educational advancement and to convince all
Kentuckians that postsecondary education should be in their future. The
campaign has received national and regional recognition for its quality
and success. Kentucky is now working with the Southern Regional
Education Board and the Southern Governor's Association to assist
States throughout the south in developing similar campaigns. It also
has worked with other States across the Nation. The campaign produced
record numbers of new adult learners pursuing the GED and college and
contributed to record college enrollments in Kentucky during this
period. A Go Higher Kentucky Web portal is in place to provide what
students need to plan for, prepare for, and pay for college.
In 2000, Kentucky successfully applied for a Federal GEAR
UP grant that provided $21 million in Federal and matching State funds
to work with low-income middle/high school students and their parents
and teachers to motivate, prepare, and successfully enroll them in
college. In 2005, Kentucky secured a second GEAR UP grant--more than
doubling the resources available for this program. P-12, postsecondary,
agency, and private sector groups have partnered through GEAR UP to
address P-16 challenges for low-income students. To date, the program
has produced academic achievement gains in our poorest schools that
exceed State averages, provided scholarship guarantees to students who
meet program requirements, and increased the number of low-income
students and their parents preparing for college attendance.
Kentucky's focus on alignment led to its selection as one
of the initial five pilot States participating in the ``American
Diploma Project.'' Sponsored by Achieve, The Education Trust, and other
national groups, the first ADP pilot produced a clear set of standards
defining what every high school and adult student should know in math
and English to succeed in college or the skilled workplace. Based on
that work, Kentucky secured agreement from all of its public
postsecondary institutions on a common set of standards and a common
assessment for guaranteed placement into credit-bearing mathematics and
English courses across the community college and university system.
Kentucky's Statewide Public Postsecondary Placement Policy clearly
defines what ``college readiness'' in these core subject areas entails,
and we are communicating this across the system (see Statewide Public
Postsecondary Placement Policy brochure). Kentucky currently spends
more than $24 million per year addressing the needs of underprepared
college students. Working with our middle and high school and adult
learning center partners to implement these standards should reduce
these costs and increase student success.
For the last 6 years Kentucky has assembled teams of key
faculty and staff from across university programs (e.g., education and
arts and sciences colleges) to develop and implement plans to increase
the quality of teacher preparation and professional development
programs. The Council on Postsecondary Education is currently working
with the State teacher standards board, the legislature, and the Office
of the Governor to implement a redesign of these programs for teachers
and school leaders following best practices identified by the SREB and
other national reports. Through the work of the State's certification
board, the P-12 system, and postsecondary education, Kentucky's teacher
quality has improved as indicated by numerous national assessments and
recognitions. Much more needs to be done, however--and it will be--to
address teacher shortages and assess the effectiveness of teacher
preparation and professional development programs in producing student
achievement gains tied to college and workplace readiness.
The Kentucky Community and Technical College System,
created in the postsecondary reform legislation, plays a central role
in implementing the P-16 agenda. As a primary postsecondary access
point for many students, the KCTCS has invested funds in high school
partnerships to provide early assessment of students' college readiness
and created successful early and middle college models to ease the
transition from high school to college. It has been the primary
provider of dual enrollment opportunities for high school students.
Statewide, the number of high school students dually enrolled in
college courses has grown from 9,321 in 2001-02 to 18,291 in 2004-05.
Several recent developments hold great promise to accelerate the
success of P-16 work in Kentucky and address current challenges.
In 2005, the Business Forum, made up of important private
sector leaders, many of whom spearheaded the 1990 Kentucky Education
Reform Act, issued a comprehensive report identifying and supporting a
range of initiatives in education, particularly focusing on
strengthening P-16 connections and programs. The support of the
business community will be important in sustaining the political will
to advance P-16 initiatives.
In early 2006, the Kentucky Board of Education, following
the recommendation of the State P-16 Council, voted to implement a
single rigorous curriculum for all students, raising the State's high
school graduation requirements and eliminating the ``general track''
diploma. Assessment standards also are being revised, in response to
the American Diploma Project recommendations for English and
mathematics, to prepare all high school graduates for college and
skilled employment. The assessment system also will provide, for the
first time, student-unit-level data that will better track individual
student achievement across the system. Kentucky Adult Education is
revising its curriculum to align with ADP benchmarks and Kentucky's
Statewide Public Postsecondary Placement Policy.
The State acquired a new Federal GEAR UP grant that will
allow it to double its capacity to implement successful programs for
low-income students developed in its first grant. Also, funding is
being put in place for the next phase of the ``Go Higher Kentucky''
college access campaign to reach Kentuckians who still do not have
college on their radar screen or who believe college is beyond their
reach.
A recent study of postsecondary affordability has produced
funding and proposals for new scholarship programs that address the
needs of students for whom affordability was identified as a barrier.
Finally, in late 2005, for the first time, Kentucky's key
education agencies, under the leadership of the Education Cabinet,
submitted a joint budget request to integrate data and virtual learning
programs. The request was submitted by the Governor for approval by the
legislature. If funded, this program will allow systematic assessment
of student success across the P-l6 system, identification of the
factors that predict success at every level, and coherent
implementation of effective virtual learning programs by all agencies.
We anticipate this joint proposal will be the first of many. It
demonstrates the commitment of Kentucky's education system to the logic
of an integrative, systemic P-16 approach to education issues.
Again, I thank you for the opportunity to share some of Kentucky's
initiatives with the Senate committee and your other guests.
Sincerely,
Thomas D. Layzell,
President.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]