[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
NCLB: PREVENTING DROPOUTS
AND ENHANCING SCHOOL SAFETY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION AND LABOR
U.S. House of Representatives
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 23, 2007
__________
Serial No. 110-23
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor
Available on the Internet:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html
----------
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR
GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon,
Chairman California,
Donald M. Payne, New Jersey Ranking Minority Member
Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin
Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, Virginia Peter Hoekstra, Michigan
Lynn C. Woolsey, California Michael N. Castle, Delaware
Ruben Hinojosa, Texas Mark E. Souder, Indiana
Carolyn McCarthy, New York Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan
John F. Tierney, Massachusetts Judy Biggert, Illinois
Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania
David Wu, Oregon Ric Keller, Florida
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Joe Wilson, South Carolina
Susan A. Davis, California John Kline, Minnesota
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Kenny Marchant, Texas
Timothy H. Bishop, New York Tom Price, Georgia
Linda T. Sanchez, California Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Charles W. Boustany, Jr.,
Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania Louisiana
David Loebsack, Iowa Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Mazie Hirono, Hawaii John R. ``Randy'' Kuhl, Jr., New
Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania York
John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky Rob Bishop, Utah
Phil Hare, Illinois David Davis, Tennessee
Yvette D. Clarke, New York Timothy Walberg, Michigan
Joe Courtney, Connecticut Dean Heller, Nevada
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director
Vic Klatt, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on April 23, 2007................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Altmire, Hon. Jason, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of............... 76
McCarthy, Hon. Carolyn, a Representative in Congress from the
State of New York, questions for the record................ 77
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck,'' Senior Republican Member,
Committee on Education and Labor........................... 2
Miller, Hon. George, Chairman, Committee on Education and
Labor...................................................... 1
Prepared statement of the Delaware Statewide Academic
Growth Assessment Pilot................................ 88
Statement of Witnesses:
Montecel, Maria Robledo, Ph.D., executive director,
Intercultural Development Research Association............. 18
Prepared statement of.................................... 20
Norwood, Dr. Jane, vice-chair, North Carolina State Board of
Education.................................................. 13
Prepared statement of.................................... 15
Smith, Kenneth M., president, Jobs for America's Graduates... 23
Prepared statement of.................................... 25
Trump, Kenneth S., president and CEO, National School Safety
and Security Services, Inc................................. 27
Prepared statement of.................................... 29
Responses to Mrs. McCarthy's questions................... 81
Wise, President, Hon. Bob, Alliance for Excellent Education,
former Governor, State of West Virginia.................... 5
Prepared statement of.................................... 7
NCLB: PREVENTING DROPOUTS
AND ENHANCING SCHOOL SAFETY
----------
Monday, April 23, 2007
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Education and Labor
Washington, DC
----------
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 3:02 p.m., in Room
2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. George Miller
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Miller, Kildee, Payne, Scott,
Hinojosa, McCarthy, Tierney, Wu, Grijalva, Bishop of New York,
Sanchez, Sestak, Loebsack, Hirono, Yarmuth, Hare, Clarke, Shea-
Porter, McKeon, Castle, Biggert, and Davis of Tennessee.
Staff Present: Aaron Albright, Press Secretary; Tylease
Alli, Hearing Clerk; Alice Cain, Senior Education Policy
Advisor (K-12); Adrienne Dunbar, Legislative Fellow, Education;
Denise Forte, Director of Education Policy; Ruth Friedman,
Senior Education Policy Advisor (Early Childhood); Lloyd
Horwich, Policy Advisor for Subcommittee on Early Childhood,
Elementary and Secondary Education; Lamont Ivey, Staff
Assistant, Education; Danielle Lee, Press/Outreach Assistant;
Jill Morningstar, Education Policy Advisor; Ricardo Martinez,
Policy Advisor for Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong
Learning and Competitiveness; Joe Novotny, Chief Clerk; Lisette
Partelow, Staff Assistant, Education; Rachel Racusen, Deputy
Communications Director; Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director; James
Bergeron, Minority Deputy Director of Education and Human
Services Policy; Robert Borden, Minority General Counsel; Steve
Forde, Minority Communicatins Director; Taylor Hansen, Minority
Legislative Assistant; Victor Klatt, Minority Staff Director;
Susan Ross, Minority Director of Education and Human Services
Policy; and Linda Stevens, Minority Chief Clerk/Assistant to
the General Counsel.
Chairman Miller. The Committee on Education and Labor will
come to order for the purposes of holding a hearing on
preventing school dropouts and enhancing school safety. And I
want to welcome everybody to this afternoon's hearings.
These two issues are critically important to students,
parents, educators and communities across the country; and we
plan to address them during the Elementary and Secondary Act
reauthorization. Nationally, only about 70 percent of students
graduate from high school with regular high school diplomas. In
fact, each year schools lose approximately 1.2 million students
who drop out for a wide range of reasons. This means that
nearly one-third of our students are missing the opportunities
provided by a high school diploma. This is a serious problem
that demands our attention and hard work.
It hurts more than the students. It also harms our economy
and our economic competitiveness.
While we have to do more to ensure that all children
graduate from high school, the dropout rate is far worse for
poor minority students and students with disabilities. Only
about half of all African American and Hispanic students
graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma. High
school students living in low-income families drop out of
school at six times the rate of students of high-income
families and students with disabilities are twice as likely to
drop out as those who do not have disabilities.
We know that earning a high school diploma is a critical
prerequisite to joining the middle class. High school dropouts
earn over a quarter of a million dollars less in a lifetime
than those who hold high school diplomas. The disparity widens
to a million dollars when dropouts' incomes are compared with
college graduates' incomes.
We are far from solving this dropout crisis, and that is
why we are having this hearing. As a part of our ongoing
process to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, this committee is reviewing elements of successful dropout
prevention programs, many of which you will hear about today.
Beyond just socioeconomic factors, experts have identified
early indicators that help schools predict when a student is
likely to drop out of high school. Research in four school
districts shows that we can identify over half of the future
dropouts as early as the sixth grade by looking at a small
number of telling indicators: attendance, discipline, and
trouble mastering basic reading and math skills.
Programs across the country that have successfully
identified and prevented high school dropouts have common
elements. Among other things, they seem to focus on meeting
both academic and nonacademic needs of students in a caring,
nonthreatening environment. One key element of students'
success is ensuring the schools are safe and free from drugs
and violence.
No Child Left Behind contains several provisions that
attempt to encourage safe learning environments for students
and teachers. Research shows that if students do not feel safe,
they are more likely to have academic problems and they are
more likely to drop out.
I want to thank Congresswoman McCarthy for her leadership
on school safety issues, and today's witnesses will help us
approach the NCLB reauthorization with a strong focus on how to
promote safe learning environments and to help students most at
risk of dropping out.
And I want to thank all the witnesses in advance.
And at this point, I would like to turn to Congressman
McKeon, our senior Republican on the committee.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for convening today's hearings. And at the outset I would like
to recognize Dr. Herb Fisher, the elected Superintendent of the
San Bernardino County schools, the largest county in the
country. I represent half that county. It is good to have him
here today.
I am pleased the issues of graduation rates and school
safety are included in our series of hearings on No Child Left
Behind. For the past year, we have been weighing in a very
bipartisan way the successes and shortcomings of the No Child
Left Behind Act, and indeed, the two issues before us today are
critical to the foundation of our school systems and to the
NCLB reauthorization.
Under No Child Left Behind, as we know, in addition to
meeting academic achievement standards in reading and math,
public schools and school districts must meet at least one
additional academic indicator in order to be deemed as having
made adequate yearly progress. For a high school this
additional indicator must be its graduation rate.
This afternoon I look forward to more closely examining the
high school graduation and dropout provisions in No Child Left
Behind and to hearing recommendations for improving the law. In
particular, I will be eager to learn more about how graduation
rates are calculated by States and school districts, what is
being done to ensure those rates are accurate, how they must be
reported to ensure schools are increasing the academic
achievement of their students, and what States and school
districts are doing to improve student outcomes in high school.
I am pleased that this hearing will also focus on school
safety. After last week's events at Virginia Tech, the memories
of Columbine, the flurry of school shootings of last fall and
other unspeakable tragedies which have taken place in our
Nation's classrooms have become all too fresh in our minds once
again.
The issue of school safety is not new to this committee.
Currently, No Child Left Behind includes various components to
help protect students, including the Safe and Drug-Free Schools
and Communities program, which provides funds to States and
school districts to support drug and violence prevention
efforts.
No Child Left Behind also allows a child to transfer out of
a school identified as persistently dangerous regardless of
whether that child has been the victim of a violent crime at
school. Under the law, each State must establish a policy
requiring that a student attending a persistently dangerous
public school be allowed to attend a safe school within his or
her school district, including a public charter school.
Unfortunately, States' efforts to implement the
persistently dangerous schools provision have been uneven. For
example, States may not uniformly define violations or
offenses. States vary in establishing a threshold number of
incidents which must occur before a school is identified as
persistently dangerous; and States may differ in establishing a
time frame during which incidents or offenses must occur in
order for a school to be defined as persistently dangerous.
This uneven nature is a matter I look forward to discussing
today, because I believe it goes to the heart of our effort to
improve the lives of students who are trapped in dangerous
schools.
Mr. Chairman, working collaboratively to ensure classroom
safety is among our highest callings. Simply put, parents must
not have to question the safety of their children when they are
at school, and teachers and school personnel should be
confident that they will be safe when they go to work each day.
Again, thank you for holding this hearing on two very
important topics, and I once again thank our witnesses for
joining us.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Our first witness is Governor Bob Wise. Bob Wise is
President of the Alliance for Excellent Education, and he has
held that position since February 2005. Prior to joining the
Alliance, Governor Wise was Governor of West Virginia, and
prior to that he was our colleague here in the House of
Representatives from 1983 to 2001, where he was very active on
the issues of clean air, and mental health where he provided
the first parity bill.
Is that right? Yes. And we welcome you here today, Governor
Wise, and I look forward to your testimony.
We will also hear from Jane Norwood, who is the Vice Chair
of the North Carolina State Board of Education, and a professor
in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Appalachian
State University. Dr. Norwood is also Past President of both
the North Carolina College Professors of Reading and the North
Carolina Council of International Reading Association.
Dr. Cuca Maria Robledo Montecel is the Executive Director
of the Intercultural Development Research Association in San
Antonio. Dr. Robledo Montecel is a nationally recognized expert
on the prevention and recovery of dropouts. She has chaired the
San Antonio Community Education Leadership program and has
served as a board member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Kenneth Smith is President and CEO of the Jobs for
America's Graduates, Inc. And prior to founding Jobs for
American Graduates, Mr. Smith served as staff aide to President
Nixon and founded 70001 Limited, a nonprofit organization
dedicated to helping high school dropouts obtain employment. He
also served as a senior advisor to Delaware Governor Pierre du
Pont.
And I believe Mrs. McCarthy is going to introduce our
remaining witness, Mr. Trump.
Mrs. McCarthy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
having this hearing. I would like to introduce Ken Trump to the
panel.
Ken is an expert in the area of K-through-12 school safety
and emergency preparedness training and consulting, and is
based in Cleveland, Ohio. He has over 20 years of full-time
experience in the school safety profession and has worked with
school and public safety officials in 45 States.
Ken has authored two books and 45 articles on school safety
and emergency preparedness issues. He is also knowledgeable in
gang prevention and intervention and related youth safety
topics serving on an anti-gun committee in Cleveland.
He was also an invited attendee at the White House
Conference on School Safety in October of 2006. Ken has also
testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions Committee as a school safety and crisis expert.
Mr. Trump, I want to thank you for your tireless efforts on
school safety and for your being here today. The committee will
benefit greatly from your input on the issue of school safety.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Welcome to all of you. We look forward to your testimony.
Those of you who have not testified, when you begin to speak,
we will ask you to turn on your microphone and bring it toward
you so everybody in the room can hear. And a green light will
go on in front of you; and then when you have a minute
remaining, an orange light will go on, and you should consider
trying to wrap up your remarks; and then a red light, and that
should allow us time for questions from the members of the
committee.
Governor Wise, Bob, welcome to the committee. And I just
would like to say to the witnesses, this is a topic that is
discussed among the Members of Congress on the floor of the
House when we are having conversations about our districts. The
questions of these two issues, of dropout--school dropout rates
and what causes that, and what we can do to prevent it. And, of
course, the issue of school safety.
So your appearance here is important to us, and we
appreciate your taking your time and for all of your experience
in these fields.
STATEMENT OF HON. BOB WISE, PRESIDENT, ALLIANCE FOR EXCELLENT
EDUCATION, AND FORMER GOVERNOR, STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA
Mr. Wise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it is a pleasure to
be back in front of you and the members of the committee
around, also, your importance in tying together safety and
learning because learning can't take place if it is not in a
safe environment. Since you have taken about the first 3
minutes of my statement, eloquently outlining the crisis--and
indeed it is a crisis in high schools----
Chairman Miller. Oh, you are far more eloquent though. So
you can go ahead and repeat it, and they won't even recognize
it.
Mr. Wise [continuing]. I am going to move forward to
recommendations, except to make one point that when many of us
have the privilege of attending high school commencements
during this next month, and we watch those young people
joyfully walk across the commencement stage, just remember that
there are also over 1 million that are not walking across that
stage that started in the ninth grade with them. Unfortunately,
for those young people, graduation day is just another day of
either being in the unemployment line or minimum wage job.
So--almost one out of three of our ninth graders starting
will not finish in a 4-year period, so we know and you laid out
well, I thought, Mr. Chairman, in your statement the nature of
the crisis in high schools.
Could I talk a little about what can be done under No Child
Left Behind and also why we are where we are? I would like,
first, to address the missing middle in our Nation's secondary
schools. And that is the Federal funding that goes to middle
and high schools.
If I could draw an air graph, starting from the table to
the top here and that is $18 billion, this reflects what the
Federal Government spends directly for K-through-6, Title I-
Head Start, pre-K-to-6 and a billion dollars for Reading First
for $18 billion.
Over here is higher education, postsecondary; it is around
$16 billion. It is Pell Grants, financial aid, does not include
guaranteed student loans, that would be much higher.
So what are we spending then, in comparison, on middle and
high schools? Here is middle schools at about $2.5, and here
are high schools at about $2.5 for a total of $5 billion in our
secondary schools system.
We don't want one penny taken out of these other areas.
They don't get enough. But we do think we ought to be looking
at the commitment that is being made in middle and high
schools.
Secondary to look at is No Child Left Behind, which I
support the concepts of, but it does not hold true
accountability at the high school level. The law looks at test
scores, but it does not look at whether students actually
graduate. It is like running students around the mile track,
and we rigorously assess them at every tenth of a mile except
the finish line, and then we throw it out. And so Congressman
Hinojosa, for instance, has been trying to address this problem
for some years now with the Graduation for All Act.
Beyond accountability, the school improvement requirements
under NCLB, namely school choice and supplemental educational
services, don't work at the high school level. One reason, 75
percent of school districts only have one high school; choice
doesn't apply there.
There is another major reason that really affects all of
Title I, or all of high schools, and that is that the main
carrot and the stick under NCLB is Title I funding and yet only
8 percent of students receiving Title I services are in high
schools. Therefore, whether or not a high school makes AYP or
not really doesn't matter; the supports and the sanctions
simply aren't available for them.
Now, there are successful models. Ken Smith talks for Jobs
for America's Graduates; the Institute for Student Achievement,
talent development; go look at Jeb Stewart just a few miles
from here in Virginia, Granger High School. All have proven
that with the right elements that you referred to, Mr.
Chairman, even schools filled with low-income and minority
students, who start out way behind, can succeed.
What can we do to address this problem? Well, one thing we
can do is to have improved measures of AYP that also have
graduation rates as a strong determinant.
Second is then using this improved measure of AYP to
determine whether or not schools qualify for a new high school
improvement fund that uses proven strategies to turn around
low-performing schools. This would be essentially State run.
The districts would have the turnaround teams, but the Federal
Government would team with them.
Incidentally, this new vision for high school reform is
actually included in bipartisan legislation being introduced in
the Senate today by Senators Bingaman, Burr and Kennedy, called
the Graduation Promise Act.
What other measures? Well, 71 percent of our eighth graders
are reading below grade level according to the National
Assessment for Educational Progress. So authorization of a
Striving Readers program--and, Congressman Yarmuth, your
efforts, we greatly appreciate--and the sponsorship of this is
critical to making sure that they are able to help the 70
percent reading below grade level to meet the content standards
of their tougher courses.
We would also look at NCLB including a major investment in
States' quality data systems in accordance with the
recommendations of the data quality campaign. From the
classroom to this committee room, we need good data to make the
decisions that are so important.
And finally, let me leave you with one last thought, and
that is that there are more than 15,000 high schools in this
country, yet only 2,000 of them, 15 percent, are producing half
of America's dropouts. We know where they are. We know what to
do about it. The question is whether in this reauthorization of
No Child Left Behind we have the will to do something about it.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Wise follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Bob Wise, President, Alliance for Excellent
Education, Former Governor, State of West Virginia
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the invitation to speak with you today.
I appreciate your commitment to education, as well as that of the other
distinguished Members of the Committee.
In the coming month, millions of high school seniors will walk
across the stage at graduation ceremonies to receive their high school
diplomas. Auditoriums and gymnasiums around the country will be packed
to the brim with proud parents and relatives. For many students,
Graduation Day will be the culmination of thirteen years of study; for
others, it will be the doorway to postsecondary education. But for
nearly 1.2 million students nationally who started high school with
these graduating students, it will likely be just another day that they
are unemployed or working at a minimum wage job because they have
already dropped out of school.
For students to succeed in high school or at any level of
education, it is critical that they feel safe and engaged in their
schools. My organization, the Alliance for Excellent Education, has
developed a list of the ten elements of a successful high school for
students and their families. Those elements are: challenging classes,
personal attention for all students, extra help for those who need it,
skilled teachers, strong leaders, necessary resources, user-friendly
information for families and the community, bringing the real world
into the classroom, family and community involvement, and a safe
learning environment.
As a parent, I worry first that my child is safe, both physically
and emotionally, and then I worry about the teaching and curriculum.
Every high school must guarantee the safety of its students, teachers,
staff, and visitors, and every school should be kept free of drugs,
weapons, and gangs. School leaders should build a climate of trust and
respect, which includes encouraging peaceful solutions to conflict and
responding directly to bullying, verbal abuse, or other threats.
Schools are the guardians of our children during the day and all else
is second to their security. Safety and engagement are the pillars of
dropout prevention in our schools. For students to be successful,
though, we must also ensure that they graduate from high school with
the skills necessary to succeed in college and the twenty-first century
workforce.
Crisis and Economic Impact
Forty years ago, the United States was number one in the world in
high school graduation rates; it now ranks seventeenth. The nation's
fifteen-year-olds, when measured against their counterparts in other
industrialized nations, rank fifteenth in reading, twenty-third in
math, and thirtieth in problem-solving skills.
This does not bode well for the future economic well-being of the
nation, nor for the continued prosperity of its people. An increasingly
global, technologically-based economy is demanding ever higher levels
of knowledge and skills from its workers. The U.S. Department of Labor
estimates that almost 90 percent of the fastest growing U.S. jobs
require at least some postsecondary education.
In a world in which a meaningful high school diploma has become the
minimum qualification necessary to obtain a good job and support family
well-being, far too many American students are being allowed to fall
off the path to prosperity. This problem has escalated to crisis
proportions in thousands of the nation's high schools and is hampering
the opportunities of millions of students.
Every school day, 7,000 students drop out--that's 7,000 students
who could have become teachers or researchers, small business owners,
or Representatives. Of the students who enter ninth grade each fall, a
third will not graduate from high school within four years. Another
third will graduate but without the skills and knowledge needed to
succeed in college or the twenty-first century workplace. And only a
third will graduate four years later with those necessary skills.
The dropout levels are particularly acute in roughly 2,000 high
schools across the country. Research by Robert Balfanz and Nettie
Legters of the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns
Hopkins University has shown that about 15 percent of the nation's high
schools produce close to half of its dropouts. These schools are the
nation's dropout factories. They have weak promoting power--the number
of seniors is routinely no more than 60 percent of freshmen four years
earlier. Year after year, often for a decade or longer, about as many
students drop out as graduate. In the worst cases, a freshman class of
four hundred often produce 150 or fewer graduates.
The numbers are even worse for minority communities in our country.
Only about 55 percent of black students and 52 percent of Hispanic
students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma,
compared to 78 percent of white students. Only 16 percent of Latino
students and 23 percent of African-American students graduate prepared
for college, compared to 40 percent of white students. And the news
could get worse. Based on projections from the U.S. Census Bureau, the
white population is expected to grow by only 1 percent by 2020, while
the Hispanic population will increase by 77 percent and the African-
American population by 32 percent. If the nation cannot do a better job
of serving minority students and ensuring that they graduate from high
school, the nation's overall graduation rate will fall even further as
a growing number of minority students are left behind.
Dropouts are not the only ones who pay the price for a lack of a
quality education. Analysis by my organization, the Alliance for
Excellent Education, with assistance from the MetLife Foundation,
reveals that if the 1.2 million high school dropouts from the Class of
2006 had earned their diplomas instead of dropping out, the U.S.
economy would have seen an additional $309 billion in wages over these
students' lifetimes. And that's only for one year--we can expect the
country to lose another $309 billion in potential earnings later this
year as dropouts from the Class of 2007 fail to graduate with their
classmates. If this annual pattern is allowed to continue, more than 12
million students will drop out of school during the next decade at a
cost to the nation of $3 trillion.
Recent research conducted by a group of the nation's leading
researchers in education and economics has shed some light on exactly
how much a high school dropout costs the nation in lost taxes,
increased health care costs, higher spending on crime, and more
expenditure on support programs such as welfare. According to a recent
report, which was published by Teachers College at Columbia University,
male high school graduates earn up to $322,000 more over the course of
their lifetimes than dropouts, while college graduates earn up to $1.3
million more.
On the flip side, the Alliance projects that if the U.S. education
system could raise minority high school graduation rates to the current
level of whites, and if those new graduates go on to postsecondary
education at similar rates, additional personal income would increase
by more than $310.4 billion by 2020, yielding additional tax revenues
and a considerably improved economic picture.
While some high school dropouts might eventually find good jobs and
earn decent livings, most will spend their life in a state of
uncertainty--periodically unemployed or on government assistance. Many
will cycle in and out of prison. In fact, about 75 percent of America's
state prison inmates, almost 59 percent of federal inmates, and 69
percent of jail inmates did not complete high school. If we could
increase the male graduation rate by only 5 percent, we could save $7.7
billion a year by reducing crime related costs and increasing earnings.
High school graduates have better health and tend to live longer
than high school dropouts. Individuals with higher educational
attainment also are less likely to use public health services such as
Medicaid. An Alliance analysis found that if every student in the class
of 2005-2006 graduated from high school, the nation could save $17.1
billion in lifetime health costs.
Federal Role and NCLB Reauthorization
The good news is that, although there is a significant crisis, we
know much about how to respond. The reauthorization of the No Child
Left Behind Act (NCLB) offers an opportunity for you as the education
leaders in the House to put the ``Secondary'' into the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act and take some critical steps towards improving
our nation's middle and high schools. The realities of global
competitiveness, the rapidly-diminishing prospects of those students
whose high schools fail to prepare them for college and work, and the
resulting widening opportunity gap all make middle and high school
reform an imperative issue from an economic, national security and
civil rights perspective.
The time is right for the federal government to take bold
leadership in advancing secondary school reform--leadership that is
appropriate to the crisis and in line with the federal government's
tradition of intervening to assure the security of the nation, reduce
poverty and increase equity, and advance research to inform effective
practice. The increasing urgency to address the trouble plaguing
secondary schools has been bolstered by an avalanche of reports
recognizing the link between improving secondary education and
increasing and maintain competitiveness. Such reports include ETS's The
Perfect Storm and National Council on Economic Education's Tough
Choices--Tough Times.
For education reform to truly take hold and be successful, it must
happen at all levels of education, from the schoolhouse to Capitol
Hill. As a nation, we will never reach the goals of No Child Left
Behind or make every child a graduate without significantly increasing
funding to improve America's high schools--levels of investment equal
to the levels of reform. But I am not interested in simply making the
current dysfunctional system just more expensive. Reforms must be
targeted and research-based and investment should match that reform.
Currently, there is little federal investment in our nation's high
schools and we are getting what we pay for. As of now, the federal
funding in education funds targets the bookends of the education
system--concentrating on grades pre-K--6 and higher education. The
``missing middle'' is our nation's secondary schools, which receive
little to no funding from the federal level. Funding for grades pre-K--
6 totals nearly $18 billion. Funding for postsecondary education totals
nearly $16 billion and that is without taking into account student
loans or other tax incentives. However, funding for grades 7-12 is
close to $5 billion.
Why NCLB Doesn't Work for Secondary Schools
Unfortunately, the focus of NCLB reflects the current federal
funding priorities in education--NCLB was just not set up for secondary
schools. I am not here to criticize NCLB. I am here to tell you why it
does not work for high schools and how you can fix them in
reauthorization. However, I believe it is critical for us to remember
all of the core reasons NCLB was written and became law when we discuss
the crisis in our nation's high schools. The law was written to provide
all children, including poor and minority children, with access to a
high-quality, standards-based education--the same reasons federal
action must occur at the high school level. NCLB, despite its
shortcomings, has put a spotlight on the achievement gap--a gap that is
startling at the high school level and illustrated in the shocking
graduation rates I described earlier.
NCLB was designed to address grades K-8 and generally it did not
even really contemplate the law's interaction with secondary schools.
For example, the original Bush Administration proposal was twenty-eight
pages and only mentioned high schools twice. In addition, NAEP, known
as the nation's report card, is only required in fourth and eighth
grades so there is no on going national measure of student achievement.
And, despite low literacy rates in the upper grades Reading First, the
federal investment in reading skills, is only a K-3 program. As a
result, NCLB policy is often neglectful of or even at odds with the
needs of America's 14 million high school students, particularly the 6
million students who are at risk of dropping out of school each year.
NCLB at its core is about accountability for improving student
achievement. However, there is not true accountability at the high
school level--the law looks at test scores but not if students actually
graduate. It's as if we are clocking runners in a race every mile but
then do not pay attention to whether they cross the finish line.
Because Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is focused solely on test
scores, there is a perverse incentive to push out the kids who do not
score well. Further, these tests generally measure proficiency in the
tenth grade, not preparedness for graduation and beyond.
Despite calculation of graduation rates being part of the law,
there is no accountability tied to those rates. States calculate high
school graduation rates in different and, in many cases highly
inaccurate and misleading, ways. Subgroup graduation rates do not count
for NCLB; therefore the graduation gaps and the low graduation rates of
poor and minority are not reflected in AYP determinations. Even if the
graduation rates were accurate and accounted for students in subgroups,
NCLB does not require schools and states to make meaningful progress in
increasing graduation rates. While states, districts and schools are
held accountable for getting all students proficient in math and
reading by 2014, there is no such ultimate goal for graduation rates.
The consequences are that most states do not have meaningful goals for
improving graduation rates each year and that schools can make AYP
while showing little to no progress on graduation rates.
In 2005, the National Governors Association (NGA) took an important
first step in recognizing these problems and moving toward a solution.
The NGA Graduation Rate Compact was originally signed by all fifty of
the nation's governors pledging to adopt accurate and consistent
measurements for reporting high school graduation rates. However, two
states have since backed out of the commitment; only a few states have
yet implemented the Compact rate; and because the Compact did not
address accountability, definitions, rates, and growth goals for
accountability are still not consistent state to state. NCLB should
operationalize the Compact by requiring that graduation rates are
disaggregated and increase over time as part of accountability.
Beyond accountability, the school improvement requirements or
sanctions under NCLB (which only apply to Title I schools, thus missing
the vast majority of high schools) namely school choice and
supplemental education services (SES), simply do not work at the high
school level. School choice often is not applicable at the high school
level. Seventy-five percent of school districts have only one high
school. In cases where districts do contain more than one high school,
they are often concentrated urban districts with many low-performing
high schools. And in the cases where such districts do contain high-
performing high schools, those schools only have a handful of transfer
slots available, thus ensuring no real improvement for a failing high
school. In the case of SES, because Title I funding is extremely
limited, very few students in high schools actually receive the
services. Further, given extracurricular, social and work demands, high
school students are not likely to opt in to extra tutoring. Finally,
regardless of whether or not SES and school choice even could work for
high school students, neither provide the research-based improvement
strategies that will turn around low-performing high schools.
At the root of why NCLB does not work for high schools is the fact
that of Title I funds almost never even reach high schools. Title I is
both the ``carrot'' and the ``stick'' that gives NCLB impetus. NCLB
requires all schools to report on their assessment performance every
year, however sanctions only apply to and are funded for the schools
receiving Title I funds. Yet only 8 percent of Title I participants are
high school students. Other major funding streams are also not reaching
high schools. Seventy percent of entering freshmen cannot read at grade
level. However, the major federal investment in reading, Reading First,
stops in third grade.
Given the problems facing our nation's secondary schools, secondary
schools need systemic reforms that NCLB simply does not provide or
require. Much is now known about how to renew and revitalize the
country's middle and high schools so as to ensure that more students
succeed. Local school districts and the states have an undisputed and
critical role to play in redesigning the nation's secondary schools to
meet the needs of the 21st century, and many of them are working hard
to implement effective reforms. Schools such as JEB Stuart High School
in Falls Church, Virginia and Granger High School in Yakima, Washington
and programs such as Institute for Student Achievement (ISA) and Talent
Development, in communities scattered across the nation are proving
that with high expectations and the necessary support, today's
students--even those who are most highly at risk of dropping out--are
up to the challenge. These schools are successfully keeping students in
attendance, improving their achievement levels, and graduating them
prepared for success.
NCLB Reauthorization and High Schools
For all of the reasons I described earlier, the Alliance believes
NCLB reauthorization must look at multiple means to improve the
nation's high schools from accountability and improvement to literacy
to critical data systems. First, I will discuss accountability and
school improvement, the cornerstone of federal school reform policy.
Accountability and Improvement
To turn around low-performing high schools, NCLB must include a new
system of meaningful high school accountability system that is tied
closely with school improvement. While the current structure of NCLB
does not work for high schools, it can be built upon to leverage the
student achievement gains and improved preparedness and graduation
rates needed for students and the nation to succeed.
As discussed earlier, adequate yearly progress (AYP) currently does
not include the appropriate indicators of a high school's performance.
An appropriate measure of AYP at the high school level must include
high quality assessments that are performance-based and aligned to
college and work ready standards not administered before eleventh grade
and consistent, disaggregated graduation rates. Both assessment
performance and graduation rates should be required to increase over
time. In this new system of accountability and improvement, such a
measure of AYP would act as a ``thermometer'' to see if schools are
meeting appropriate goals. In other words, it would tell us something
is wrong but further diagnosis and treatment are needed.
That improved measure of AYP would determine whether or not schools
enter a new school differentiated improvement system. That new system,
a High School Improvement Fund would turn around America's lowest
performing high schools and give students attending those schools a
chance to graduate ready for college and work. The High School
Improvement Fund would support more comprehensive state accountability
and improvement systems at the high school level.
Under this new system of improvement, states would set up new
statewide systems that utilize multiple measures or indicators to
appropriately assess high school quality. Formula grants would be
distributed to the states, based on poverty and graduation rates, to
establish and/or expand statewide, differentiated high school
improvement systems guided by research and best practice. These systems
would be approved by the Secretary as part of a rigorous peer-review
process. States would then develop a set of school performance
indicators to be used, in addition to the new measures used to
determine AYP, to analyze high school performance, determine the amount
and type of support each school needs, and guide the school improvement
process. States would also define a minimum amount of expected growth
on each school performance indicator to demonstrate continuous and
substantial progress.
States would then determine how data from the school performance
indicators and AYP data will be used to place high schools in need of
improvement into one of three school improvement categories. Unlike
current law, how schools fit into the following categories is not
determined by how long the school has been failing, but by how badly
the school is performing. The first category is schools needing
targeted assistance, which are schools that have just missed making AYP
and are performing well on most indicators, but a targeted
intervention, such as improved instruction for ELL students or a school
wide literacy plan, is likely to improve student outcomes. The second
category is schools needing whole school reform, which are schools that
have missed making AYP by a significant margin or for multiple
subgroups and are struggling on most other indicators. Such schools
could benefit from a school wide strategy to address the multiple
layers of school improvement demonstrated from research and best
practice. The third category is schools needing replacement which are
schools that are failing large numbers of students by most or all
measures and likely have been for some time. Improving student outcomes
in those schools would call for replacement with more personalized,
rigorous and well-designed school models.
Under this new system, development and implementation of the
improvement strategies would come from the local level. For each high
school that did not make AYP and was placed into one of the three
categories I just discussed, district-led school improvement teams
would use the school performance data, a school capacity audit and
needs assessment, and data about incoming ninth graders, to develop
appropriate school improvement plans. The high school improvement plans
would lay out the evidence-based academic and nonacademic interventions
and resources necessary to improve student achievement, reduce dropout
rates, meet annual benchmarks, and make adequate yearly progress.
Districts would then apply to the state on behalf of their high
schools, for funds necessary to implement the high school improvement
plans and complementary district wide strategies. States would award
subgrants to districts with approved applications, with funds going
first to those districts serving high schools needing whole school
reform or replacement.
Districts and high school improvement teams would implement the
high school improvement plans, directing funds first to implement the
plans for schools in need of whole school reform or replacement. In
subsequent years, high schools that meet the annual benchmarks on
school performance indicators, even if they do not make AYP, could
continue to implement the school improvement plan. High schools not
meeting the annual benchmarks for two years would be redesignated into
a different school improvement category and required to develop a new
school improvement plan with state involvement.
Research, evaluation and technical assistance are critical for this
system to work. States would be able to reserve 10 percent of funds to
implement the requirements of the statute and also to build the
capacity to support the school improvement efforts. The Secretary would
also reserve funds to provide technical assistance and regional
training programs; to develop and implement or replicate effective
research-based comprehensive high school reform models; and to evaluate
the program and determine the most effective interventions.
A new, more appropriate measure of AYP and the High School
Improvement Fund provide the foundation for true, systemic high school
reform. However, alone, a new accountability and improvement system
will not be successful in preparing students to graduate with the
skills to succeed in postsecondary education and the workforce. NCLB
must include other measures that will inform teaching, support students
and provide the interventions that will ultimately improve student
achievement.
Striving Readers
As I mentioned earlier, 70 percent of eighth graders cannot read at
grade level. Unfortunately, the federal investment in reading, the
Reading First program, disappears after third grade, which is exactly
the point at which expectations for student literacy increase. This
lack of basic reading skills contributes greatly to students failing to
master the knowledge they need to succeed after graduation, or simply
dropping out entirely. In the last year, Congress has repeatedly
discussed improving our nation's competitiveness. Clearly education
plays a critical role in how economically competitive we are as a
nation. I understand the Senate may soon consider legislation on this
very topic. While the conversation has focused tightly on math and
science, I ask you to consider the role literacy plays in the success
students have in math and science. A 2006 report by ACT found that high
school students with higher level literacy skills performed better in
math, science, and social studies courses in college, had higher
college GPA's, and returned to college for a second year at higher
rates.
In response to the need, Congressman Yarmuth, a member of this
Committee, will be introducing the Striving Readers Act, which would
improve literacy skills by helping every state, district, and school
develop comprehensive literacy plans that ensure every student reads
and writes on grade level. The bill will support training teachers to
use assessments and literacy strategies to help struggling readers,
train leaders to support teachers, and provide reading materials for
schools that lack them. NCLB must include Striving Readers so that low
literacy is no longer a reason students fail to succeed in high school.
I want to thank Congressman Yarmuth for his leadership and encourage
all of the members of the Committee to cosponsor the bill when it is
introduced.
Voluntary National Standards
To be competitive, students need to leave high school with a
college- and work-ready diploma. Our students and the nation are
spending billions of dollars at the college level and in the workplace
on remediation because our students are not leaving high school with
the necessary skills. The Alliance estimates that the amount saved in
remedial education costs at U.S. community colleges if high schools
eliminate the need for remediation would be $3.7 billion a year. This
figure includes $1.4 billion to provide remedial education to students
who have recently completed high school, and this figure includes in
the almost $2.3 billion that the economy loses because remedial reading
students are more likely to drop out of college without a degree,
thereby reducing their earning potential.
NCLB should establish a process for developing shared education
standards to ensure that all students are held to the same high
expectations aligned with the requirements of postsecondary education
and the workforce. The federal government should also offer states
high-quality performance assessments to regularly measure student
progress towards those standards and fulfill the testing requirements
of NCLB. This action would remove a significant financial burden from
states and increase the quality of assessments. In addition, the
federal government should provide states with incentives and supports
for adopting such standards and aligning them with their key systems,
such as their curricula, graduation requirements, and professional
development.
Data Systems
To turn around low-performing high schools, educators and policy
makers need accurate information about how students are doing in
school. High-quality longitudinal data systems using individual student
identifiers are critical to improving student achievement. However,
most states and school districts have not yet fully implemented such
systems. The federal government must help states build the
infrastructure needed for data to be collected, reported to the public
and used by educators to improve education. NCLB should include a major
investment in grants to states to build such systems in accordance with
the recommendations of the Data Quality Campaign, as well as grants to
build the capacity to use data to improve teaching and learning through
professional development, effective data collection and other key
functions. NCLB should include $100 million in competitive grants to
build those systems, and $100 million in formula grants to every state
to align those systems with district systems and build educator
capacity at state and local level to use the data to improve teaching
and learning.
Thank you
Again, I want to thank the Chairman and the Committee for their
leadership on this critical issue. I urge you to seize the opportunity
of NCLB reauthorization to take our nation's high schools into the
twenty-first century. The quality of high school education is
increasingly central to national concerns, including securing the
nation's global economic position, reducing threats to national
security, and assuring equal opportunity for a population that is
growing increasingly diverse. By appropriately extending its education
focus to include the needs of students in middle and high schools, the
federal government can move the nation from ``no child left behind'' to
``every child a graduate.''
______
Chairman Miller. Dr. Norwood?
STATEMENT OF DR. JANE NORWOOD, VICE CHAIR, NORTH CAROLINA STATE
BOARD OF EDUCATION
Ms. Norwood. Good afternoon, Chairman Miller, Ranking
Member McKeon and members of the committee. On behalf of the
National Association of State Boards of Education, I want to
thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to
talk about graduation rates and what we need to do----
Chairman Miller. Could I ask if you could just pull the
microphone a little closer to you.
Ms. Norwood [continuing]. And what we need to do to ensure
that every child has the opportunity to graduate from high
school, ready for college and work in the 21st century. In
North Carolina we are moving toward greater accountability with
more accurate data and reforming our system accordingly.
My colleagues at State Boards of Education from around the
country are also engaged in similar efforts to improve the high
school curriculum and raise student achievement. We recognize
that the institution of the American high school must undergo
sweeping improvements in order to prepare all students for
today's economy. High schools must reject the notion that
students with differing abilities should be prepared for
different futures.
Today, I would like to share with you the lessons we have
learned and what the implications may be for your work at the
Federal level. Effective high school reforms must focus on the
core issues of literacy, high school structure, teacher quality
and dropout prevention. 21st century high schools should ensure
that every student takes relevant, challenging and integrated
courses taught by qualified teachers and has the opportunity to
access online and higher education courses.
Graduation rates and dropout prevention are perhaps the
most pressing concerns at this time. Many States have begun to
accurately measure and report graduation rates as a first step
toward dramatically improving dropout prevention efforts and
closing achievement gaps.
In North Carolina, we decided to calculate a 4-year cohort
graduation rate, that is, students who started ninth grade and
graduate 4 years later rather than an annual dropout rate that
only counted incidences of dropout. In February we reported our
first 4-year cohort graduation rate of 68.1 percent, a dramatic
downward revision from previous figures that had prompted
State, local and general public attention to prevent these
dropouts.
Beyond simply calculating rates accurately, we must reform
our education system to improve graduation rates and prevent
and recover dropouts. We have to use dropout information to
help students. This will take a systemic effort across numerous
policy areas to align standards with college and work
expectations, ensure access to rigorous courses and early
college opportunities, promote support for struggling students,
promote interventions in our most chronically underperforming
schools and more.
Last year, our State board approved a framework for a more
rigorous high school curriculum that will better prepare
students to succeed in their postsecondary and workforce
careers known as the Future-Ready Core. The framework consists
of 17 courses critical to the economic and societal demands of
the 21st century. Examples of other innovation are that our
General Assembly funded literacy coaches at middle schools.
Schools are offering summer transition programs to ease
students into new high school environments. Also many of our
high schools are implementing ninth grade academies.
North Carolina students can also attend Learn and Earn High
Schools. Students in these programs can earn an Associate
Degree before leaving high school, a degree that will transfer
to the university system and satisfy the first 2 years of a 4-
year degree.
Nationally, school districts have developed plans that
create early identification and innovation for students who are
considered at risk. There are dual enrollment opportunities and
early college high schools; increasing the compulsory
attendance age, for example, from 16 to 18; recovering or
regaining students that have dropped out; establishing truancy
prevention programs which involve schools, law enforcement
agencies, families, business community and social service
agencies working together; and partnering with community
college and the adult education community to entice dropouts to
return by offering them an alternative education path to
recover credits and receive their diploma through
nontraditional means, such as the North Carolina Virtual Public
School.
We simply cannot achieve the overarching goals of No Child
Left Behind without effective high school reforms. More support
is needed from the Federal level for reform and to increase
graduation rates, from codifying the right rates to supporting
a range of efforts and interventions. This assessment should
reinforce the wide-ranging work going on in the States and
promote continuous innovation.
We call the three Rs of dropout prevention ``Reform,
Relevancy and Reading.''
In crafting dropout prevention and high school reform
policies, policymakers cannot lose sight of relevancy of the
real-world impact and reaction of their best-intended efforts
at the school and classroom level. We need to be sensitive to
the unique circumstances, interests, needs and demands of
students.
Finally, nothing can be accomplished unless we dramatically
improve literacy rates, especially of high school students.
Nothing less than a new paradigm is required, one based on
joint problem solving, collaboration, practice and collective
accountability that engages students in purposeful reading,
writing and all subjects being taught.
In today's world, we must communicate the message that a
high school education has become a bare necessity and should be
a minimum expectation, if not a basic right, for all students.
We have an obligation at the local, State and Federal level to
protect and promote this right.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this very
important topic. I look forward to answering any questions you
may have.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Norwood follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Jane Norwood, Vice-Chair, North Carolina
State Board of Education
Good afternoon, Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon, and members
of the committee. On behalf of the North Carolina State Board of
Education and the National Association of State Boards of Education--
NASBE--I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today to talk about graduation rates and what we need to do together to
ensure that every child has the opportunity to graduate from high
school ready for college and work in the 21st century.
In North Carolina we have taken great strides toward focusing on
this vital issue, moving toward greater accountability with more
accurate data, and reforming our system accordingly. North Carolina may
be a leader in high school reform, but we are not alone in these
efforts. My colleagues on state boards of education from around the
country are engaged in similar efforts to improve the high school
curriculum and raise student achievement. Over the last several years,
as a national organization NASBE has undertaken multiple projects
related to graduation rates and accountability. I am proud that NASBE
and my state are partners with the Gates Foundation in redesigning high
schools. We recognize that the institution of the American high school
must undergo sweeping improvements in order to prepare all students for
today's economy. High schools must reject the notion that students with
different abilities should be prepared for different futures.
Today I'd like to share with you some of the actions we are taking,
the lessons we have learned, and what the implications may be for your
work at the federal level.
Overview of the Issue
Effective high school reforms must focus on the core issues of
literacy, high school structure (including use of the school day and
the school calendar), teacher quality, and dropout prevention. 21st
Century high schools should ensure that every student takes relevant,
challenging, and integrated courses taught by qualified teachers and
has the opportunity to access online and higher education courses.
Among reform strategies, graduation rates and dropout prevention
are perhaps the most pressing concerns at this time.
Nationally, we have learned a lot about graduation rates and their
meaning. To reinforce the work of the Alliance for Excellent Education,
the National Governor's Association graduation rate task force, and
others, many states have begun to accurately measure and report
graduation rates as a first step toward dramatically improving dropout
prevention efforts and closing achievement gaps.
In North Carolina, the first step in addressing the dropout
epidemic was the decision to calculate a four-year cohort graduation
rate in keeping with the Governors Compact, rather than an annual drop
out rate that only counted incidences of drop out during one year. The
dropout problem needed to be more personal--it needed to represent the
students who were in school in grade nine and absent at graduation. We
do not include in our graduation rate any student we can't verify as
attending another education institution, excluding the community
college system unless students are attending it as part of a public
high school program and not a GED program.
Indeed, in February we reported our first four-year cohort
graduation rate of 68.1 percent, a dramatic downward revision from
previous figures that has prompted state and local leader scrutiny of,
and public attention to, reducing dropout rates.
Moving Forward: Beyond the Graduation Rate
Beyond simply calculating rates accurately, however, we must reform
our educational systems to dramatically improve graduation rates and
prevent and recover dropouts. It is not enough to have accurate rates--
we have to use that information to help students. And here I have to
tell you that our experience is that this will take a systemic effort
across numerous policy areas--to align standards with college and work
expectations, ensure access to rigorous courses and early college
opportunities, promote supports for struggling students in reading and
other areas, promote interventions in our most chronically
underperforming schools, and more.
Last year, our state board approved a framework for a more rigorous
high school curriculum that will better prepare students to succeed in
their post-secondary and workforce careers. Known as the ``Future-Ready
Core,'' the framework consists of 17 courses, including four units of
English and four units of math, our board has identified as critical to
the economic and societal demands of the 21st century.
In addition, our General Assembly is funding literacy coaches at
middle schools to ensure that students entering ninth grade are
stronger readers. Many of our high schools are offering summer
transition programs to ease students into the new high school
environment. Also many of our high schools are implementing Ninth Grade
Academies. These smaller learning environments offer additional support
to students in English Language Arts, Reading, and Mathematics.
North Carolina students can also attend Learn and Earn High
Schools. Students in these programs can earn an Associate Degree before
leaving high school--a degree that will transfer to the university
system and satisfy the first two years of a four-year degree. Governor
Easley is asking the General Assembly to fund the final two years of
college for eligible students whose families qualify at two times the
national poverty level. Those students would graduate from college
debt-free. Strong incentives for staying in school such as the ones
cited are being developed to keep North Carolina students from dropping
out.
Nationally, many states and school districts have developed plans
that create early identification systems for students who are
considered ``at-risk.'' A few states have focused on dual enrollment
opportunities and early college high schools, programs that are
designed to encourage students to earn college credit while completing
high school in an effort to take a preventive approach to curbing the
drop out problem.
One approach to curbing the dropout rates some states are taking is
to increase the compulsory attendance age, for example, from 16 to 18.
However, in most cases a parent or guardian can allow a student to
withdraw from school by signing a written consent form. Although this
tactic has become increasingly popular among states, critics have
argued that compulsory attendance laws take away freedom and make the
case that teenagers who are kept in school against their wishes will
not learn.
School systems are also making efforts to recover or regain
students who have dropped out. This generally includes establishing
truancy prevention programs, which offer services to help students
overcome personal and social obstacles that have led to a decline in
attendance. These strategies bring together schools, law enforcement
agencies, families, the business community, and social services
agencies.
School districts have also partnered with community colleges and
the adult education community to entice dropouts to return by offering
an alternative education path that allows students to recover credits
and receive a diploma through nontraditional means. Recovery efforts
are still in their infancy, but many education officials are now
beginning to understand the importance of re--engaging the dropout
population through nontraditional techniques. In North Carolina
students can access credit recovery courses through the North Carolina
Virtual Public School.
Moving Forward: Implications for Federal Policymakers
But more broadly, we simply cannot achieve the overarching goals of
the No Child Left Behind Act--100% student proficiency and closing the
achievement gap--without effective high school reforms. Moving ahead,
all of this suggests some important lessons for your work at the
federal level. In summary, more support is needed for high school
reform and to dramatically increase graduation rates, from codifying
the right rates to supporting a range of efforts and interventions.
This assistance should reinforce the wide-ranging work going on in the
states, and promote continued innovation.
There are several effective systemic solutions that can be
incorporated into state and federal policies. You hear a lot about the
three R's so I offer 3 R's to help you remember my testimony today:
Reform, Relevancy, and Reading.
Reforms must promote intervention and recovery efforts as part of
the comprehensive restructuring of high school. Creating an ``early
warning system'' can be helpful in preventing students from dropping
out. Other initiatives can include identification and turnaround
efforts at schools graduating low percentages of students. In North
Carolina, with the help of Gates dollars, the Department of Public
Instruction has added a turnaround division to work with low-performing
high schools. This turnaround effort provides a leadership coach for
the high school principal who also participates in extensive
professional development offered through the University of North
Carolina. Curriculum specialists broker needed content-based staff
development for teachers who often times are inexperienced or new to
the state and are unfamiliar with the North Carolina standards.
It is critical that states, schools, and districts have accurate
data in order to address the dropout problem. Key to this effort is
improving the ability of schools to calculate the precise number of
students leaving school, along with developing robust state data
systems.
We also need to more carefully scrutinize the milestone transitions
in the middle of the P-16 continuum. A student's move from elementary
school to middle school, and the middle school to high school transfer
are fraught with academic, emotional, and social strains on students,
many of whom we would already consider ``at-risk.''
These comprehensive reforms cannot succeed without the broad
support of education stakeholders and the public. Just last week, the
State Board of Education hosted a second retreat on high school reform.
Over one hundred people representing education, business, nonprofit,
and civic sectors gathered to discuss high school reforms. The purpose
of the discussions was to measure the amount of progress being made in
high school initiatives currently underway and to set strategies for
scaling up promising practices and findings. In North Carolina, we
believe that if high school reform is to be effective, the whole
community must grasp the urgency for change and feel ownership of any
new redesign.
The second ``R'' is relevancy. In crafting dropout prevention and
high school reform policies, policymakers cannot lose sight of the real
world impact and reaction of their best-intended efforts at the school
and classroom level. We need to be sensitive to the unique
circumstances, interests, needs, and demands of students and schools.
States must provide access to the full range of curriculum offerings
and courses of study to all students.
For example, NASBE will soon undertake a new national research
project on student participation in high school athletics and the link
between athletics and academics. In preparing for this project, we came
to appreciate the recognition policymakers must give to the integral
role athletics now often plays in the high school experience when
crafting high school reform policies. In working to improve the quality
of secondary schools, educators cannot ignore the significant influence
athletics can have on academic decision-making, and vice versa. Any
successful comprehensive high school reform--such as longer school
days--must take into account the impact on athletic programs because it
is one of the primary considerations of many local communities across
the country.
Finally, nothing can be accomplished unless we dramatically improve
literacy rates among students, especially the reading skills of high
school students. Individually, middle and high school students lacking
the necessary literacy skills are more likely to dropout, go to jail,
and be unemployed. More broadly, the national literacy crisis will
seriously hinder this nation's ability to sustain its economy and well-
being into the 21st century. I am pleased to have chaired a year-long
NASBE study of adolescent literacy. The result was a report, Reading at
Risk, detailing the status of student literacy rates across the nation
and policy recommendations for a new vision of teaching and learning
for all students.
You all are no doubt aware of the damning and dismal statistics.
The scope of the literacy problem is staggering. According to the
National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), approximately two-
thirds of 8thand 12th-graders read below the proficient level. For
minority students, almost half of African American and Latino 8th-
graders read below basic level. Accordingly, it is estimated that about
half of the incoming 9th-graders in urban, high-poverty schools read
three years or more below grade level, meaning that large numbers of
entering students cannot comprehend factual information from their
subject matter texts and struggle to form general understandings,
develop interpretations, and make text connections.
Nothing less than a new paradigm is required--one based on joint
problem-solving, collaborative practice, and collective accountability
that engages students in purposeful reading and writing in all subjects
being taught.
Brenda Welburn, NASBE's Executive Director, has called reading a
``basic human right.'' ``An inability to read in today's world,'' she
says, ``is to be consigned to educational, social and economic
failure--an existence entirely devoid of meaningful life, liberty, or
the pursuit of happiness. School leaders have an absolute and
unequivocal educational responsibility and moral obligation to ensure
that every child learns how to read, and read well.''
Conclusion
In today's world we, as education leaders, must communicate the
message that a high school education--a high school diploma--has become
a bare necessity and should be a minimum expectation, if not a basic
right, for all students. We have an obligation to protect and promote
this right. Effective, meaningful and rigorous high school reform
policies are needed at the local, state, and federal levels in order to
increase graduation rates, prevent dropouts and raise overall student
achievement.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this very
important topic. I look forward to answering any questions that you may
have.
______
Chairman Miller. Dr. Robledo Montecel.
STATEMENT OF MARIA ROBLEDO MONTECEL, PH.D., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
INTERCULTURAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH ASSOCIATION
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Chairman Miller, Ranking Member
McKeon, distinguished members, good afternoon and thank you for
the invitation to appear before you.
I am the Executive Director of the Intercultural
Development Research in San Antonio, Texas. IDRA is an
independent research and training organization. For 34 years we
have worked closely with schools, school systems, parents and
communities across the country. Our goal is to assure that
every child has access to quality education that prepares him
or her for a good life and for a productive contribution to
this great democracy that are these United States.
We have partnered with thousands of educators,
administrators and business, family and community leaders to
strengthen public education at national, State and local
levels. IDRA designed and leads the award-winning Coca-Cola
Youth Program, a model program that has helped schools in the
United States and in Brazil succeed in keeping 98 percent of
students in school and learning.
In 1986, I served as principal investigator for one of the
first statewide studies of school dropouts. With that study,
IDRA developed in Texas an enrollment-based methodology that
has become the foundation for dropout counting methods across
the country, including those at the Harvard Civil Rights
Project and the Urban Institute. That seminal IDRA study also
looked at the cost of undereducating our young people.
Findings from our annual cost study totaled over 20 years
indicate that $730 billion have been lost to the State of Texas
alone. With the magnitude of these losses what is needed is a
seismic shift from dropout prevention to graduation for all.
And all must mean all. Many dropout prevention efforts fail
because they are too small or piecemeal or because they blame
students or parents or minority communities for the problem.
Dropout prevention efforts also fail because all too often
schools plan for a failure. Recently, I was talking with a
teacher. She had been hired to teach freshman English in a
large inner city high school. When she learned she had 38
students and that they had been assigned to her class, she
marched to the principal's office and said to him she could
never do a good job with 38 students in one class. He told her,
don't worry, in 6 weeks your class will have 24 students. The
other 14, he assured her, will drop out within 6 weeks.
We need to be honest about the fact that right now we plan
on one-third of students leaving school before they graduate.
We plan on children leaving school. This assumption is built
into classroom assignments, teacher hiring practices,
curriculum purchases and facilities planning.
It is time to plan for success, not failure. To move from
dropout prevention to graduation for all, I would offer
primarily recommendations focused at the campus, district and
systems levels. At the campus level, strengthen and support
school level change through local accountability teams.
Community oversight is the critical missing ingredient in
effective and accountable dropout prevention efforts at the
local level. Local accountability teams would review the local
dropout and graduation data disaggregated by subgroups, as well
as data on school factors affecting the graduation rate, such
as parent involvement, student engagement, curriculum access
and teaching quality. Using these data, a team would develop a
comprehensive plan of action to include all students. Funding
priorities would be based on campuses with the lowest
graduation rates.
Secondly, fund district-wide efforts that focus on
elementary to middle and middle to high school transition
points. Research very clearly shows that students drop out at
key transition points. Research also shows that there are
effective strategies that create safe passage for all of our
students.
Chairman Miller. Excuse me. I am told that your microphone
is not on, and I am worried about recording this.
Go ahead. Just proceed.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Sorry. That is why I had to----
Chairman Miller. You were doing well in the room. It is
just the recording. If I can hear you, let me tell you, they
heard you.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Secondly, we fund district-wide
efforts that focus on elementary to middle and middle to high
school transition points. Research shows that students drop out
at key transition points. Research also shows there are
effective strategies that create safe passage for students.
Targeted school districts would demonstrate use of
effective and coordinated practices that align curriculum, that
create cross-level student tracking systems, that support joint
planning and coordinated professional development. Funding
priorities would be based on States and school systems with the
lowest graduation rates.
Thirdly and finally, our recommendation is to fund the
Graduation for All Act and comprehensive efforts that will
address the issue of graduation for all students. I would also
recommend that you designate a minimum of 5 percent of NCLB
allocations within each title to efforts that graduate all
students.
Planning for success obviously requires investment.
Designating 5 percent of Title I to address dropout strategies
for disadvantaged students is clearly needed, and every
component of NCLB can play a unique role in graduating students
from high school. The same would be true for preparing,
training and recruiting high-quality teachers out of Title II,
improving language and instruction for ELL students out of
Title III and informing parents out of Title V.
If 5 percent of NCLB allocations within each title were
designated for graduation for all efforts, it would cost the
equivalent of $900 for each of the almost 1.3 million students
who drop out of school each year. Many schools in our country
operate on a 100-day instructional day schedule, which means
what is being recommended is a $5-a-day investment.
In this country, not so long ago, it seemed unreasonable to
think that we would have universal education through primary
school. We have that. Now we must have universal education
through high school. Our children deserve it, our democracy
demands it, and our economy requires no less.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
[The statement of Dr. Robledo Montecel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Maria Robledo Montecel, Ph.D., Executive
Director, Intercultural Development Research Association
Mr. Chairman and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you
for the invitation to appear before you to discuss an emerging vision
that ensures graduation for all.
I am Maria Robledo Montecel, executive director of the
Intercultural Development Research Association in San Antonio, Texas.
IDRA is an independent, non-profit organization founded in 1973,
committed to one mission: creating schools that work for all children,
especially those children who have traditionally been left behind--
those who are poor, minority or speak a language other than English.
We have partnered with thousands of educators, administrators, and
business, family and community leaders to strengthen public education
at the national, state and local levels. IDRA designed and leads the
award-winning Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program, a model program that has
helped schools in the United States and Brazil succeed in keeping 98
percent of students in school and learning.
IDRA has worked with schools in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico,
Oklahoma and Texas through our federally-funded equity assistance
center and across Texas through our federally-funded Parent Information
and Resource Center. We have partnered with thousands of educators,
administrators, and business, family and community leaders to
strengthen public education in Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan,
Oregon and Pennsylvania, among many others.
We have worked closely with schools and school systems, helping
them address the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. In
collaboration with the Public Education Network, IDRA conducted a
statewide hearing in Texas on NCLB, bringing together stakeholders
across the education spectrum to gain first-hand insight on NCLB
implementation. IDRA has also partnered with the Hispanic Education
Coalition to frame recommendations for NCLB reauthorization regarding
English language learners; on which the Mexican American Legal Defense
and Educational Fund recently testified before the Senate.
In 1986, I served as principal investigator for one of the first
statewide studies of school dropouts. With that study, IDRA developed
an enrollment-based methodology that has become the foundation for
dropout counting methods by other researchers across the country,
including the Harvard Civil Rights Project and the Urban Institute.
Since 1986, Texas schools have lost more than 2.5 million students. One
student is lost every four minutes.
That seminal study also looked at the cost of under-educating our
young people. Findings from our annual cost study, when totaled over 20
years, indicate that $730 billion have been lost to the state of Texas
alone.
But IDRA has never limited its work only to research the problem;
it has also dedicated its work to creating solutions that keep students
in school, such as IDRA's internationally recognized, research-based
Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program.
With the magnitude of this loss, what is needed is a seismic shift
from ``dropout prevention'' to graduation for all; and ``all'' must
mean ``all.'' Many dropout prevention efforts fail either because they
are too narrow, or piecemeal, or because they blame students and
parents for the problem. Dropout prevention efforts also fail because
all too often schools plan for failure.
Recently, I was talking with a teacher. She had been hired to teach
freshman English in a large inner-city high school. She had finished
preparing her curriculum, identifying books and her principal now sent
her a list of students for the coming school year. When she learned 38
students had been assigned to her class, she marched to the principal's
office and told him that she could never do a good job with 38 students
in one class. He told her: ``Not to worry. In six weeks, your class
will have 24 students.'' The other 14, he assured her, will have
dropped out by then.
We need to be honest about the fact that right now we plan on one
third of students leaving school before they graduate. This assumption
is built into classroom assignments, teacher hiring practices,
curriculum purchases and facilities planning.
Some will say we cannot afford to adopt an emerging vision that
expects all students to graduate. But this ignores the short- and long-
term costs of insufficient or misdirected action.
Over the last two decades, the inability of schools to hold on to
students through high school graduation has cost the state of Texas
about $730.1 billion in forgone income, lost tax revenues, and
increased job training, welfare, unemployment and criminal justice
costs.
It is estimated that across the United States, 1,252,396 students
in 2004 did not graduate on time (Urban Institute). Based on this
number, the cost to the country is $325 billion in lost wages, taxes
and productivity for one class of students (Alliance for Excellent
Education). By contrast, if every household were headed by an
individual with at least a high school diploma, there would be an
additional $74 billion in collective wealth in the United States
(Alliance for Excellent Education).
IDRA's research shows that for every $1 invested in education,
states yield a $9 return. Texas economist Ray Perryman estimates that
just a 10 percent reduction in dropouts would produce 175,000 new jobs
in the state and $200 billion in economic output (Zellmer, 2004).
We must move from a low and archaic expectation that only some of
our country's students can successfully graduate from high school to a
guarantee that all of our students will graduate.
It is time to plan for success, not failure.
To move from dropout prevention to graduation for all, I offer
three primary recommendations focused at the campus, district and
system levels.
At the campus level, strengthen and support school-level change
through Local Accountability Teams.
Community oversight is a critical missing ingredient in effective
and accountable dropout prevention efforts at the local level.
For years, researchers, educators and policymakers have generally
focused on ``fixing'' students rather than on strengthening the school
systems that are responsible for ensuring that children and youth
succeed throughout the educational system.
It is not about fixing students; it is about schools that make a
difference and succeed with all students. The student-deficit approach
has never worked.
What does work are dropout prevention efforts that focus on the
inherent value of the students and their families. But it is critically
important to recognize that what exists is not enough. Part of this
emerging insight is that we cannot simply look for a new or better, or
even another ``program''; what is needed are effective systemic reforms
that will improve a school's holding power.
We also know that schools and communities working together have the
capacity to craft and carry out effective solutions that will make a
difference for students.
Most recently, under IDRA's new Graduation Guaranteed/Graduaci"n
Garantizada initiative, we have been piloting a school holding power
portal that gives community-school action teams data on how their
schools are doing on student attrition and achievement. The portal
provides data on the factors (from teaching quality to curriculum
access and funding equity) that affect attrition, achievement and
school holding power at the campus level.
The community of El Paso has been a forerunner in these efforts.
Last June, higher education and high school leaders in El Paso gathered
more than 150 parents, educators, students, school board members and
community members to raise awareness about high attrition rates and
develop a plan for achieving their vision of 100-percent graduation for
every child in their community. They asked IDRA to provide technical
assistance, data and facilitation to support local action and used
IDRA's Quality Schools Action Framework for their gathering
(``ENFOQUE'') and next steps.
Local accountability teams like this keep schools from working in
isolation. They are better able to use best practices and create new
solutions to strengthen the school's holding power for every student it
serves.
Local accountability teams would review their local dropout and
graduation data, disaggregated by subgroups, as well as data on school
factors affecting the graduation rate, such as parent involvement,
student engagement, curriculum access and teaching quality. Using these
data, the team would develop a comprehensive graduation plan of action
to include all students. These plans would addresses local
accountability, identification and removal of barriers, and the
monitoring and evaluating of the plan's implementation. Teams would
bring together critical stakeholders--parents, educators, community,
business and higher education leaders and students. Funding priorities
for pilot projects would be based on campuses with the lowest
graduation rates.
Secondly, fund district-wide efforts that focus on elementary-to-
middle and middle-to-high school transition points.
Research shows that students drop out at key transition points.
Research also shows that there are effective strategies that create
safe passage for students.
Targeted school districts would demonstrate use of effective and
coordinated practices that align curricula, create cross-level student
tracking systems, and support joint planning and coordinated
professional development for teachers and administrators. Funding
priorities would be based on states and school systems with the lowest
graduation rates.
Not too long ago, parents put their children on a flight to visit
their grandparents across the country. When the flight arrived at its
destination, the grandparents were there, eagerly waiting to greet
their grandchildren. After everyone had left the airplane, the
grandparents were frantic--where were their grandchildren? How could
the airline have lost them?
Quickly, the flight crew and airline agents mobilized to find those
children, and in what seemed like an eternity the children were found
in another airport. The airline president apologized profusely and
promised to find out what had happened and change the system so that a
child would never be lost again.
In today's schools, two out of five students are lost, one out of
two Hispanic students and one out of three African American students
are missing. They never reach their final destination--high school
graduation. Even worse, no one is looking for them, some will not even
admit they are gone. Those who do admit they have lost students,
usually blame the students or their families for the loss.
Imagine if the airline president had said that their young charges
had not arrived because they were minority or because their parents
were poor or because the children were bored or were not ``good''
children.
Instead, everyone in that airline took responsibility for ensuring
safe passage for those young passengers.
The same must be true of our schools. Schools, too, must take
responsibility for ensuring safe passage for our children--they must
hold on to them from the beginning of their journey to their final
destination.
With a newly focused NCLB investment, school districts across the
country can shore up the key transition points that students face
(elementary to middle to high school to college and university) to
secure a ``safe passage'' when they are most vulnerable to lack of
attention and support provided by schools.
Thirdly, our recommendation is to fund HR 547 the Graduation for
All Act and to designate a minimum of 5 percent of the NCLB allocations
within each Title to efforts that focus on graduating all students.
Research on best practices of high performing schools, for example,
has for many years examined the links among a constellation of
indicators on student outcomes.
What is less well understood is which change strategies and school
and community capacities will ensure that schools as systems can hold
on to all students and secure their success.
To bridge this gap, IDRA has been developing the Quality Schools
Action Framework in our collaboration with schools and communities. It
offers a model for assessing school outcomes, identifying leverage
points for improvement, and focusing and effecting change.
Students are far more likely to succeed and graduate when they have
the chance to work with highly qualified, committed teachers, using
effective, accessible curricula, when their parents and communities are
engaged in their schools, and when they themselves feel engaged. We
know that this becomes possible when schools and school policy reflect
good governance and the funding to provide excellent education for all
students.
Planning for success requires investment.
Every component of NCLB plays a unique role in all students
graduating from high school. Title I focuses on improving academic
achievement for disadvantaged students. Designating 5 percent of Title
I to address dropout strategies for disadvantaged students is clearly
needed. The same is true for preparing, training and recruiting high
quality teachers (Title II); improving language and instruction for
English language learner and immigrant students (Title III), and
informing parents (Title V)--all key factors needed to increase
graduation rates for all students.
If 5 percent of NCLB allocations within each Title were designated
for graduation for all efforts, it would cost an estimated $900 for
each of the 1.3 million students who have dropped out of school. Many
schools in our country operate on a 180-instructional-day schedule
which means that what is being recommended is a $5 dollar a day
investment.
Just as successful schools require an integrated, coordinated plan
that has everyone working together to support a common goal, it must
also be the case that the reauthorization of NCLB set an example of
integrated and coordinated policies and funding that are specifically
targeted at improving high school graduation.
In this country, not so long ago, it seemed unreasonable to think
that we would have universal education through primary school. We have
that. Now we must have universal education through high school.
______
Chairman Miller. Mr. Smith.
STATEMENT OF KENNETH M. SMITH, PRESIDENT, JOBS FOR AMERICA'S
GRADUATES
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member McKeon,
for this opportunity to present a 26-year track record that has
been carried out by Jobs for America's Graduates.
Let me commend the committee on behalf of our Chairman, who
is a former member of this organization, John Baldacci, who
sends his regards for holding this hearing on a matter of such
importance to our Nation and to our collective futures.
We believe Jobs for America's Graduates is one of the
Nation's largest and, we believe, most successful, consistently
applied models. And I think that is important, that the
statistics I am going to recite come from a consistently
applied model over 26 years, 500,000 at-risk and disadvantaged
young people. We believe we have a very long track record and
we have an awful lot of bases upon which--for you to take a
look and to make recommendations.
The results over the 26 years are consistent and, we
believe, compelling: a 93 percent return-to-school rate. These
are the young people identified by the schools as most likely
to drop out. A 92-plus percent graduation rate last year, 90
percent overall for the last 26 years, and an 80 percent rate
of success at the end of 12 months on the job, in college, in
the military, or some combination.
Over the past years, we have also developed, at the request
of the schools and governors and others, a model to serve high
school dropouts. We have about 5,000 high school dropouts
enrolled in that application of our model.
Let me just give you the lessons we think we have learned
after all these years and a half million young people later.
Improvements in curriculum and increased rigor are essential,
but they are not sufficient if you really want to reduce the
dropout rate.
To best ensure success in reducing the dropout rate, there
are several things we have learned that make a great deal of
difference. Perhaps the most important is engagement. It
appears to us to be a critical dimension of a sustainable
strategy of dropout prevention and recovery. Everything seems
to work if young people are engaged, and not much seems to work
if they are not.
Part of the engagement process is assembling the assets of
the community as described here by others. Another we have come
to find is the opportunity to be involved in a student
organization, to be involved in something positive,
constructive, that is aimed at high school graduation, that is
aimed at success in the labor market.
Ninety percent of our young people say they were never
invited to join anything ever before. They never were invited
to join anything. It makes an enormous difference. Come join
the JAG Career Association, and not only that, would you like
to be the president, the vice president, and you would like to
be a leader? A fundamental ingredient to success is somebody
who cares. You know that. We know that. It is so simple, but it
is absolutely accurate.
Accountability matters a lot. If you don't know where you
are going, it is hard to get there. Work, it turns out, matters
a lot. We have got some independent research that was conducted
with funding from other organizations that shows that work for
this population is part of the form of engagement. Twenty hours
or less of work improves high school success because they have
got a relationship with why they are going to school, and
particularly if they are disadvantaged, they need the money.
Employer involvement is very important. Community
involvement is very important. We do need to have everybody to
make this work.
Maybe most importantly, we can do this. We can do this. We
have got 26 years of experience that says, as the many other
programs, this can be done. The difference is whether we can
take it to scale.
Let me just spend 2 minutes on engagement and some
recommendations. We find that having a staff member who is that
somebody who cares intensively involved with 35 or 40 of these
at-risk young people every day, 7 days a week for as many years
as you can makes a decisive difference, decisive difference. If
you make those staff members accountable for graduation from
high school and success on the job, that is a very powerful
combination and it works.
We offer a student organization, as I mentioned. These
young people flock to it. It is remarkable how engaged they
become and how excited they become, and they begin to show up
for school because they have got a reason to be there.
Getting involved in community service activities: It is
great for the community; it is better for the kids. Self-
esteem, they are worth something, they are contributing back.
Our recommendations for your consideration as you look at
the various laws that you are going to reauthorize or act on
this year: Absolutely, accountability is something that we
continue to reinforce. Our experience says accountability gets
results.
We do encourage you to encourage engagement, encourage
involvement, encourage ways for young people to be engaged in
addition to academic work.
Recognize the value of work. We have got a lot of data
which we have got in your booklets. Work does make a
difference. Lots of independent research demonstrates that.
Value the role of both the teacher and the mentor, somebody
who cares. Value that in your future legislation because those
people make the difference in whether or not young people
succeed.
And finally, we encourage you to look ahead to scale. Take
systems that work to scale, take evidence to scale.
Even within existing resources, we could have a much
greater impact if they were devoted to those things that have
been proven to work. Thank you very much.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Kenneth M. Smith, President, Jobs for America's
Graduates
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to present the 26 year
track record of success and some of the most important lessons we have
learned about dropout prevention and recovery over that quarter of a
century.
Let me commend the Committee, on behalf of our Chairman and your
former colleague here in the House, Governor John Baldacci, for holding
this hearing on a subject of such critical importance to the future of
our nation as you consider the most important federal legislation
impacting dropout prevention and dropout recovery strategies through
the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind and other legislation later
this year.
Very briefly, Jobs for America's Graduates is one of the nation's
largest and, we believe, most successful, consistently applied,
national models of dropout prevention and, more recently, dropout
recovery.
Today JAG has a rare national ``footprint'', with operations in 30
states, serving well over 40,000 of our nation's most at-risk youth and
impacting over 1,000 communities across our country.
JAG programs range from the inner-cities of Chicago, Atlanta, and
Phoenix to the most rural parts of Eastern Montana, Northern New
England, and a number of Native American Reservations and right here in
our Nation's Capital.
JAG also has one of the longest track records and bases of
experience of any dropout prevention and youth development program. We
are completing our 27th full year, having served well over 500,000
high-risk youth in almost every socio-economic, geographic, and
educational setting found in our country.
The results over a quarter century are both consistent and, we
believe, compelling:
A 93% return to school rate while targeting high-risk,
dropout prone youth.
A 92.4 percent graduation rate for the most recent cohort.
An 80 percent overall success rate at the close of the 12-
month follow-up period after graduation, with graduates employed,
pursuing a postsecondary education, and/or enlisted in the military.
In addition, over the past eight years we developed and are now
rolling out nationally an application of our Model serving dropouts
specifically in conjunction with community colleges. Nearly 5,000 young
adults are enrolled in that application of the JAG Model.
Lessons learned
In the five minutes available, we thought it best to present to you
some of the most important lessons learned over 26 years about what our
experience and data suggests it takes to prevent dropouts, or to
recover them:
1. Improvements in curriculum and increased rigor are essential,
but rarely sufficient to prevent dropouts or improve overall academic
achievement for at-risk youth.
2. To best ensure academic and economic success for at-risk youth,
it is imperative to provide a fuller range of support and engagement
which addresses non-cognitive needs.
3. Engagement is, perhaps, the most critical dimension of a
sustainable strategy of dropout prevention and recovery. Everything
works if young people are engaged, they are involved, they see hope,
and they feel a sense of self esteem. Very little works if they do not.
4. Part of the engagement process is to ensure that the assets of
the community are available to help overcome personal as well as
academic barriers.
5. Engaging young people with positive, ``real-world'' experiences
such as school- and community-based service-learning and career
exploration motivates young people to stay engaged with school, achieve
academically, pursue higher goals and define themselves as positive
contributors to the community.
6. Offering engagement services where youth already congregate,
such as school, makes it more likely that they will receive the support
they need--and will be served by people who know them by name.
7. In the end, a fundamental ingredient to success is having
somebody who cares and who listens--somebody who is responsible for
providing consistent support and mentoring and held accountable for the
individuals' success.
8. In addition to the key ingredient of a caring adult who serves
as a mentor and guide, the other needs which must be met include safe
places, healthy starts, effective education and opportunities for
service and civic engagement.
9. Overall accountability for success by the sponsoring
organizations as well as for individuals who are entrusted with the
educational and, in some cases, employment outcomes is another
essential component.
10. Work matters--a lot. Part-time work at 20 hours or less per
week is very favorable for both the long-term income and academic
success for dropout prone youth. As another form of engagement, it
makes school much more relevant and understandable.
11. Employer and community leader involvement in addition to
education add important value to the sustainability of dropout
prevention programs and rates of individual success.
12. Most importantly for your consideration: We know what to do to
cut dropouts rates and recover dropouts--whether it is our 26 years of
experience, or that of others, we DO know what is effective. What, as a
nation, we have not been able to do is take those proven solutions to
scale.
In short, there are proven solutions and methodologies for reducing
dropouts, improving graduation rates, and ensuring transition to
employment and further education for at-risk youth. With an emphasis on
intensive engagement, clear accountability for educational success,
work, and community involvement, we can reduce dropout rates very
significantly--and we can do it now.
Engagement
Time will not permit a full discussion on all of these conclusions.
However, let me focus on that key issue of ``engagement.''
Everything we have learned over 26 years serving over 500,000 high-
risk youth indicates that engagement is a key to dropout prevention. In
our case that includes:
Intensive personal engagement by our staff member--the JAG
teachers who are with our young people every day during school, and
after school, during the summer and for weekend activities, and follow-
up over the course of the year after they graduate and go to work or
college. Our staff members are constantly engaging our young people in
constructive and interesting job preparation, educational advancement,
and self esteem building activities.
The JAG model includes a highly motivational student
organization, designed on the success of the vocational student
organizations and Junior Achievement--but aimed for these at-risk
youth--is another key. 90% of our young people tell us they had never
been invited to join any organization ever before. The chance to be
part of a group, a team, and to be offered opportunities to lead are
all extremely powerful means for school retention and success.
Work is a vital form of engagement, we have found. That
conclusion is backed up by recent research by the Center for Labor
Market Studies. Work engagement enhances student achievement and
success in school, especially for high-risk youth.
Engagement in community service activities, in service
learning, and in school activities are all part of our student
organization activities' core engagement process.
Recommendations for consideration for the reauthorization of No Child
Left Behind
The recommendations we have are based on the experience I have
discussed.
Accountability for educational outcomes is at the core of
what we have learned leads to results.
Find ways to ensure high-risk youth in particular have
serious and sustained opportunities for real engagement. Consider
providing new opportunities for high-risk youth to be part of a
positive student organization that reinforces educational success.
Recognize the value of work as a part of the educational
success strategy, especially for high-risk youth.
Value the role of both the teachers and the role of the
mentors--who may be the same, or a second individual.
Encourage/incent scale for proven methodologies to
accelerate improvements in outcomes.
Again, on behalf of Governor Baldacci and the Board of Directors of
Jobs for America's Graduates, we very much appreciate this opportunity
to share our 26 years of experience and would be more than pleased to
answer any questions.
______
Chairman Miller. Mr. Trump.
STATEMENT OF KENNETH S. TRUMP, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL
SCHOOL SAFETY AND SECURITY SERVICES, INC.
Mr. Trump. Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon and
distinguished members, thank you for the invitation to be here
today to speak with you about the most important issue to every
parent in this country and education, the safety of their
children.
Congresswoman McCarthy, thank you for your leadership and
your kind introduction, and allowing me to forgo the background
and to go right into the important points here.
For many school dropouts, maintaining the academic
standards of No Child Left Behind is directly related to our
ability to have safe and secure schools. Children cannot learn
and teachers cannot teach if their focused attention is on
their safety rather than what is going on in the classroom.
Parents will forgive educators, legislators and everyone else
if their test scores go down for a year. They will be much less
forgiving if something happens to their child that could have
been prevented or better managed in a crisis.
Parents and educators are increasingly frustrated as they
feel that support for school safety actually may be waning as
we invest our resources into many other critical
infrastructures to protect our homeland, but in recent years
school safety funding and emergency planning funding have
actually been cut.
Three immediate steps, in my professional opinion, the
Congress can help to address this issue include, No. 1,
improving school crime reporting for K-through-12 schools so
that we can identify trends and develop strategies accordingly;
No.2, restore recently cut funding and look at future funding
resources for expanding safety to children; and No.3, if
necessary, look at the current Federal organization and
structure for delivery of funding and school safety services to
see if those mechanisms and administrative structures can be
even more improved.
No. 1, school safety crime reporting: One of the dirty
little secrets in education today is that there is no
comprehensive, mandatory Federal school crime reporting and
tracking for K-through-12 schools. Current Federal crime and
violence statistics largely rely upon academic research
studies, not incident-based, incident-driven data based on real
crimes that occur in school. While the Cleary Act that was
enacted by Congress to improve crime reporting and data
collection and communications to parents on a college level was
a very positive move, K-through-12 schools do not have that
information, and parents do not have that resource.
Today, there is largely a hodgepodge collection of over a
half-dozen academic surveys and research studies that tell us
various things, but no data on actual crimes reported in
schools, as many of you have seen on uniform crime reporting,
for example, with the FBI on crime stats.
To give you an example, the annual Indicators of School
Crime and Safety Report: 2006 is best summed up in the one line
on the section on violent school deaths which states, quote,
``Data for school-associated violent deaths for 1999-2000
through 2004-2005 school years are preliminary.'' how can we
base policy and funding for 2007 and 2008 on preliminary data
from 1999 to the present? This forces Congress to make funding
and policy decisions based on a best-guesstimate approach,
rather than real, actual crime data and can leave the American
public being misled on the exact extent of violence in schools
and our communities.
When frontline educators and public safety officials hear
the Indicator reports say, ``Violent crimes in schools are
actually down 50 percent since 1992,'' they laugh. But this is
not a laughing matter.
The Gun-Free Schools Act, which Congress passed, actually
has loopholes. It only requires schools to report students who
are expelled for gun offenses. The key words here being
``students'' and ``expelled.'' it does not include nonstudent
adult trespassers, strangers who come onto the property, or
even expelled students who come onto campus with a firearm.
That is not mandatorily reported to the State and, in turn,
collected at the Federal level.
And there are also questions as to whether students who are
special education students, who technically are not expelled,
are actually reported because they may have modified
educational placements but not expulsions. So are some
significant gaps even in existing reporting structures.
Ranking Member McKeon mentioned persistently dangerous
schools and very appropriately said there were varying
definitions and confusion in terms of what States are using to
define ``persistently dangerous schools.'' and we know that in
many school communities, due to the interest in protecting
image, there has historically been a perception and culture of
downplay, deny, deflect and defend when sharing information to
parents in the community, even though schools are more open
today to calling the police than ever.
In my written testimony, Exhibit 3 actually identifies over
20 national news stories in the last 5 years where crimes in
schools have been underreported, including one situation where
one State's largest school district failed to report over
24,000 serious incidents including fights, thefts, drugs, sex
and weapons offenses to the State as required by their State's
law.
Congresswoman McCarthy has introduced H.R. 354, the SAVE
Act, that would improve accountability, accuracy and
transparency in school crime reporting, build better guidance
to school districts on crime reporting, close those loopholes
in the Gun-Free Schools Act, and require States that
incorporate the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System,
NIBRS, in determining what is known as ``persistently dangerous
schools'' while providing resources to schools who need help
the most instead of punishing principals who accurately report
and honestly tackle school crime problems.
In short, we must shift the conversation from academic
surveys to incident-based data so that we have accurate
information. We have seen the Safe and Drug-Free Schools
program deemed as ineffective largely because the PART
assessment has determined the data was inaccurate.
SAVE requires no new bureaucracies or overwhelming
expenditures. It requires no invasion of privacy; the FBI will
not be coming to a neighborhood near you to investigate your
school crime assault in the bathroom. And it requires a focus
on incident-based data, not individual-based data, where it
would be an invasion of individual privacy.
Number two, restoring funding cuts. Very briefly, the
Emergency Response and Crisis Management grant, now known as
the Readiness and Emergency Management grant in the Education
Department has been cut almost 40 percent since 2003 from $39
million in 2003 to $24 million this past year at a time where
we are protecting our infrastructure and homeland security and
other elements.
I also encourage Congress to look at opening up the
Nation's homeland security policy on funding to include
schools. Schools are soft targets. We most recently saw--the
FBI reported just a month ago a homeland security advisory
about foreign nationals with extremist ties obtaining licenses
to drive school buses and buy school buses.
There are other examples that raise some concern, and
many--all of us remember the Beslan, Russia, incident which was
not unforeseeable, but--it could potentially happen here, but
there is a denial to even discuss that possibility again, out
of fear of alarming parents. And to look at our school funding
of resource police officers, police officers in schools have
been cut. Keeping in mind that our city and county law
enforcement officials are our ``first responders,'' our
educators are our ``very first responders.''
And finally, I would say that, if necessary, I would
encourage Congress to take a look--there has been a great deal
of controversy and discussion about the effectiveness of the
Safe and Drug-Free School program. What those in the field
would ask of you is, if it is determined to be ineffective,
that Congress act quickly to restructure, retool or define a
replacement for that, so that we don't have the continued
funding gaps; and to look at the structure so that Homeland
Security, the Departments of Justice and Education can
capitalize on their strengths.
I thank you for your time. I thank you for your attention
and encourage you to look at the SAVE Act and the accompanying
bill to pass that, to change the backwards trends of Federal
funding on school safety. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Trump follows:]
Prepared Statement of Kenneth S. Trump, President and CEO, National
School Safety and Security Services, Inc.
Chairman Miller and distinguished committee members, thank you for
inviting me to appear before you today to provide testimony on what
undoubtedly is the number one education concern of parents in our
nation: The safety and security of their children at school.
My name is Kenneth Trump and I am the President and CEO of National
School Safety and Security Services, Incorporated, a Cleveland (Ohio)-
based national consulting firm specializing in school security and
school emergency preparedness consulting and training. I have
personally had the opportunity to work with K-12 school officials and
their public safety partners in urban, suburban, and rural communities
in 45 states during my career of over 20 years in the school safety
profession.
In addition to working with educators and public safety officials
nationwide, my background includes having served over seven years with
the Cleveland City School District's Safety and Security Division as a
high school and junior high school safety officer, a district-wide
field investigator, and as founding supervisor of its nationally-
recognized Youth Gang Unit that contributed to a 39% reduction in
school gang crimes and violence. I later served three years as director
of security for the ninth-largest Ohio school district with 13,000
students, where I also served as assistant director of a federal-funded
model anti-gang project for three southwest Cleveland suburbs.
I have authored two books and over 45 articles on school security
and emergency preparedness issues. My education background includes
having earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Services (Criminal
Justice concentration) and a Master of Public Administration degree
from Cleveland State University; special certification for completing
the Advanced Physical Security Training Program at the Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center; and extensive specialized training on
school safety and emergency planning, terrorism and homeland security,
gang prevention and intervention, and related youth safety topics.
Presently I volunteer as Chair of the Prevention Committee and
Executive Committee member for Cleveland's Comprehensive Anti-Gang
Initiative, one of six Department of Justice-funded federal and local
collaborative model projects to address gangs through enforcement,
prevention, and reentry strategies. I was an invited attendee at the
White House Conference on School Safety in October of 2006. In 1999, I
testified to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP)
Committee as a school safety and crisis expert.
School districts and other organizations engage our services to
evaluate school emergency preparedness plans, provide training on
proactive school security strategies, develop and facilitate school
tabletop exercises, conduct school security assessment evaluations, and
consult with school administrators and board members on management
plans for improving school safety. We have increasingly found ourselves
also called to assist educators and their school communities with
security and preparedness issues following high-profile incidents of
school violence. In the past several years alone, we have worked in a
school district where a student brought an AK-47 to school, fired shots
in the halls, and then committed suicide; in a private school where
death threats raised student and parental anxiety; and in a school
district where a student brought a tree saw and machete to school,
attacked students in his first period class, and sent multiple children
to the hospital with serious injuries.
My perspective on school safety is vastly different from the many
other types of other witnesses you may have heard from in the past, or
will hear from in the future. I am not an academician, researcher,
psychologist, social worker, law enforcement official, or government
agency representative. Instead, I bring to a perspective of front-line
experience in working with public and private school staff, their
public safety and community partners, and parents of our nation's
children on school violence prevention, security risk reduction
strategies, and emergency preparedness measures.
School climate: parental and student expectations and needs for
academic achievement
Preventing school dropouts and meeting the academic standards our
legislative and educational leaders have established, including those
under the No Child Left Behind federal education law, requires that our
schools first be safe. Children cannot learn and teachers cannot teach
at their maximum capabilities if their attention is distracted by
concerns about their personal safety. I have personally experienced
firsthand in the school communities in which we have worked after a
crisis how parental, student, and educator attention to safety trumps,
and often consumes, the entire focus over academics in a school
community for weeks and months, and sometimes years, after the tragedy.
Parents will forgive educators, legislators, and others with whom
they entrust their children's education and safety if their children's
test scores go down for one year. They are much less forgiving if
something harmful happens to their children that could have been
prevented in the first place or better managed in a crisis which could
not be averted. Parents, students, educators, and public safety
officials are increasingly frustrated with what they believe to be a
lack of awareness, interest, and support on school safety, especially
as they have watched federal and state budgets for school safety and
emergency planning being cut while resources are being increased
elsewhere to better protect other critical infrastructure environments
of our homeland.
Parents are desperately looking to educators and their elected
officials for help in better protecting their children in our nation's
schools by improving violence prevention and intervention programs,
developing improved threat assessment measures to provide for earlier
detection and diversion of persons plotting to cause harm, improving
school security measures in a balanced and comprehensive manner, and
better preparing our educators for managing school crises and emergency
situations which cannot be averted.
Parents and educators are increasingly demanding that we not only
do more, but do better, in improving safety in our educational climate.
While many improvements in school safety, security, and emergency
planning have been made in schools post-Columbine (April, 1999), the
progress we saw in the months and years after that tragedy has been
stalled and is slipping backwards in many school communities. Federal
and state school safety funding cuts, pressures on meeting new academic
standards, and diverted attention to the many other issues challenging
our nation have caused school safety to fall to the back burner from
here in inside the Beltway to our local neighborhood school offices.
As we meet here today, eight years after the Columbine High School
tragedy in 1999, we find ourselves discussing the many aspects of
school safety that we were discussing eight years ago almost to the
day. We cannot change school climate if we do not change the
conversation. This hearing and your attention to school safety provides
an opportunity to take meaningful steps to change the conversation and
the backwards direction school safety policy and funding has taken in
recent years so that we may prevent dropouts and protect those children
and teachers whose focus should be firmly on the academic achievement
we so strongly desire, instead of on their personal safety as they
attend school.
Congressional action for improving school safety
Congress is poised, beginning with the leadership of this Committee
as demonstrated by your attention to school safety today, to take
reasonable, practical, and meaningful steps to change the conversation,
change the school climate, and make our nation's K-12 schools safer.
Three immediate steps needed, in my professional opinion, include:
1. Improve K-12 school crime reporting so that Congress, states,
and local school districts will have incident-based data, instead of
the current reliance upon perception and opinion based survey data, to
make sound policy and funding decisions related to improving safety in
America's schools;
2. Restore recently cut funding, and expand future funding
resources, for school violence prevention, school security, school-
based policing, and school emergency preparedness planning; and
3. Examine the current federal organization and structure for the
oversight and management of federal school safety policy, programming,
and funding.
1. Improve school safety by improving school crime
reporting
Congress can and should improve school crime reporting. If we
cannot accurately identify the scope and severity of school crime and
violence, we will never be able to reduce school crime and violence,
and improve safety in our schools.
Current federal school crime and violence data is limited
to surveys, not incident-based data on school
crimes and violence
One of the ``dirty little secrets'' in our nation's education
community is that there is no comprehensive, mandatory federal school
crime reporting and tracking of actual school crime incidents for K-12
schools. While Congress enacted the Cleary Act in 1990 to improve crime
reporting and collecting on college campuses, K-12 schools have no such
requirements or incident-driven data in place. Federal school crime and
violence data by-and-large consists of a hodgepodge collection of just
over a half-dozen academic surveys and research studies.
The primary source of federal data on school crime and violence is
known as the annual Indicators of School Crime and Safety Report. The
most recent report, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2006 was
released on December 3, 2006. Data in these reports is typically
outdated by several years by the time it is published.
One of best examples of the poor quality of federal data is
reflected in the Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2006 report
itself in the section on, ``Indicator 1: Violent Deaths at School and
Away from School.'' The last line in the first paragraph of this
section states, ``Data for school-associated violent deaths from the
1999-2000 through 2004-05 school years are preliminary.'' This leads to
one simple question: If the data our federal government has on school-
associated violent deaths is only complete up to 1999, and the data for
1999-2005 is ``preliminary,'' how can we expect to make solid school
safety policy and funding decisions in 2007 and 2008?
Exhibit 1 to this report includes a table from Appendix A of the
2006 ``Indicators'' report which lists the half-dozen or so surveys and
the limited sample sizes of each. Sadly, this is what Congress, state
legislatures, local school districts often refer to for making policy
and funding decisions, and for advising the American public on what
they believe to be trends in school crime and violence.
While we recognize the difficulties and limitations in federal data
collection, and appreciate the fact that the surveys are certainly
better than nothing, the fact is that they are still just that:
Surveys. There is a vast difference between perception and opinion-
based survey, and actual incident-based data on actual occurrences of
school crime and violence. The absence of incident-based data forces
this very Congress to make federal policy and funding decisions based
upon a ``best-guestimate'' approach driven by perceptions and opinions,
rather than data on actual crimes which occur on school campuses.
Most importantly, not only is Congress forced to make school safety
policy and funding decisions based on a ``best-guestimate'' approach,
but the American public is being inadvertently mislead when these
surveys are being used to claim that school violence in America is
actually decreasing over the past decade. When front-line educators and
public safety officials hear quotes from this federal source claiming
that violent school crime is down over 50% since 1992, they laugh. But
this is no laughing matter. Still, the Department of Education and
others inside and outside of the Beltway continue to claim school crime
has been decreasing over the past decade, repeatedly referring to the
``Indicators'' reports, and this very information has long been fed to
those of you in Congress as a basis for making policy and funding
decisions.
How would we know if school crime is actually up or down when there
is no actual incident-based federal data collection? It is widely
believed by me and my colleagues in the school safety field that the
federal survey data grossly underestimates the extent of school crime
and violence. Reality exists somewhere in between, but statistically,
nobody actually knows exactly where this ``somewhere'' is because there
is no federal mandatory K-12 incident based data--just surveys.
In fact, my non-scientific data collection from national news
accounts and, educators and school safety officials working in schools,
on school-associated violent deaths, which unlike the federal data is
not ``preliminary'' and is up-to-date as of the last business day
before this testimony, shows that school-associated violent deaths have
increased from the 2000-2002 time period, and have remained steady the
past few years. See Exhibit 2 for a chart of this data. While this data
is not scientific, it does beg the question of a private citizen can
monitor national news and school safety sources to put together more
timely data than the federal government. Sadly, school and safety
administrators have told us they rely on our informal data as being
more accurate and timely than that produced by the federal government.
Even data from the Gun Free Schools Act (GFSA) required by law
passed by Congress is limited due to loopholes in reporting. The GFSA
requires local education agencies to report to states students expelled
for gun offenses on campuses. The key words here are ``students'' and
``expelled''. Schools do not have to report non-students arrested on
campuses with firearms because they are not students, nor would
reporting be required for students who are already expelled due to
other offenses but return to campus with a firearm. There are also
questions as to whether special education students who offend are all
being reported under GFSA since their disabilities may technically not
result in ``expulsion'' from school, but instead in modified
educational placements and services.
Additionally, the ``Persistently Dangerous Schools'' component of
the federal No Child Left Behind law requires states to create
definitions of a ``persistently dangerous school'' so that parents may
have the option of school choice. This label alone is considered to be
the ``Scarlet Letter'' of education today. The result has been that to
avoid creating a politically volatile relationship with local education
agencies, states have created definitions of ``persistently dangerous''
that are so unreachable that they could not be met by most school
districts even if they wanted the label. The result, at best, has been
well intended legislation that has been lost in the politics of
implementation.
The aforementioned points should beg this Committee, and Congress
in general, to ask how you can make sound policy and funding decisions
when as a nation, we do not even have timely and accurate incident-
based data on how many school-associated violent deaths and gun
offenses occur on campus, much less the many, many more common forms of
school violence and crime such as assaults, sexual assaults, other
weapons offenses (such as bladed weapons), threats and menacing,
extortion, etc.
School crimes are underreported to police, states, and to
the public
While educators today are more open to calling the police than ever
before in the history of education, far too many principals,
superintendents, and school board members still believe that the public
will perceive them to be incompetent leaders and poor managers if the
public becomes aware of crimes, violence, and serious discipline
problems which occur in their schools. The result has been a historical
culture of ``downplay, deny, deflect, and defend'' when it comes to
local districts reporting crimes to police and discussing school
crimes, violence, and discipline problems with parents.
Exhibit 3 to this testimony is an extraction from our web page on
school crime underreporting (See www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/school--
crime--reporting.html). The exhibit provides a synopsis of
approximately 20 national news stories from the past five years which
document examples of the underreporting of school crimes to police,
states, and the public. Stories discussed situations including an
initially unreported firearm discharge at a private school, a case
where high school where a student was stabbed to death reported to
their state no fights or assaults for the entire school year, and a
situation where one state's largest school district failed to report
over 24,000 serious incidents, including fights, thefts and drug, sex,
and weapons offenses, to their state as required by law.
Furthermore, I have personally conducted surveys of our nation's
school-based police officers (School Resource Officers or SROs) which
indicate that police who work in schools believe that school crimes are
underreported to law enforcement. Four annual surveys of over 700
officers per year, for each year from 2001 through 2004, found 84% to
89% of school-based officers indicating that it is their professional
belief that crimes occurring in schools have gone unreported to law
enforcement. Most educational administrators will admit this as well,
although they will do so privately versus going on the record since
doing so would place their jobs at risk.
Far too many educators also believe that if they even talk with
parents about school security and emergency preparedness measures, it
will alarm many parents and draw adverse media attention (many deem ANY
media attention as being adverse, even when it is not). They also
believe that what they perceive as ``negative attention'' that would be
drawn from public awareness on school safety issues will also somehow
jeopardize the public confidence in their leadership and, in turn,
potentially jeopardize voter funding requests and parental/community
support of the school district.
Interestingly enough, most parents believe just the opposite of
what some educators believe they would think. Parents tell us time and
time again that their biggest fears are that there are not enough
security measures in place at their children's schools and that school
emergency planning is ``not on the radar'' of their school
administrators. While some school officials too often are afraid of
creating fear and an adverse image of themselves by talking about--and
dealing with--school security and emergency preparedness issues, their
resulting silence and inaction actually creates the very fear and
negative images they so desperately want to avoid in the eyes of
parents and the media.
Why do so many local school administrators underreport school
crime? The answer tends to fall into one of two categories:
1) Many school administrators fail to distinguish crimes from
violations of school rules. As such, many crimes are handled
``administratively'' with disciplinary action, such as suspension or
expulsion, but are never also reported to police for criminal
prosecution. Oftentimes this is due to a lack of training of principals
on distinguishing crimes from disruptive school rule violations, and/or
a lack of clear policies and procedures (and a lack of enforcement for
those that do exist) on reporting school crimes to police.
2) Far too many school administrators believe that by reporting
school crimes to the police, they will draw adverse media and public
attention to their school. These school administrators believe that
parents and the community will view them as poor managers of their
schools if their school has a high number of incidents or appears in
the media because of a school crime incident. Many building
administrators (principals) are pressured by central office
administrators and/or school boards, either directly or indirectly, if
their school crime reports, discipline cases, suspensions or
expulsions, etc. are ``high'' or ``higher'' than other schools.
These ``image'' concerns result in the underreporting of school
crimes for political and image purposes. Sadly, the honest principal
who deals head-on with incidents and reports crimes, often unfairly
suffers adverse political consequences while the principal who fails to
report incidents and sweeps them under the carpet is rewarded
administratively and from a public relations perspective for allegedly
having a ``safer'' school. The reality is that the principal with the
higher statistics may actually have a safer school because he or she
deals with the problems head-on and reports incidents.
It is therefore not surprising why some education associations and
lobbyists may very well oppose incident-based school crime data,
instead preferring to continue doing things the same old way by using
limited academic surveys and research studies that do more accurately
disclose the extent of school crime and violence to the American
public. The challenge for Congress will be to determine whether it
wishes to continue making policy and funding decisions based upon
opinion and perception survey data, and in turn continue to get the
same results we have had in recent years with school safety, or if
Congress is willing to ``change the climate by changing the
conversation'' through requiring the use of incident-based data.
H.R. 354--The SAVE Act
This Committee, and your colleagues in Congress, can act now to
make a difference in school safety. H.R. 354, the Safe Schools Against
Violence in Education, or the ``SAVE'' Act, introduced by The Honorable
Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy of New York, calls for meaningful and
practical steps to improve accountability, accuracy, and transparency
to our nation's parents and educators in the reporting for school
crimes and violence. It also calls for much better guidance on
reporting school crimes, tightening of loopholes in the Gun Free
Schools Act reporting, and the use of incident-based data (instead of
just perception and opinion-based data from surveys) in determining
safe climates for academic achievement (currently known as
``persistently dangerous schools'' designation by states under No Child
Left Behind).
The SAVE Act closes the loopholes in the Gun Free Schools Act by
including reporting requirements for students who are already expelled,
removed or suspended from school, as well as non-students who may bring
a firearm on campus or on a school bus. Current law only requires
reporting on students who have been expelled. The Act will also require
certification that data is accurate and reliable, an important
component for improving accountability of those who report school crime
data who may otherwise be tempted to underreport whenever the absence
of such accountability certifications may allow them to do so.
Equally important, The SAVE Act requires states to use already
available data from the FBI's National Incident's Based Reporting
System (NIBRS) in determining what is now known as ``persistently
dangerous schools'', a label that The SAVE Act would modify to ``safe
climate for academic achievement'' options to remove the stigma of
``persistently dangerous'' which encourages underreporting by local
schools. By enacting The SAVE Act, the introduction of NIBRS data into
school safety policy and funding decisions would provide the first
meaningful effort to shift the conversation on school safety in this
country from one based upon perception and opinion surveys, to actual
incident-based data on real crimes that actually occur at our nation's
schools. Congress, state legislators, and local educators could finally
begin to have a national and state data source on school crime based
upon real incidents going on in our schools, rather than on the
perceptions and opinions of a limited population tapped for an academic
survey.
We have already seen how the lack of good data can have a
detrimental effect on safety programs. The Program Assessment Rating
Tool (PART), a rating tool developed by the Administration, rated the
Safe and Drug Free School state grants ``ineffective'' for FY 2007,
because ED was unable to demonstrate that those programs worked. As a
result, the Administration terminated the state grants programs in its
FY2007 budget. The PART stated: ``while the program requires grantees
to report their progress against locally developed measurable
performance goals and objectives, this reporting does not produce
comparable national data. The Department of Education has not provided
national performance measures that help improve local programming
decisions and are of equal use to State, local and Federal
administrators.''
The surveys can and should continue. But they should not be the
sole source of school crime and violence data in our nation. Surveys
can supplement actual incident-based data, and surveys can continue to
exist along with the new focus on NIBRS incident-based data. Congress
and others rely upon improved data to make public policy and funding
decisions, just as they do with the current FBI Uniform Crime Reports
on actual crime incidents in our communities, which is augmented by
many research reports and victimization surveys on crime in our
neighborhoods.
The SAVE Act will also provide resources to schools that need it
the most. We cannot continue punishing school administrators who
accurately and honestly report school crimes. Educators who acknowledge
school crime problems and tackle them head on should be provided the
resources to correct the problem, instead of being left hanging out to
try in the eyes of adverse media attention with no support for making
their schools safer.
Opponents of incident-based school crime reporting, who tend to
prefer limited perception and opinion surveys over real crime data
(perhaps to further the image and perception obstructions that are a
part of the historical culture of education downplaying school crimes),
often tend to cloud the issue with ridiculous assertions about the
process and outcomes of moving to incident-based data. It is therefore
important to recognize the following:
1. The SAVE Act requires no new bureaucracies or overwhelming
budgetary expenditures to collect school crime data. It simply calls
for the breaking out of existing data in a manner to identify K-12
school-based crime incidents.
2. The SAVE Act reflects no invasion of privacy. The FBI or other
federal agencies would not be ``coming into a school near you'' to
investigate or oversee school criminal incidents.
3. The SAVE Act focuses on incident-based data, not individual
data. There would not be an invasion of privacy or focus on
individuals, just a record of the number of types of incidents that
occur.
If presented opposition to the SAVE Act, members of Congress should
simply ask the same question myself and my colleagues ask: ``Why would
anyone be against having more accurate school crime data?'' In my
experience of over 20-years in the school safety field, I have yet to
be able to find a legitimate answer to this question.
As such, I encourage Congress to pass H.R. 354, The SAVE Act, and
its related H.R. 355, the feasibility study bill for exploring the
NIBRS data collection school crime data reporting-out process
identified in The SAVE Act.
We cannot change the climate if we do not change the conversation.
It is time for Congress to act to change the conversation if we expect
to better identify school crime and violence problems and trends, and
make meaningful and accurate policy and funding decisions for
preventing and managing these problems.
2. Restore recently cut funding, and expand future funding
resources, for school violence prevention, school
security, school-based policing, and school
emergency preparedness planning
In recent years, Congress has repeatedly cut funding for the
federal Safe and Drug Free School Program which is the primary funding
source for school safety and violence prevention efforts. It is worth
noting again that the federal Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)
assessments which identified the state grants component of the Safe and
Drug Free Schools Program as ``ineffective'' noted the problems with
the lack of quality data associated with this program. Again, data
lacking quality is impacting federal policy and funding on the major
source of funding for keeping our schools safe.
Additionally, even in today's world of attention to our nation's
homeland security, federal funding for the Education Department's
Emergency Response and Crisis Management (ERCM) program, now known as
the Readiness and Emergency Management (REM) for Schools program, has
been cut almost 40% since 2003. According to PowerPoint slide data from
a presentation by a Department of Education official, the program has
been cut from over $39 million awarded to 134 school sites in FY 03, to
only $24 million awarded to 77 sites in FY06. See Exhibit 4 for this
document detailing these facts.
It is worth nothing that the numbers of applications for this ERCM/
REMS grant program have ranged from over 550 in its first year of FY03
to 301, 406, and 379 the following years. Given the Department of
Education has issued the RFP for this grant toward the end of each
school year (April-May) and required submissions around May-June, it is
logical to believe there would be greater interest and more
applications had the Department not chosen to put out calls for
proposals at the end of the school year when educators are focused on
testing, graduations, and school-year closure and therefore have more
difficulty in putting together complex grant applications with multi-
agency partners from their communities. Many of us in the school safety
field believe the number of applications would be even greater if the
call for proposals was put out earlier in the school year and not when
school administrators are so overwhelmed with year-end school matters.
At a time when Congress is funding more resources to protect our
national infrastructure such as airports, monuments, and the hallways
of our government offices themselves, how can we justify cutting almost
40% from an already pithy amount of funding for helping to protect the
children and teachers in the hallways of our nation's schools?
Unlike many other narrowly focused federal grant programs, the ERCM
(now REMS) grant provides for a comprehensive and balanced program
consisting of prevention, mitigation, preparedness, and response
components in order to be successfully funded. This means that school
programs can be designed as they should, not skewed towards prevention
programming-only or security/policing/emergency response-only, but
designed instead with a balanced and comprehensive approach of
prevention, preparedness, and response. The threats facing our schools
today require nothing less.
Congress should immediately act to restore funding cut for the ERCM
(now REMS) program and significantly increase future funding multiple
times the original already-under-funded $39 million funding allocation
for this program. The need is significant. Reducing school emergency
prevention and preparedness funding in a post-911 and post-Columbine
world is illogical, counterintuitive, counterproductive, and
inconsistent with our overall national homeland security philosophy of
prevention and preparedness.
Congress should also closely examine the issue of schools as
potential targets for terrorism. Congress should make sure that K-12
schools are an integral part of our nation's homeland security
preparedness policy and funding. This should include opening up
Homeland Security funding to K-12 schools for use in protecting schools
and school buses. Schools clearly fit the definition of a ``soft
target'' and an attack upon our schools would have not only a
devastating impact on Americans emotionally, but a severe impact on the
American economy if the ``business'' of education shut downs and/or is
disrupted due to a catastrophic terror attack upon our educational
infrastructure.
We need only look at the following quote from the National
Commission on Children and Terrorism's report of June 12, 2003: ``Every
day 53 million young people attend more than 119,000 public and private
schools where 6 million adults work as teachers or staff. Counting
students and staff, on any given weekday more than one-fifth of the
U.S. population can be found in schools.'' Schools and school buses
have basically the same number of children at the same locations every
day of the week in facilities and buses that are unquestionably soft
targets.
There are a number of ``red flags'' that appear to be going
unnoticed in recent years. News reports in June of 2004 indicating a
suspected sleeper-cell member of al-Qaeda who obtained a license to
drive a school bus and haul hazardous materials; the reported
(appropriate) reclassification of schools to a higher risk category in
its national risk assessment program by the Department of Homeland
Security in 2006; March of 2007 alert by the FBI and Homeland Security
Departments about foreign national with extremist ties obtaining
licenses to drive school buses and buying school buses; and even a top
school administrators employed in the Detroit and DC schools who was
federally charged in 2005 with a conspiracy with terrorists according
to news reports. Add to that a number of other suspicious activities
around schools across the country, the Beslan, Russia, school hostage
siege and murders in 2004, and the history of schools and school buses
being terror targets in the Middle East.
In short, the tactics have been used elsewhere in the Middle East
and in Beslan, Russia. An attack our educational system would have a
devastating emotional and economic on America. And it is not
unforeseeable except to those who do not wish to acknowledge and deal
with it for political and image reasons.
Yet to date, from inside the Beltway to our local communities,
public officials have largely been afraid of talking about, and acting
proactively upon, the idea of schools as potential terror targets out
of fear of alarming parents. I pray we do not face the day where we
have a ``911 Commission'' type hearing asking how a terrorist attack
that occurred upon a school in the United States could have been
avoided. We know that denial, downplay, and ``Ostrich Syndrome'' make
us more vulnerable. We cannot continue the current course of ignoring
the threat of terrorism to our nation's K-12 schools.
Congress also needs to revisit federal funding for the hiring, and
most of all for the training, of our nation's school police officers
(known as School Resource Officers or SROs). Justice Department
programs for School Resource Officers have suffered major cuts in
recent years, in effect decimating the COPS in Schools program that
helped to protect our children and educators. Funding for training
school security personnel, in addition to school police officers, is
sorely lacking and desperately needed as limited education funds are
focused on academic achievement strategies for meeting mandated test
score standards.
While our local police, fire, and emergency medical service
personnel are our ``first responders'', our educators, school security
personnel, and school-based police officers are our ``VERY FIRST
responders.'' We must give them the training and tools to do protect
our children and teachers.
3. Examine the current federal organization and structure
for the oversight and management of federal school
safety policy and programming
Congress should also act in a swift and effective manner to
determine the direction of the state grant component specifically, and
the overall program in general, for the Safe and Drug Free School
(SDFS) Program. The dramatic cuts of the SDFS program state grant
allocations in recent years has resulted in this program bleeding a
slow death. Our nation's educators cannot be left standing by idly
while the major source of funding (SDFS) for school safety and violence
prevention, and the aforementioned school emergency preparedness grants
continue toward elimination.
If Congress is determined to allow the SDFS to die, it needs to
create a replacement source of primary funding for school violence
prevention and preparedness. Perhaps then this would mean looking at
making the EMCR/REMS grant program as the new model for federal funding
of school crime and violence prevention, mitigation, preparedness, and
response.
Perhaps also it means Congress needs to look at how federal school
safety and policy is managed in the federal government administrative
structure. The Department of Education has long been the lead source
for violence prevention curriculum, intervention programming, and
dealing with strategies school as bullying prevention, youth suicide,
and related prevention policy and funding, and many believe they the
expertise for addressing these issues is best housed in the Education
Department. Congress should explore whether the Departments of Justice
and/or Homeland Security's richer history, experience, knowledge, and
expertise with security, policing, and emergency preparedness
programming would provide a more focused leadership on managing K-12
school security, policing, and emergency preparedness components of our
nation's school safety policy and funding. While these two departments
do work, and should continue to work, with the Department of Education,
perhaps the emphasis of responsibility for specific programmatic areas
would be worthy of restructuring and/or realigning.
In short, if the current program in the Department of Education is
indeed determined to be ``ineffective,'' Congress needs to ``fix'' it
and to do so quickly. While it is very questionable if the SDFS program
is as ``broken'' as some believe, especially since it has been
evaluated by PART using faulty data (or the absence of data), then
there is a responsibility for Congress to replace it with an effective
funding source
Closing comments
I thank Chairman Miller and the members of this committee for
seeking my input. We cannot change the climate of our educational
institutions until we change the conversation. This Committee, and your
colleagues in Congress, can change the conversation by improving school
crime reporting, restoring and expanding funding for school crime
prevention and emergency preparedness, and examining the structure and
delivery of current federal school safety policy and funding delivery
to better protect our nation's schools.
I encourage you to act now by advancing H.R. 354 (The SAVE Act) and
H.R. 355; by moving swiftly to address the backwards trend of federal
school safety funding cuts our educators have been subjected to in
recent years; and by examining whether the current housing, structure,
and delivery of federal school safety policy and funding is adequate.
Our nation's children and teachers depend upon your leadership and
action today.
exhibit 1
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
exhibit 2
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
exhibit 3
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
exhibit 4
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
Chairman Miller. Thanks very much to all of the panelists.
And I can see a lot of interest here.
Let me begin by linking this to discussion around No Child
Left Behind, if I might. And to each of the panelists--I don't
know if Mr. Trump wants to speak to this or not--but the
question of whether or not there is an effort, not admitted to,
but an effort to pushing students out because you are afraid of
what they will do in terms of their test scores, whether this,
in fact, is taking place or not.
Dr. Norwood, whatever way you want to----
Ms. Norwood. In my real life, not being a State board
member, I worked with student teachers; and I can say that this
is a reality. And what concerns me is not only the feeling that
some students may be pushed out, but also--I am not sure that
the general public is ready to accept the responsibility of
keeping them in, because it is going to be expensive to keep
them in.
You have to have more teachers, you have to have more
classrooms. This is indeed a problem.
Chairman Miller. Governor Wise?
Mr. Wise. I think--I think--I think I had better learn how
to push this button.
I think that the--what Dr. Norwood has said and also Dr.
Montecel has illustrated, as well, ``push-out'' is a problem.
But then also what is a problem is--and that only encourages
more dropouts.
We identified in one of our publications, one State had 22
different ways to avoid classifying you as a dropout, although
you weren't in school. And so this push-out is a problem.
And then how you determine the final benchmark graduation
rates is another which is critical. While under No Child Left
Behind we would urge the Congress to make graduation rates one
of the determinants of AYP and also to insist that graduation
rates be disaggregated in the same manner that NCLB requires
test data to be disaggregated so we can truly see who is and
who isn't making it across the finish line.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Ms. Montecel?
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Chairman Miller, I think it is
absolutely so that push-outs are a reality in our schools and
that in some cases that occurs as a result of the desire for
school districts to look good and get rid of students that are
not doing well on tests.
I would urge us, though, to take a bit of a longer-term
perspective, and I would suggest that accountability systems
did not create dropouts. Losing children from our school
systems has been a problem, is a problem.
Chairman Miller. I understand that. And I am going to
infringe on your time because there are two other questions I
want to get answered.
But it is just the question that that, in fact, is
happening.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Hispanic dropouts has been at 80
percent in the 1940s, so I am just saying accountability did
not create dropouts.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, I am sure that is true. What we
see in the school districts we work in is, they push the
students to us; not out, but to an alternative or to another
option. In many ways, we prove we can keep 93 percent of them.
We are an option before the push-out, but we do see it, I have
to admit.
Chairman Miller. Okay. Again, what data did we have?
I was in a discussion with some people, and on the question
of--we have a 4-year requirement--whether or not we should
allow 5 years to keep some of these kids. And when they seek
out the people who have left school, to bring them back, active
programs to bring them back, a significant number of these
students are actually very close to graduation. They may have
35 out of 40 requirements and something has happened, and they
did not come back.
But when you get them to come back and a significant number
of them end up graduating, why is this happening? Here they
have shown diligence. And, one, is it accurate that there are a
significant number of them that are, in fact, relatively close
to graduation? And the ability to recover them----
Mr. Wise. I will jump in first. The data that we use both
from the Manhattan Institute, as well as the research arm of
Education Weekly, plus NCS, suggests that the bulk of dropouts
occur in the ninth and tenth grades, and that goes to some of
the warning indicators that some of the other witnesses have
talked about, which are, once you have failed a course, once
you have been held back, once you have had a certain number of
absences, you are much more inclined to drop out. And once you
have been held back in the ninth grade, it is very difficult--a
large number of those students will then drop out.
There are a number that do get to 11th or 12th grade, and
there you are dealing with boredom or failure to be engaged.
They are easier to bring back.
However, the data does seem to me to be pretty clear. We
are seeing somewhere around 30 percent of our kids not cross
the finish line; and of course, for kids of color, that number
is far higher.
Chairman Miller. Quickly, Ms. Norwood.
Ms. Norwood. One of the things to think about with this is
the kids, as Governor Wise said, that are close to graduation
get out there and they see the problems of not having a high
school diploma. And so then they are more willing to come back
to finish it.
But what happens when you lose them early is a major
problem because we allow 16-year-olds to make life-changing
decisions without their parents even being involved. A kid can
walk into the counselor's office and say, I am leaving school
today, and he is gone; we don't let him make other kinds of
life decisions like that.
So we need to have clear data on who is leaving and how to
prevent----
Chairman Miller. Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. We said that we get 92 percent graduation rates.
That is true. A third of them, to reinforce your point, don't
occur until the late summer or the fall because by the time we
get kids, they are already way behind.
The good news is, we can stay with them until they
graduate. But the evidence of our program and the evidence of
our dropout recovery program is, there is a good portion that
are pretty close.
Chairman Miller. My time has expired here.
I just want to say, Mr. Smith, I am really--I would like to
get back to you on this question of ramping to scale if there
is time, but I also want to thank you for your testimony. I
have been telling my staff since November of last year, I
attended a conference at the George Lucas Foundation, and we
spent a couple days looking at successful programs, and I said,
the watchword in education is going to become ``engagement,''
and there you are, you have finally arrived.
They haven't listened to me until now. But thank you for
your testimony.
Mr. McKeon.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I served on a local
school board for 9 years, and it was a high school board, and
so we had 7 through 12, and I never could get a handle on
dropout rates because--I don't know how--I don't know how
anybody can say what the number is, because we don't have a
system to know whether they have gone to another school or
another State or another country and whether they have
graduated someplace else. Am I wrong?
Can you tell me, how you do track dropouts and how do we
know for sure that people are dropping out, not graduating?
Anybody.
Ms. Norwood. This is one reason why North Carolina has gone
to the cohort, the cohort group of who starts in ninth grade
and who finishes in 4 years. We can keep that number. If they
are there, we know they are there. If they are not there, that
is what is left. And so that has worked well for us. As I said,
we had to the bullet to have such a 68 percent number.
Mr. McKeon. So if you have 68 percent that start in the 9th
and graduate in the 12th, that doesn't really mean that you
have a 32 percent dropout rate?
Ms. Norwood. No, it doesn't mean we have a 32 percent
dropout rate. But we aren't finishing with those kids in 4
years.
Mr. McKeon. You aren't, but somebody else may.
Ms. Norwood. Well, we are counting--in our group, we are
counting anyone who goes to community college for a program
that is a high school program, not a GED. We are working,
partnering with the community colleges to make sure where
these--some of these people are. But if they leave the country,
if they leave the State, we truly don't know.
But we do know that in North Carolina last year we had like
22,000 kids who dropped out. Now they may drop back in next
year and drop out again, but 22,000 did leave schools last
year.
Mr. McKeon. But they may not have left school. They may
have just left your schools.
Ms. Norwood. But they did not ask for records and that type
of thing.
Mr. Wise. Mr. McKeon, you illustrate two problems. One is
determining whether or not they are dropouts and the second one
is what happens to them, which is why we think it is essential
that NCLB also assists States in developing good longitudinal
data systems that can truly track them.
If there is a positive story coming out of Katrina, it is
that when Katrina--Louisiana had a fairly sophisticated system
and Texas has been developing one, and when the Katrina victims
showed up in Texas schools, the two systems were able to talk
to one another and trade information so these students could
get situated.
Well, we need to be doing the same. Florida is developing a
system, a number of other States; there are 14 States that are
presently receiving Federal assistance to do this. If you ramp
that process up--and it is a relatively small dollar value; if
you ramp that process up, you will be able to deal with many of
the problems that you are talking about; and also you will have
greater ability to make certain decisions, as well as every
school board member, as well as every teacher in the classroom.
Mr. McKeon. Until we really understand that, we don't
really know what our dropout rate is; we don't really know what
the problem is.
I think, gut feeling, I have some--I have some feelings of
why kids are dropping out. I think engagement. I think having
something for them. If you are a ninth grader and you have no
intention of going to college, and the only track is college
preparatory and it is something you are just not interested in,
we don't really offer much in the way of alternative. And so
there you lose any chance for engagement.
I think that this is a problem that has a lot of different
solutions. I would like to see us really try to first address
what the problem is and then try to work on the solutions.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. I think also there is a convergence
of data that one can look for. And in Texas, for example, we
find now that--from many different sources, it is very clear
that one out of two Latinos drops out of school before
graduating high school. It is also important to have a
credible, clean way of counting, one that makes sense to the
public; and that usually is the percent that drop out who
started ninth grade and didn't graduate.
So I think the NGA efforts to create a Federal credible
definition are very good. I think we ought to do that quickly
and make sure that we address the issue, because there is
absolutely no doubt that it is a pressing, persistent issue,
especially for minority students.
Mr. McKeon. Thank you.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Kildee.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We see dropping out as
an after-the-fact event. But truancy, especially chronic
truancy, generally precedes the dropping out. I taught school
for 10 years, and you could predict who was going to drop out
by the truancy rate pretty well.
And I know education is a local function, a State
responsibility but it is a very important Federal concern. Can
No Child Left Behind play a role in trying to minimize both
truancy and dropping out?
For example, we have a disaggregation of data for testing.
Should we have disaggregation of data for truancy and
graduation rates to see how certain groups are being treated or
even valued in certain school systems?
Mr. Smith. I would agree with that, yes. I think the whole
disaggregation of data is a really important mechanism by which
this Congress and governors and State legislatures can get
their arms around the problem; otherwise, it gets lost in the
larger numbers. And truancy is absolutely a predictor.
And making the case again for engagement, if you can find a
way to engage those young people and get them back early, but
the longer you let them go the harder it is.
The disaggregation of truancy is something I would
recommend.
Mr. Kildee. Governor?
Mr. Wise. Congressman, the answer, we feel, is absolutely
correct. And truancy is a significant factor in a number of
low-performing schools. We would suggest that an improved
measure of AYP under our new High School Improvement Fund, one
of the things you could use would be multiple measures to
evaluate high schools. For instance, teacher turnover would be
one, truancy would certainly be another; you might even do
safety in the schools. These would help determine what are the
high-priority high schools to be targeted for this strategic
found.
Mr. Kildee. Yes, ma'am.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. The other thing that these types of
indicators would do would be to give local communities
information about what to do, where to attack the problem. And
I think it is important that NCLB provide information to the
local communities as they seek to address the issue. And to do
that, they need to know, are our teachers teaching? Are they
qualified? Are our parents involved? Are our students engaged?
To what extent and how? Do our kids have access to the
curriculum?
All of these things, together with measures like truancy,
that are already clear and imminent threats, and students will
drop out once they are not showing up in school a lot. But
these other measures will help the local community to get at
the issue earlier. What do we do?
Mr. Kildee. I can recall when I was teaching, very often
someone in authority would say, well, don't worry, he or she
will be 16 in a few months, and they will be gone because that
is the mandatory school attendance age. And most schools are
doing a tremendous job out there, but there are some schools,
some places, where certain people are valued more than others;
and that is why we have always asked for disaggregation of
data, to make sure that no child is left behind.
And as I say, we do that on testing. We want to have the
data disaggregated. But I think it would be wise to do that on
truancy and graduation rates, because there is no question that
some groups are really, unfortunately, valued more than other
groups in our schools, or we wouldn't be insisting upon the
disaggregation of data.
And I thank you for your--yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norwood. One other thing I would like to ask you to
consider and that would be flexibility in inventive programs so
that school systems can receive funds to try new things, try
different things to re-engage those kids who are being truant,
whether it be Saturday academies or evening academies or
whatever it is to get those kids back and engaged in school.
So rather than just having funds for cookie-cutter
programs, allow local flexibility with some of the funding.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Castle.
Mr. Castle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple things.
One, Mr. Trump, I think your programs that you have spoken
about in terms of safety are vitally important. I don't have a
question for you specifically about that, except to say that is
something we should be considering. And to Mr. Smith, who has
had great success with Jobs for America's Graduates, had as
great success with Jobs for Delaware's Graduates before that. I
have worked with him, and congratulate him on that.
Ken, if you could just tell us very briefly, because I have
other questions, how that would work. In a typical case, how
would Jobs for America's Graduates, or Delaware's graduates or
the particular States, come in and deal with a kid; and what
would they do versus what would a school do? If you could, give
us a 30-second synopsis.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Congressman.
While the Governor of Delaware actually helped to grow the
program, which has now been in Delaware for 26 years, in the
end, it boils down to four things.
Number one is motivation. If you don't capture the kids,
you don't get them motivated, the rest of it doesn't work. That
means the right person, the job specialist, the staff member,
and the school; and secondly, the youth organization, the
engagement to motivate them to come and to participate. And
frankly, to care about whether or not to is, do something in
school.
Number two is, you have to get them through school, and you
have two problems. One is, you have to get academics; the other
is, you have to solve the home problems and the outside
problems.
Mr. Castle. Be specific about what you do, though. I
understand what you have to do. What do you do--you do?
Mr. Smith. The staff members are responsible, first of all,
and accountable to get the 90 percent graduation rates.
Therefore, you have to find the right remediation or deliver
the remediation to catch them up so that they do, in fact,
graduate within that school year if you can.
Number two is, you have got to find the community
resources. If the young lady is pregnant, if the young man is
on drugs or picked up by the police or they are homeless, you
have to find a solution to that problem because otherwise they
are not going to graduate. So you have to engage the community
services and organize it and make it work.
Third, you have to work and have this motivational student
organization. The staff member is responsible for organizing
and engaging young people during school, after school hours, in
the summer, on weekends around a set of activities that are
employment- and graduation-related, but are fun and engaging to
do.
Finally, that staff member is responsible the year after
leaving school to make sure they do graduate; if need be, that
they get a job, they get a raise or promotion on that job and
or go on to higher education or both. And that is what that
staff member does.
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
I guess this is for Governor Wise, primarily. We were
talking about this a little bit before the hearing began, but
sort of building on what Mr. McKeon was asking, as well, I
worry about the graduation rates and the way we measure these.
The States have various methodologies for doing this. As
you have indicated, we tend to describe people who are no
longer in schools as ``dropouts'' sometimes. And I am not
suggesting we don't have a huge dropout problem, but in terms
of writing legislation, of No Child Left Behind, of funding
dollars, of dealing with this, I worry about it.
I remember a couple years ago the governors were up to
their ears in putting this together, which a couple of you
worked on; and I just wonder where that is today. I mean, to
me, it would be tremendously helpful if we get some measurement
of dropout rates that all the States were endorsing, that we
naturally could endorse, as well, and really be able to measure
in terms of a lot of the different measurements that we need to
do at our level, too.
Mr. Wise. Congressman, you and I both come from a similar
background as being former Governors. And, you're right, the
NGA did adopt a compact, which all 50 Governors signed in a
number of organizations, including my own.
Having said that, let me observe--and what it did was
essentially, as Dr. Norwood is talking about, is to set up a 4-
year measurement system. But let me observe something. First of
all, a couple of States have already stepped back from the
compact. Second is several States--States are all over the
board as to when they will actually implement it some many
years hence. And also there is no accountability to it. As you
well know, compacts have the political life of the one who
signed it, and then it is up to his or her successor as to what
happens with it. For all those reasons we think it would be
worthwhile to take the model of the compact, enact it and make
it truly a common measurement that we are all using. Now we are
all able to compare apples to apples.
Mr. Castle. I have one final question. Sometimes I wonder
about the whole cultural aspect of this. One of you mentioned
that if you graduate from high school, you are liable to earn
half a million dollars more, something like that, and another
half million if you graduate from college over the course of
your life. And I worry about all this being educationally
oriented. Should we be oriented some to what we are doing to
television, to the Internet, to other cultures which are out
there, we as politicians? I wonder sometimes if the focus is
too much on just education and not the broader area of how do
we motivate people by pointing out that their future is much
brighter if they stay in school. Just something to think about.
Mr. Wise. Can I respond? Congressman, you are absolutely
correct. Our organization spends a good deal of time doing
that. Only 25 percent of the American public has some contact
with the public school system. Seventy-five percent don't.
There are two groups that are affected every day somebody drops
out. And incidentally before we all go home today, 7,000
schoolchildren will disappear; that is, they will drop out of
school today, each and every school day.
The first group that is affected are the schoolchildren
themselves, the economic costs that you just mentioned. The
second are the rest of us. They reflect the 2006 dropout group
will cost our country $309 billion in lost income alone over
their lifetime. Now, multiply that times 10 years and you can
see the cost to all of us.
Mr. Castle. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Hare.
Mr. Hare. Thank you. My question is focused on two areas. I
hope I have enough time for you to address both of them. First
is my concern about dropouts in a rural community, since I have
a congressional district that has a tremendous amount of rural
area. I wonder if perhaps, Mr. Smith and Ms. Norwood, you could
address the unique challenges that you see that rural school
districts have in confronting dropout problems and how we in
Congress could possibly address those problems in terms of
dropouts in the rural communities and the special problems we
may be seeing here?
Mr. Smith. Thank you. We have had a lot of experience in
rural areas from rural eastern Montana, northern New England
and rural parts of Arizona, California and elsewhere. The
challenges are really different. The good news is we have been
able to get similar results. But I will tell you it does take
even more of a community effort in rural areas to make it work,
and you really do need employers and you need the community and
you need them all tied together through this job specialist as
somebody to pull it together. Ultimately in the end you have
got to give these young folks hope that they can find work in
that area, because if not, if you don't have hope, it is not
going to work.
So either being able to show them where employment is or
even help them create employment, which sometimes in rural
areas it has got to be the only other solution, it is a crucial
part of giving these young folks hope and the opportunity to
succeed. Most young people want to stay where they are, despite
how they may talk about it, but in the end they are most
comfortable. The key is to make sure there is a future for
them, and the key to that is a job.
Ms. Norwood. One of the things North Carolina has invested
in is the North Carolina virtual public school, and this is a
resource for all students in North Carolina where they can take
classes virtually. And the hope there is several things, that
we can bring in some of those who have been dropouts and bring
them back in; also, that we can make all courses available for
all students across North Carolina, so that in case a student
wants to take Mandarin Chinese and they happen to live in a
county that would not attract such a teacher, that that course
is available for them by the virtual school.
We are really working hard to make North Carolina more
global and take down those walls of distance and ruralness so
that those kind of things can be available for every single
child in our State.
Mr. Hare. Thank you. We were talking about school safety
and there has been a great amount of discussion in my district
about positive behavioral learning intervention, and in
particular a program called Positive Behavior Intervention and
Supports, PBIS. I am wondering if you are familiar with that.
The schools that have this program tell me they have seen a
remarkable decrease in expulsions and suspensions. Are any of
you familiar with the program or would you support funding or
other resources to be allotted to schools that wish to
implement these types of interventions under the Safe and Drug-
Free Schools and Communities Act in NCLB?
Ms. Norwood. I am slightly familiar with the program as
used in one particular elementary school. I think it is a very
good program. Anything we can do to help train teachers how to
work with children and to work with their behavior I think is
excellent. The one caution I would have is I don't want us to
go with one egg in one basket. If we could have several
options, I think it would be good.
Mr. Hare. There is a small community in Roosevelt,
Illinois, and they use this and it was amazing. The principal
was telling me and the school district administrator was saying
that reinforcing positive behavioral things; in other words,
focusing on if somebody does something wrong. We spend a lot of
time doing that, but we don't spend enough time. As you said, I
think, Mr. Smith, when you talked about getting them involved
and when they do something, they get credit for what they have
been able to do. And I talked to some of the students that were
in the program. They thought it was wonderful. I wasn't sure if
anybody on the panel encountered that in their areas.
Ms. Norwood. One thing I will say is it works well with
novice teachers because it gives them a strong instrument to
work with and a strong structure. Novice teachers frequently
have discipline problems.
Mr. Hare. One thing I wanted to ask you, Doctor, you talked
about the dropout rate among Hispanic students. A lot of
teachers in my district said it is because kids get into
junior high and they go home with homework to a home where the
parents don't speak English and can't help them with their
homework. And a lot of the educators in my district are saying
we need to fund that type of program because otherwise those
kids get lost and fall off the radar screen. You don't see them
any more because there is nobody there to help them through. I
don't know if you would agree with that.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. I think in my mind obviously we
always need to see how we might be supportive of parents as,
Mr. Hare, you are suggesting, and I think we ought to do that.
My experience and the research that I have seen really says
that Latino parents care a lot about their children's
graduation and they may or may not be able to support the
homework piece of it. And so for example in the parent
engagement work that we do, we work with parents to make sure
that they can work with the schools to support their child,
rather than having to--sometimes you know it seems almost like
we have to wait another generation until the parents are
educated before Latino children can graduate, and I think that
that is not so. The parents that we talk to really care, and
schools tell me that they are very interested in finding out
how to become engaged. The community oversight groups that I
mentioned I think are one way in which parents can get together
and see how do we help the school together, because parents
bring that kind of commitment that no one else does about their
children. So if they have data about how their schools are
doing, about how the graduation rate is and about how to help
with that, then I think that that will work.
Chairman Miller. Thank you.
Ms. McCarthy.
Ms. McCarthy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you
again calling for this hearing. I happen to look at the
students that drop out in the areas that we are, especially
with the gangs. In New York and Long Island we have a big
problem with that. And I know District Attorney Charlie Hynes,
going back a number of years, he was taking dropout numbers
from Brooklyn and then looking at the crime rate that was in
the local area. And he found the crime rate was obviously
higher where those kids had dropped out. So what he did was,
working with Department of Justice money, picked the kids up
every morning. If they didn't show up in school, the police
went and picked them up. They brought them to a safe area. At
that area there was a social worker, there were tutors, trying
to find out what was motivating this kid, and how to get him
back into the system, and he had great success. Obviously it
cost money, but it is one way to go.
Mr. Trump, one of the things that you brought up was the
Cleary amendment. I think a lot of people here don't know what
it is. We dealt with it a little bit a couple years ago in
higher education. The Cleary Act was named after a young girl
that was killed at Lehigh University in her residence hall. Her
parents worked to enact a law so that colleges would have to
report the kind of crimes that they had on campus. It was then
that they found out there were 38 violent crimes in Lehigh for
a short time before this young girl died.
I think what I am trying to gear towards with the data that
you had talked about earlier, that K through 12 schools were
not reporting the incidence data that is needed even though our
colleges are, I guess my question would be, would a Cleary-like
crime tracking system be useful for K through 12? Do you think
parents of K through 12 students would like to have access to
the crime data, and how would K through 12 crime data be
helpful to policy makers? But also following through with that,
if we know that there are schools that have a higher rate of
incidences, whether it is bullying or any of those, would that
also cause some children to drop out?
Mr. Trump. Congresswoman, absolutely. We know that gang
influences, an unsafe environment, actually bullying and
harassment certainly would contribute to kids, particularly who
don't have the support, the engagement and the involvement.
They are just giving up and leaving and dropping out of
schools. The parents don't know what they don't know. The
average parent in this country drops off their kids at school
in the morning and there is an inherent assumption that we have
had over all of our years that when we drop off our kids they
are safe at school. So parents don't know what to ask for, they
don't know where to look and nobody is volunteering the data
for them because of the image concerns, because of the
political aspect in a school community. So I think parents want
to know. I want to know as a parent of two children. That is my
number one concern. Test scores are second, the academic is
second. I want to know when I drop them off in the morning that
I am going to get my daughter and my son back in the same
healthy condition that afternoon. Parents don't know where to
look. Even the best of principals who are tackling problems and
dealing with it head on are not going to put something in their
school newsletter or under a Web site saying, by the way, the
police were at our school 10 times this year.
So there needs to be some outside support such as what has
been recommended to Congress here to make that available in
spite of all the pressures not to so the parents can make an
informed decision. If we are talking about issues of school
choice, if we are talking about parental options under
persistently dangerous situations, we want people to make
informed decisions. And I also want to see legislators at the
congressional level here and at the State levels making
decisions based on real incidents reported to law enforcement,
not perception surveys and opinion surveys. We do it in the
Justice Department with uniform crime reporting, FBI
statistics, it can be done with the NIBRS data that has been
proposed in your SAVE legislation. And I think we can have the
surveys to support that, crime surveys and perception surveys
and dealing with bullying and prevention issues, but we also
have to know how many crimes occurred at the school in real
numbers, not just perceptional.
Ms. McCarthy. The other things that I found by talking to
high school students, they certainly seem to know a lot more
about what is going on in the school than the teachers or
anybody. It is amazing what an earful I get when I ask that
question of what is going on, what bugs you the most. I think
the sad part is a lot of the kids do feel unsafe. They are
saying, oh, no, school is fine, but they don't feel that way.
That is a shame because if we don't have a school that is open
for academic learning, it could be a real problem, and why put
the stress on the kids.
Mr. Trump. We have heard student engagement, Congresswoman,
mentioned several times here. We want students engaged in about
safety issues in schools. If we ask kids where they feel
unsafe, what they recommend, kids are straightforward. They
will tell you exactly what they think and it may not always be
the same as what we as adults think. There is a huge gap
between what many school officials think parents want to hear
and what parents actually want to hear. Parents tell me that
they are not concerned the police are at the school or that
their schools have an emergency plan. They are concerned that
they don't know that school safety is on the radar. They are
not finding out. They know a police car was there, but nobody
wants to tell them what is going on. It is the lack of
information that creates fear, not the availability of
information.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Grijalva.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me tell Mr.
Smith that I just finished meeting with JAG students in my
district and they were both working on a forum that was very
well attended on the DREAM Act dropout prevention and your
staff there. Plus your program should be commended. These kids
are planning to go to college, these kids are planning to have
careers. And I would say 2 or 3 years ago that wouldn't have
been the case, so just a comment.
Let me if I may, Dr. Norwood, Governor Wise, one of the
areas that we don't talk about enough in this reauthorization
process and in general in public education, you mentioned it
briefly, Governor, is middle schools and their role, and
counting dropouts 9 through 12. I think there is a phenomenon
when kids are leaving before then and there is also a
phenomenon that they may not physically have left but they have
left. And these all result in the increasing dropout rate in
the high school level. Under No Child Left Behind, as we go
through this process, as we integrate a comprehensive strategy
on dropout prevention, where does the middle school fit? And I
will begin with you, Governor.
Mr. Wise. Middle school, Congressman, obviously is
critical. The indicators for dropping out, many of them are
quite evident in the sixth grade; absenteeism, truancy,
literacy and so on. You said the key word, which is
``comprehensive.'' In No Child Left Behind we ought to be
looking at this as a seamless system from pre-K all the way to
grade 20, graduate school or the work place, as opposed to
segmented areas. So with middle school what I would suggest is
the same application we have been talking about in high
schools; namely, targeting, because there are a number of low
performing middle schools. Targeting the same kind of
interventions there that we are talking about in high schools I
think would go a long way. Also recognizing essentially at the
Federal level and in most States we stop being involved with
literacy reading in the third or fourth grade, and yet it is in
the middle school that the child's mind begins to turn. Where
before we have been teaching them--they have been learning to
read. Now they need to read to learn. So we need to continue
our adolescent literacy efforts all the way through middle
school and high school.
Ms. Norwood. If you go back and look at several years ago,
the middle school concept that came about, about teachers
teaming together and working together, this is a lot like what
they are doing now in high schools. And it is sort of like we
kind of left it in the middle school and now we are putting it
back in in the high school. And we need to put it back into the
middle school where kids were connected, especially connected
with at least one adult who knows them.
The literacy problem is a major problem in the middle
school. That is one reason why North Carolina is starting to
fund literacy coaches, so they have one person in each middle
school, especially right now our low performing middle schools,
that will help the teachers teach this. Governor Wise is right
on target talking about we teach kids to read in K through 3,
but we don't teach them how reading can work for them in the
fourth grade through middle school through high school. And
that is a learning process too.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. I would suggest that if you looked
at the Feeder System, from elementary through middle school,
the same indicators would be there. Let me if I may, Dr.
Montecel and Mr. Trump, we are talking about nonacademic
variables that create dropouts or create kids who want to leave
school. I am assuming a couple of other variables. Let's use
the 15 percent responsible for 50 percent example. In those
neighborhoods, areas, you would find the high schools are the
poorest quality structurally, physically, technologically. You
would find external and internal violence, crime. And so my
question is where does something as simple as bricks and mortar
and renovation, upgrading facilities, where would that fit as a
noneconomic variable in terms of dropout prevention and overall
safety for that community and for the kids coming to that
school? If you wouldn't mind, Doctor.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Two important nonacademic variables
that the research shows, one is school resources and those
resources being available for keeping kids in schools. So
funding equity would be clearly important. The other is
governance efficacy and governance at the local level that is
required in order to assure that the local policy supports
keeping all students in school instead of not. So I think that
you are absolutely right, Mr. Grijalva, that that is critical.
I think then when you couple those two, governance efficacy and
equity in funding, with the four key variables for keeping kids
in school then you have got it made.
One quick thing, sir, 80 percent of Latinos drop out before
the ninth grade and so you are absolutely right
about----
Mr. Grijalva. The middle school question?
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Yes.
Mr. Trump. Two points, Congressman. We know that the
climate the children are in to them tells them a message as to
how much we value them. If they are in dilapidated facilities
that are poorly maintained they are going to feel that that is
a reflection of how we feel about them. The second aspect is
there is an area called crime prevention through environmental
design. When we are looking at building new buildings,
renovation and design of schools, there are many things that
you can do, simple things, line of sight visibility, how you
position gyms, media centers, cafeterias, areas that are used
for after school events in one area to section off the other
end of the building so it is not open to the evening, lighting,
natural observation. There are many things you can do in the
physical climate to actually improve safety without creating a
prison like environment.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much.
Chairman Miller. Mrs. Biggert.
Mrs. Biggert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it was in
the last session of Congress there was a proposal in the
President's budget to zero the Perkins Grant. And so I went out
in the district to the vocational schools within the district
and talked to the teachers there and talked to the students,
and I was really pleasantly surprised about what was going on.
In our schools we have a conglomerate of schools and we will
have one vocational ed facility. But I was really amazed at the
number of kids and the stories that they told about how they
had been going to drop out and then they had this voc ed
teacher, whether it be auto mechanics or they were working on
engines of airplanes or whatever, and worked with them. And I
think you have all been talking about the one person that
connects with and engages that student. Or they were in
construction. But what happened to them was when they got so
interested in those courses, that they realized why they needed
the basics, why they needed the math, why they needed the
English, why they needed to be able to read instructions and
the scientific instructions that they needed. I just wonder if
we are leaving that behind. There are so many different ways
that a child or student connects with the schools. And I don't
know if any of you have noticed that difference.
The other thing I might add is PE. In Illinois we have
physical education, is required every day. It is a State law.
There are some schools that try to say recess qualifies. But I
also think that really gives kids the physical blowing off
steam that doesn't happen when they are not having,
particularly the younger kids--well, they are not able to
concentrate as well.
Just those two things. I wonder if any of you have any
comments about that. I think probably, Mr. Smith, you talked
about this engagement and jobs.
Mr. Smith. Absolutely. Most of our young people never had a
chance to go to vocational education. They missed it somehow.
They didn't either know about it or whatever. They missed it.
If we can catch them early enough we encourage them to look
that direction, for all the reasons you have cited; it is real,
it is concrete, they understand.
Secondly, the vocational student organizations have done
wonderful things; the Future Farmers of America, the
Distributive Education Clubs of America, 3 million young people
a year, highly motivational to engagement. The young people in
the program we are serving couldn't join because they weren't a
member of a vocational program. So over and over again there
was no route for them to become engaged. The mechanism of
engagement is what has made vocational education really a very
strong part of what we have done in this country, and the
vocational student organizations have been that motivational
tool that helped encourage them to come and stay. I think what
you saw is actually broad across the country.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Ms. Biggert, the RAND Corporation
studied the Coca-Cola Valued Youth Program as a type of student
engagement, and the key they found was that in that program
students are seen as valuable and important young people who
have a contribution to make. And this could happen in this
program, it could happen in many programs. But in that
particular program kids who are at risk of dropping out are
actually put as tutors of younger kids and they learn what they
didn't learn the first go around and they feel better about
themselves and they become contributors instead of problems
that need fixing. RAND found that this was the key in terms of
engaging students. And I think voc ed does that, participating
in sports does that. Young people need many and different ways
to find what it is that they can connect with in schools.
Mrs. Biggert. Ms. Norwood.
Ms. Norwood. Beyond the connection that kids can make with
this, this is also an area that got a bad rep as people
thinking it was not rigorous. I was at a meeting last week at
Charlotte Motor Speedway with business leaders and educators
talking about what kind of 21st century skills are needed to
run NASCAR. And this is very scientific, it is very
mathematical. These kind of classes can teach very rigorous,
deep level thinking skills to kids.
Mr. Wise. Congresswoman, one of the areas that could be
borrowed from Perkins in terms of the NCLB reauthorization is a
provision you put in this year in Perkins that permits a
Federal fund to be used for developing personal graduation
plans for the students so that as we talk about personalization
and knowing them and where they live this would give us the
ability, starting in the seventh grade, to develop a personal
graduation plan to maximize their opportunities.
Mrs. Biggert. Is there anything more we need to do on that,
because it still seems so many of the schools complain that
they have all these academics and they can't be bothered with
moving them?
Mr. Wise. I have heard that many times myself. The reality
is every student is entitled. Certainly the most at risk ought
to be entitled to have a plan that maximizes their chances for
success. Presently the Federal law only permits the funds to be
used in Perkins. We would suggest making it also a permissible
use under ESEA or No Child Left Behind.
Mrs. Biggert. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Miller. Thank you. Mr. Sestak.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you, sir. Mr. Smith, I am always kind of
taken when I hear comments like yours and others in the
education area about how a comprehensive approach seems to work
best. You talk about engagement. It is not dissimilar to my
experience in the military how, and you had mentioned, I
thought from a great question from Representative Castle, how
you do it. If someone gets pregnant or something you are
actually engaged with them.
Mr. Smith. Right.
Mr. Sestak. It harkens back to my experience where you have
a young sailor who gets someone pregnant. We couldn't outsource
it. We were our own human resources, so the young ensign just
dealt with it, because we couldn't afford to lose that kid.
Mr. Smith. Right.
Mr. Sestak. To your question, Governor, or comment, that at
the end of this 2-hour hearing 7,000 individuals will have
dropped out. So that means after five of these hearings are
done, the 35,000 will have dropped out. How do you scale this
up to a question I think the chairman would have gotten to, but
it is mine. The investment attendant to it. In the military we
are not a social welfare organization and yet we would have
done anything to keep that kid.
Mr. Smith. Absolutely. The bill in the Senate that has just
been put in today that Governor Wise referred to, we are
convinced if you could put some incentives on the table States
and communities would respond. And I think it is important they
respond. I wouldn't recommend to you that you do it all at the
Federal level. But if you can incent the States and local
communities, businesses and others and schools, around the
outcomes that you are looking for and provide either matching
incentive money and say this money must be spent on things that
are proven to work by whatever definition you care to put in
the law, then you will find assets aggregating around things
that work and they will go to scale. I think there is an
opportunity here for the Congress to lead and that the States
and the local communities will follow. Money obviously helps to
encourage them. But our view of this is that it should be in
some form of matching or incentives with clear criteria for
what you define you want the other end to be. If it is drop out
reduction, say that, or whatever it is that you decide to do.
In the end engagement doesn't cost very much, but it costs
a little bit and therefore they do not spend on engagement
because they think everybody is looking only at academic
achievement they everybody is only looking at academic
achievement. They don't appreciate, as you have described in
the military, if you do a little bit extra you save that young
man or young woman in the schools. And the little bit extra can
make a decisive difference in the outcomes. And all of a
sudden, by the way, these students are earning State money and
all of a sudden there is more money in the schools because the
students are there, so on and so forth.
So I believe it can be done. And I believe the States are
looking for solutions. The Governors are looking for solutions.
And if there was a way that you could incent them I think they
would respond.
Mr. Sestak. If I could, off of Representative Biggert's
comment. My district lost 1 out of 5 manufacturing
establishments it had in the last 3 years. You can go down to
Aker Shipyard and they are hurting in the Philadelphia area for
MIG and TIG welders. These artisan skills upon which our
country was so well built is an important aspect. When I had
the MIG and TIG welders, you would flip your helmet down, you
light the arc, you lay the bead. Not today. Today you have got
to have a higher level of education. And we can't lose. It is
not just vocational training. They need a higher level of
science and math because you sit at a computer now and you are
talking about nanofabrication and all. You have got to learn
how to actually lay that bead to a computer to put it on a
machine.
To both of you though, how do you incentivise people to
recognize that it is a No Child Left Behind value attendant to
higher education in math and science and eventually reading and
the attraction to that high value manufacturing skills that we
need?
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Congressman, I think that the
incentivising and the developing of models has to occur in a
few districts. Let me tell you why I say that. Schools, there
are a number of schools that are very successful, individual
campuses. But if we are talking about bringing to scale and if
we are talking about incentivising, then I think we have to
find ways in which districts are willing to say we will
graduate all students, this is how we are going to do it, give
us a little bit of help here, we are going to implement best
practices. I think that the States have a lot to do with this,
but I really do think that one needs to get as close to the
locals as possible and then to be able to work across those key
transition points where we lose kids when they move from
elementary to middle and from middle to high school.
Mr. Sestak. It seems.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Yes, yes.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you very much.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Yarmuth.
Mr. Yarmuth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the
panel for some very interesting testimony. I represent a
community that has a school district of just under 100,000
students. And one of the things that I have learned has been
that we have an incredible mobility problem. 250 kids every day
move schools, 1,250 a week, which means that over the course of
the school year half the students have gone from one school to
the other. And I know that this is a huge frustration in terms
of No Child Left Behind because many teachers and schools are
judged on kids that, it is a moving target essentially, kids
they see part of the year and not the rest of the year.
So my question is I assume, although I haven't seen a
correlation, that there is a disproportionate number of
dropouts that come from this population that is constantly
moving. And they move for all sorts of reasons; broken
households, evictions, seasonable workers, you name it. Is
there something in the law that--I know in terms of No Child
Left Behind many teachers say this is where the push-out comes
to a certain extent, too, that they are frustrated because of
the kids they get and they are being graded. Is there something
in the law that we can do to make it so that these kids who are
moving around constantly don't become the victims of a
combination of their own situation and the law in terms of
helping them stay in school?
Mr. Wise. Yes, sir. In fact if you have a 100,000-student
school district, then on average you probably are going to lose
2,500 a year dropping out. One of the things that can be done
is to provide these data systems with a longitudinal data
system but with a student identifier number; in other words, as
that student moves from one school to another, preferably
across the State even but certainly within their own school
district, that you are able to track that student every step.
And the teacher who gets that student the next day knows
automatically how that student is faring, what the student's
strengths and weaknesses are. As the student moves forward you
are able to track. It is not just tracking. It is also what is
the plan that you deliver for this student. How do you
customize it to meet the student's needs as they move from one
school to another. In terms of getting a maximum bang for the
Federal buck, that could be one of the ways you could assist
most.
Fourteen States, as I mentioned earlier, are receiving
Federal funds to do this. It will both save funds, it will make
the learning experience much more accountable and much more
credible and it will also permit you to make certain decisions
you are going to have to make in years to come with good data.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. The migrant program that has to
connect seasonable workers as they move from State to State has
actually developed some good examples of how that might work. I
think also by coupling not just the courses, the curriculum,
aligning the curriculum, but assuring the graduation plan
follows the student and that graduation plan is based on the
student's assets. The main problem is that schools are really
not prepared to build on children's assets. For example, Army
kids are very mobile, CEO kids are very mobile. That doesn't
become a problem because the school finds ways of integrating
them. And that is what the challenge is here.
Mr. Yarmuth. So this is definitely a national problem and
not State by State?
Mr. Wise. It is. And the mobility has increased
significantly in our society in just the last 30 or 40 years.
Mr. Yarmuth. We have a program in my community called Youth
Alive and it was started by a man named Kenny Boyd, who was one
of these kids who was about to fall off the cliff in his life
and somehow pulled himself up. He is an African American man, a
true hero, who started a program where at risk population kids
come after school. They feed them, they help them do their
homework, they expose them to different options, they expose
them to college. They have a trip every year where they just
show them college campuses to show them there is a different
type of life path available to them. As he says, they could
serve many more kids. They serve about 50 kids at any one time.
The key is getting the kids to voluntarily come in. And I
assume this is a problem or an issue with the JAG program as
well. How do you get the kids to come into the program? Is
there a way institutionally that we can create some kind of
method for creating this type of--motivation is a hard way to
create, I understand, but to get kids into these programs?
Because I assume many communities have similar ones. I know a
lot of faith based institutions do as well as the school
systems.
Mr. Smith. There is a lot of good examples. We would like
to believe we are one of them, but there's lots of good
examples. I think in the end we are back to the simple
equation, it takes somebody who reaches and holds and engages
the young people. And two is to create a series of activities
like the gentleman just mentioned that gives them a reason to
come and attend and feel good about doing so and want to come.
But when you can watch the absentee rate drop like a rock when
you implement the program you described or others, it is really
not that hard. We know what it takes to engage and to get them
to come.
The other important news, almost all of our young people,
however at risk, really do want to be like the rest of us. They
really do want to succeed, they really do want to do the right
thing. You just have to give them an opportunity to do it.
Mr. Yarmuth. Thank you.
Chairman Miller. Yes, Doctor.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. If young people have a sense they are
valuable and important they will come. If they have support
that is given them they will come. And if their family and
community is acknowledged, recognized and incorporated they
will come. And we find those are the three keys in terms of
assuring that kids take advantage of opportunities that are
given them, is that they are important and valuable. And
programs work on that basis rather than on fixing their
deficits. You and I wouldn't show up if that was the purpose of
us being somewhere.
Chairman Miller. Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all the
witnesses for their testimony today. Governor, how are you?
Mr. Wise. I am doing great.
Mr. Tierney. You look like you are. I just want to ask a
couple general questions. If we decided that we were going to
make this part of the determination yearly progress and
disaggregate the numbers, do we have a pool of programs that we
know are effective and that work that could be designated as
those programs that people ought to choose from if they are
going to implement that?
Mr. Wise. I would like to jump in on this. Absolutely yes,
Congressman. I want to say the same thing to Mr. Sestak as
well. We do know what works.
Mr. Tierney. Particular programs or just in theory?
Mr. Wise. We have both programs and elements. You heard the
common elements, whether it is Jobs for America's Graduates
represented by Ken Smith, whether in New York City it is
Institute for Student Achievement, whether in Baltimore it is
Child Development, whether it is First Things First in Kansas
City, and so on down the line. Here is a research base that has
been developed particularly over the last 5 to 10 years that
tells us what works. And we have many schools already in play
which have all the indicators for failure and yet students are
turning around. So we do know what works.
We also know that we have to have common elements to it.
The legislation that we are talking about posing would provide
along the lines of what Congress Yarmuth is talking about, is
money that States and districts would match also having to come
up with a plan that they could either use these models or use
what they have already proven to work, but to turn these low
performing schools around.
There are basically three types of schools that need help.
One has something wrong with it but it is not serious; target
and intervention, such as literacy, you take care of it. The
second is more systemic. There you probably are going to have
to deal with the culture of the school but you can keep the
school in place, you just have to change the structure, deal
with the personalization and a number of other issues. The
third one is significant, and that is replacement of the
school, probably about 5 to 10 percent of our high schools,
which is the most difficult to do. But once again there are
models that will work for each of those.
Mr. Tierney. Would you leave it to the Secretary's office
to determine whether or not a local education agency's program
was acceptable as a model?
Mr. Wise. No. The Secretary would obviously have something
to say about it. But I want this done as much as possible at
the State and local level. They will have to develop the
turnaround teams, they will have to develop the plans. The
Secretary is going to have to acknowledge whether or not he or
she thinks the plan will work. You just don't want the money
out the door. This has to be coming from the State.
Mr. Tierney. They can develop it, but our control on that
is that the Secretary's office would determine whether or not
they developed it properly?
Mr. Wise. Right. Under our plan the Graduation Promise Act
is that each State would get a certain amount of money which
would then go to districts based upon two factors. One is
poverty rate and graduation rate. The State and the districts
would put together the plans and put together the turnaround
teams. The Secretary is a partner to it, but it is not strictly
a Federal decision.
Mr. Tierney. If you were going to determine whether or not
a school was underperforming based on their failure to have a
graduation rate that was acceptable, how would you determine
what the acceptable graduation rate was and how would you
change it from year to year? What is an acceptable graduation
rate? Is it school by school, is it nationwide, who determines
it and how, or would you just work on progress to increase it
or improve it by a certain amount?
Ms. Norwood. My preference would be school by school or by
State. And part of the way I am basing my opinion on is with No
Child Left Behind North Carolina just fairly recently got
approval to do a growth model. And a growth model for us has
always been where we felt we needed to go. And I see the growth
model concept is fitting into this also.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. I think also one has to deal
realistically with accountability measures, et cetera. I think
if we are going to really shift from dropout prevention to
graduation for all, which we have to do, we have dropped from
first in the world in graduating students from high school 4
years ago to 15th or 16th. We are not economically competitive
and we cannot be until we see high school graduation as a new
minimum. And I think that in order to do that we really just
have to go for graduation for all. That being said, then I
think it important to make sure that at the local level there
be data not just about outcomes in terms of graduation but also
what is it that the school is or isn't doing that is holding
kids in school so that the schools and the communities can work
together on the school improvement and the progress measures
that would need to be put in place.
Mr. Wise. I would just add to that if you do this, which we
would support, you measure progress at every level, the school,
the district and the State.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Chairman Miller. If I might follow on. Governor Wise, there
was a lot of discussions in meetings I have attended over the
last 6 months or so about the idea, and you sort of alluded to
it, this question of dropout factories. Where do they fit on
the time line here? Apparently everybody knows where they are.
They know what is taking place there. And usually they talk
about dropout factories and shutting them down.
Mr. Wise. The most extensive research on dropout factories
has been done by Johns Hopkins University and two researchers,
Bob Belfanz and Nettie Letgers. Their data is what I have
talked about. I don't think you can shut them all down. Working
with Johns Hopkins and others, the legislation that has been
introduced would suggest that there are three ways to approach
it. One is to look at where these dropout factories have a
particular problem, but there is one problem, bad literacy,
whatever it is. The second classification are those where it is
much more systemic within the school but you can change the
culture of the school. The third is you have to replace the
school totally. It has educational Legionnaire's Disease. You
can't do anything for that building but just to take it down.
That is estimated to be only 5 to 10 percent of those dropout
factories.
Chairman Miller. And get on with that task?
Mr. Wise. If you get on with that task you will deal with
about half the dropouts in this country. You will deal with
about half the African American dropouts and close to the same
number of Hispanic dropouts.
Chairman Miller. You are saying in 5 percent of schools you
would be dealing with half the dropouts?
Mr. Wise. I am saying 15 percent of the schools, you would
be dealing with half the dropouts in this country.
Chairman Miller. Ms. Sanchez.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am particularly
interested in this topic because I have school districts that I
represent in my congressional district that have a 50 percent-
plus dropout rate for Hispanic students, African American
students, and other minority students. And those are rates that
haven't changed in 30 years. So clearly there is something that
is not working.
And I want to touch on the issue of school safety for a
minute because I think I read somewhere in my materials if
students don't feel safe they are less likely to graduate. The
U.S. Department of Education has looked at several school
safety factors, and something that I have a particular interest
in is school bullying. It is something that has gone on since
time. So when I experienced it or saw it growing up it was just
sort of a ``kids will be kids'' mentality and teachers
scratched their heads and nobody thought much about it.
I am very much focused on that issue because in parts of my
district we have actually seen things as serious as a rise in
gangs as a result of kids being picked on and wanting to feel
protected in school. We know that students who bully are more
likely to go on to become adult career criminals. Kids who are
bullied are more likely to experience suicide and depression
and other negative effects. And nearly one in every three
American schoolchildren experiences bullying at some point.
Interestingly enough, kids that are more likely to be bullied
are kids that are doing well in school, that are performing
well and get picked on by their peers. And yet when I have had
meetings with superintendents in the different school districts
that my congressional district overlaps with there really isn't
a comprehensive anti-bullying curriculum in schools. Some
schools have just formulated their own.
But I am curious to know what you think we may be able to
do to try to help reduce that on school campuses. And
interestingly enough, I just last night on 60 Minutes saw a
piece where school shooters, almost every single one, has that
common element in their background, that they were bullied when
they were in school. So I am interested to know what your
thoughts are on trying to help reduce violence in schools and
some of the other negative consequences that come as a result
of bullying.
Dr. Norwood.
Ms. Norwood. You have really hit on one of the things that
is probably one of our ugliest problems that we have in
schools. And one thing I will ask the staff to do is get you a
copy of the Standard. There is an article in it talking about
bullying. Because one of the things is that some of the things
you think of as common-sense solutions are not really
solutions. And the bullying is a real problem. And I think
personally that it is a real problem because everybody accepts
it. There are certain people who think other people should be
bullied, and I am talking about adults. And this is a thing
that is going to take an entire community to work on.
As I said, I would like to send you a copy of this so that
you can read through it at your leisure because it is pretty
eye opening of what works and what doesn't.
Ms. Sanchez. I would appreciate that. Other thoughts, Mr.
Trump?
Mr. Trump. Congresswoman, two things. One is we need to
define what is bullying. In many of our schools our schools
actually have policies and procedures under discipline;
extortion, harassment, physical assault, intimidation. So one
of the things we stress is look at what you have. I think what
Dr. Norwood is saying is are you fully conscious of those
resources you already have policy wise. And on the other side
of that certainly climate and awareness with staff. The other
thing is the physical security. There was a study, I don't have
the citation with me, within the past year of where the
bullying occurs. When the researcher looked at where in the
school are places that are less safe, one of the most places,
the biggest place of concern is in our school restrooms. Adults
don't supervise there. So we not only have to look at climate
and culture, but supervision, adult visibility and, as we say,
the fourth R of education, with reading, writing and
arithmetic, today is relationships.
The adult relationship with the kids so they feel
comfortable coming forward to report the student with the gun
and the fact that they are a bully.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Ms. Sanchez, to add a bit to that, we
have been working with school systems in which the Latino
population has grown tremendously in a very quick period of
time. In many States throughout the United States, as you know,
there is hypergrowth of Latinos. And I think that speaking
directly and working directly with the relationships between
communities that were never next to each other before, and that
would include African American, Latino and white students, and
seeing each other in very direct ways, parents of those
communities working together to create some solutions to the
harassment and the bullying issues are producing some very good
results at the local level.
Mr. Smith. Congresswoman, there is some good evidence that
also shows that young people who are involved in something else
don't tend to be the ones doing the bullying and don't tend to
be the ones causing the problems. It is those that are not
involved in something else, in effect, that create that
something else to be involved in.
So, again, the argument of providing multiple opportunities
and get young people into them, school principals will tell us
with the arrival of the kind of program we provide, the
demeanor and the climate of the school changes. All of a sudden
things that were acceptable before aren't now, and many of
these young people are now engaged in something constructive.
So in the end, it is back to engagement and involvement, and in
enough opportunities, I think you will see that bullying and
the discipline issues go down.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield.
Mr. Kildee. [presiding.] The gentlelady from New York Ms.
Clarke.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to
touch on a couple of other indicators that some of my
colleagues have touched on, but I wanted to go into greater
depth.
I am from Brooklyn, New York, and research shows that
academics coupled with socioeconomic factors influence
basically a student's decision to drop out of high school. And
I am looking at the issue of school safety taking on a whole
new dimension when you are dealing with working-class
communities, immigrant density, working toward systemic
poverty. So the schools located in a particular area oftentimes
correlate with, you know, the conditions of the area. And I
just wanted to get from, you know, what have you looked at or
have you experienced in your interactions with others that can
be done to address the students leaving that school environment
when you have the pressures of such an environment bearing down
on them? Any----
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Ms. Clarke, I think your comments
point to a very important issue, and that is that solving the
decision of dropouts is not just tinkering at the edges. We
have to really look fundamentally as how we educate children,
especially African American and Latino children, and where we
educate them. Latino children, African American children
continue to mostly go to schools that are highly segregated,
which in the United States also means that they are high-
poverty schools. So you have children of the poor who are
attending schools that are poor, and in which are concentrated
big problems, and in which there are few resources.
And so I think it important to look systematically at those
issues, and when we are looking at schools that fundamentally
need to be shifted, that we look not just at the outcomes that
are being produced, but at what is it about those systems that
just plain doesn't work for our kids.
Ms. Norwood. Also in North Carolina we are looking at the
concept of schools are not in isolation, but that schools are
part of the community. And our chairman Howard Lee has been
very strong working with the faith community, especially in our
lead-performing schools, to try to get the faith community to
work along with the school system and provide some of the
support that the students may not be getting. So it is the
community, the whole environment looking at this rather than
just the schools in isolation.
Mr. Wise. And it is also about in dealing with the
environment, the first thing is what can you do about the
environment within the school, and we talked a lot about the
personalization process, having an adult in the school that you
can go to so that the adult knows firsthand what are some of
these other issues that a student is facing. But let us be
frank. With 1 guidance counselor for every 500 students, with a
teacher having to handle 120 to 150 students a day, there isn't
going to be a lot of personal attention in the present
structure either within the educational system or outside.
So what is it we can do and what is it through the Federal
process you can do to provide incentives and assistance to
school districts to do school-based services, have the school
open longer hours obviously, to have health counselors there,
the other kinds of operations that are so important that can
assist students with their basic, basic needs? I have seen--for
instance, in Philadelphia I visited a school recently which has
services available to it through communities and schools. There
are other successful models like this that are trying to
grapple with that problem.
We have to deal with the child in their whole world.
Ms. Clarke. I just want to--and I am going to have you
respond as well, Mr. Trump--but I want to sort of bring to the
surface the fact that a lot of our students, no matter what
kind of antiseptic environment we try to create for them in the
educational facility if they are going into a community where
you have generations of dropouts--because we have been talking
about the dropout phenomena that took place over 30 years; we
are talking about going back to communities where your role
models, your environment has not been progressing in terms of,
you know, the educational arena. You have a severe struggle
there. And if that--if that is the real constant in the
student's life, you know, how do we address it in the school?
And then what are we talking about in terms of the
responsibility of the wider community? And I just sort of
wanted to put that the table, Mr. Trump.
I see you sitting up, Mr. Smith.
Mr. Trump. Congresswoman, I want to reinforce one of the
things we hear often is that schools reflect the broader
community, and I think that is true. But we also know from my
work in Cleveland schools when I ran the gang unit in the
school district in one of my previous lives, we knew oftentimes
in the worst of communities that school was the safest place
for that child, as long as we have an environment with firm,
fair and consistent discipline and the support systems during
school and most of all at 3 o'clock when the bell rings, where
do they go next, and when you have that connection to some of
the things that we have heard with the rest of the panelists
here. So I think that the school can make a difference in an
uphill battle, and we have to have that linkage between what
happens after school as well. Even in the toughest communities,
sometimes school is the safest place.
Mr. Kildee. Gentleman from New York Mr. Bishop.
Mr. Bishop of New York. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
for this hearing, and I want to thank the panel. It has been
very, very interesting and informative testimony.
Mr. Smith, before I came to the Congress, I was a college
administrator, and I spent an awful lot of time looking at the
issue of attrition and persistence on the college level. And I
was struck that the factors that you outlined that contribute
to persistence on the high school level are virtually the very
same factors that contribute to persistence on the college
level. And I am wondering how far that goes.
One of the things we learned about college attrition is
that students tend to drop out when they can't see a connection
between what it is they are doing and what their ultimate goals
are. I am assuming that is also true on the high school level.
And so I want to take that and link it to something that was in
Secretary Spellings' report on higher education in which the
committee found that there was an insufficient articulation
between what high schools teach and do and what colleges
expect.
And so I am wondering do you see possibilities, fruitful
possibilities, for more liaisons between high schools and
colleges and more interventions on the part of colleges in
getting high school students involved in what college students
do, whether it is student newspaper or radio station or
whatever, to get them, in effect, turned on to staying in high
school and then moving on to college?
Mr. Smith. We have got some great experience, and the Gates
Foundation has got some research that shows for really high-
risk kids in 10th grade, if you can get them on a college
campus to start taking some of their high school courses as
well as college courses, it cracks the environment. It changes
the whole thing. All of a sudden they are adults. All of a
sudden they get treated like they are adults because the
assumption is they are. And guess what? They start responding
that way.
We have some very limited evidence, and we are going to try
and find ways to get more, that says involving young people
early, creating that relationship early is critically
important. We have also got some evidence that reinforces your
point.
In Ohio we did some research. We tracked all the kids in
Ohio that go on to public higher education institutions. Sixty-
one percent go on to year 2, about average around the country.
The young people of--jobs-for-hire graduates with the
intervention of the jobs specialist staying with them for the
year is 82 percent. And these were the at-risk poor kids, which
just references the point that that kind of intervention,
involvement, engagement, caring, help them see where they are
going, make the connections to work. It works. It doesn't
matter whether it is in college or high school.
Mr. Bishop of New York. On the issue of involvement and
engagement and caring, another thing from college persistence
is that the single greatest factor correlating with student
success and student persistence was the existence of a
substantive out-of-class relationship with a member of the
faculty. Moving that to the high school level--and actually, K
through 12, one of the things that we are dealing with in No
Child Left Behind is the so-called highly qualified teacher.
There is some discussion now of changing that from highly
qualified teacher to highly effective teacher. Certain groups
are proposing that.
How do you feel about that, all of you, the notion of
moving towards a highly effective teacher, and perhaps linking
the out-of-class involvement and the substantive engagement of
a member of the faculty, whether it be a 6th grade teacher or a
10th grade teacher, with their, in effect, making that an
integral part of their performance evaluation. Anyone?
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Teachers are, of course, key.
Teachers teach and engage kids, and kids stay in school.
I think that the notion of teacher effectiveness is a good
one. We want to know whether teachers are doing what our kids
need.
I would also urge that we not move away too quickly,
though, from whether and how teachers are trained and whether
and how they are qualified and certified, because it is such a
huge problem in the schools in which dropping out is the
biggest problem, and that is the number of teachers that just
plain are not certified to do what they are doing, are teaching
out of area and other things. So I would urge us not to move
away from that.
Mr. Bishop of New York. Fair enough.
Dr. Norwood.
Ms. Norwood. If you move toward the highly effective, I
think you will be looking at a different kind of thing also. I
think you have to have the highly qualified on one side and
highly effective as a second part of it.
The other thing is you have to look at what you are putting
on teachers' plates. Teachers have so much on them right now.
As Governor Wise mentioned a minute ago, 150 kids a year--I
mean, a day, even just getting those names down gets to be
difficult.
And so I think this is a way to move, but we have also got
to change the culture of what a teacher is expected to do
within a day in order to do this.
Mr. Bishop of New York. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kildee. The gentleman from New Jersey Mr. Payne.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. Good to see you again,
Governor. Pleasure serving with you.
Let me ask a question as it was indicated that schools are
extremely segregated. I think in my State, they are more
segregated now than they were before Brown v. Board of
Education in 1954. And so because African American, the schools
are that way, there seems to be some type of disproportionate
harsh and frequent discipline on African American students; you
know, no tolerance or whatever. Do you think that some of that
may have something to do with the high dropout rate with
African Americans and Latinos, I think, to a lesser degree?
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Segregation?
Mr. Payne. In many of the schools they have harsher
discipline in schools that are predominantly----
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We have
been looking at this issue of discipline of students, and, of
course, male students get the brunt of what goes on by
discipline, but we have found in State after State an
overrepresentation of disciplinary action against young Latino
and young African American males. And we are talking about, you
know, treating students as valuable and important young people
and recognizing the contribution that they can make. That
hardly happens when, by virtue of color, you are seen to be a
threat to the school and to society.
And so I do believe that that is an important issue to look
at and would recommend that that be one of the indicators, that
at the local level, as schools are looking at dropout rates and
what is related to that in terms of the school's performance,
that that serve as an indicator to the list that Governor Wise
and others have spoken about this afternoon, sir.
Mr. Payne. Yes.
Ms. Norwood. I agree that we are seeing much more
segregation today than when I started in this business. It is
getting to be quite, quite a factor. Some people are calling it
trying to have neighborhood schools, but I am not going to get
into that.
If you look at the suspension and expulsion reports, you
will see that they are overwhelmingly kids of color and
overwhelmingly males. I think one of the problems--and I don't
have the answer for this--is we need to recruit more minority
teachers, minority teachers who understand these kids a lot
more than people who look like me, to be terribly honest. And
so this is a problem. And so we are going to have to attack it
from several fronts, but kids who are--suspended kids who are
expelled are more likely going to be dropouts than other kids.
Mr. Wise. Could I also chime in as the importance of
recruiting more minority teachers is to provide the incentives
or whatever it takes to get them into the schools where they
are needed the most and where we get our highest-performing
teachers into our lowest-performing schools instead of the
process which works right now, which is we don't get that.
So it is individualization, it is spending more time,
structuring your school day so that that teacher is able to
spend time with a number of students that he or she is
allotted, such as Mr. Smith talked about earlier; having a
personal graduation plan so they know they are valued; and also
having teachers that are culturally sensitive to their
concerns.
Mr. Payne. Yes, Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump. I would say from a tangential perspective as a
school security system, we have a significant turnover with
school administrators now, people retiring. We are getting more
new deans, assistant principals and principals who are
administering that discipline you are talking about. It is
critical we do adequate preparation on training them, on
mentoring the new administrators who are coming in so they
understand the principle of firm, fair, consistent discipline,
fair discipline, and creating a safe and secure climate.
Mr. Payne. You know, I taught for about 10 years myself
years ago at a predominantly African American high school and
middle school, coached and all that, and we did have a large
number at that time of African American men at the school, and
the discipline was not a problem at all. However, there have
been changes, too, in society not just--Mr. Chairman, if you
give me a half second more, I am color blind. Thank you.
Just quickly on the manner in which when I was teaching,
long back when--while it wasn't Abraham Lincoln's day, but it
was a while ago, you could really do more things. The society
was different. You didn't have as many potential problems, it
seemed, unless they were just kept under the carpet. But there
were things we could do, you know, trips, sports after school,
you know. We always played the students in athletics--and we
had some pretty good athletes who were the teachers, and we
would always beat the kids--not up, but in the games.
The problem of today where you--because of so many stories
you hear about children being abused, parents don't let their
kids go out to play anymore. This whole question of suits, do
you think that, too, is a constraint on teachers today?
Dr. Robledo Montecel. I think the relationship between the
school and what is happening in the community is, of course,
very, very crucial. And the constraints on schools, the
constraints on communities, the need for engaging communities
with schools is huge.
I think that all efforts that can find new ways to bridge
the school and the community and the school and parents--we
know that a very, very effective dropout prevention measure is,
in fact, good parent involvement so that teachers know what is
going on in the home, parents know what is going on in the
school. And, yes, I think that that might speak to some of
those things, Congressman.
Mr. Kildee. Gentleman from Virginia Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the advantages
in coming this late is a lot of the questions have already been
dealt with. For example, we don't have to debate whether we are
going to have disaggregated data on dropouts because I think
that has been pretty well solved. And one of the questions--one
of the first questions we had in dropouts is to make sure we
count the dropouts, because people were given all kinds of
different numbers. And, Governor, you have indicated that the
Governors have come up with a methodology that you believe will
count--accurately count or as accurately as you can--count the
dropouts?
Mr. Wise. Yes, sir. It is a good start, and what they did
in 2005 was reach a compact all 50 Governors agreed to.
Basically it works on the 4-year model, cohort model, 9th
graders starting, and you look at seniors finishing.
Mr. Scott. If people move into the district, what happens?
Mr. Wise. In their methodology they also account for that.
But I want to stress that it is very useful to a point, but
the--because what it does is it provides a common methodology;
however, it does not have accountability, and it does not have
disaggregation. That is what we hope you will do.
Mr. Scott. When we passed No Child Left Behind, in the
beginning I was active in making sure there was a provision in
there that punished you for having a high dropout rate. You
know, you want to achieve AYP, so you will do that which helps
you get there. And the formula essentially gives you an
incentive to have a high dropout rate because the more people
drop out, presumably your scores go up; if you try to keep
people in, your scores are lower, and therefore you have a
disincentive to have a low dropout rate. The formula ought to
be such that if you have a low dropout rate, you are--your
chance of achieving adequate yearly progress is enhanced. So we
need to try to get the formula straight so that the incentives
are there to try to make sure that you have a reason to have a
low dropout rate. So that is one of the things that we said
from the beginning.
Now, Governor, you indicated that there is no question the
dropout--we know that some dropout prevention programs work.
They are effective. Is that right?
Mr. Wise. Yes, sir. I will be glad to supply----
Mr. Scott. Is it a virtual certainty that a good dropout
prevention program will also reduce juvenile delinquency, drug
use and teen pregnancy?
Mr. Wise. Yes, sir, and our organization has done some
analysis of this. Sixty-five percent of all State prison
inmates are high school dropouts. We also have calculated that
you could save I think it is $17 billion a year in Medicaid
costs and other health-related costs by cutting the dropout
rate sharply. So there are clear indicators in both cases, sir.
Mr. Scott. Now, you have also indicated that 15 percent of
the schools have 50 percent of the dropouts. Now, if you were
distributing--if you had a Federal formula that was
distributing snow removal money, you wouldn't expect Boston and
Miami to get the same amount?
Mr. Wise. No, sir.
Mr. Scott. Would it make sense to target the money to where
the clearly identified problem is?
Mr. Wise. Well, we would suggest and what--the bill that
was introduced in the Senate today, the Graduation Promise Act,
would target the money based upon graduation rates and poverty
rates, and so this would--and then it would go to the State and
then to the local school districts. So this would get it to
those areas that need it the most, where it is snowing the
heaviest.
Mr. Scott. If we know what works, we ought to know what
those programs cost. We have heard descriptions of the problem
is in the hundreds of billions, maybe trillions over a few
years, and the budget is in the handful of millions, the
President's budget cut that little bit out. Could you give us
an idea of how much money we ought to be spending to solve this
problem?
Mr. Wise. We propose in the legislation that has been
introduced today a $2\1/2\ billion targeted fund. Will that be
sufficient to take care of----
Mr. Scott. Did you say billion?
Mr. Wise. Billion, yes, sir. Would that be sufficient to
handle every school? No. But as far as an authorization, $2\1/
2\ billion a year gets it started. And I might add it still
does not take from Title I. This would be a separate fund so we
would not be taking dollars from other important areas covered
by Title I.
Mr. Scott. And at the present level of funding in the 4
million, with--a million with an M--is clearly insufficient.
Mr. Wise. It is insufficient, and while the President--we
do applaud the President for recognizing the problem and
creating a High School Improvement Fund in Title I; however, he
takes a lot of that money from Perkins and other programs. This
would be new money that would be necessary.
Mr. Scott. Thank you very much.
Mr. Kildee. The gentleman from Texas Mr. Hinojosa.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the panelists for bringing such good
information to our committee.
And I would like to direct my first question to Dr. Robledo
Montecel. Would you please describe for us some of the
effective practices that have helped students navigate the
transition points from elementary to middle school and from
middle school to high school, and how can we scale up these
effective practices that you recommend?
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Yes. There are three keys. One is to
make sure that what you are doing is valuing kids instead of
trying to fix them, Congressman.
One important, effective practice around that is to make
sure that children who are at risk or at risk circumstances
have the best teachers--the Governor spoke to that before--find
ways in which that can happen; make sure that reading is
focused on not only at the elementary level, but at the
secondary we continue to assure that young people can read,
that young people can write, that young people can engage with
science and mathematics, and those would be important pieces.
The other one would be to assure that children have the
support that they need that will help them to stay in school.
That might range from making sure that their health is well,
making sure that they have those things that all of the rest of
us take for granted, and for the schools to work with the
community to assure that students are supported.
And then thirdly and importantly, sir, the bringing of
parents to schools not just for bake sales or for telling them
that their child messed up. We talk to parents all the time who
are very happy when the school doesn't call because it means
their child hasn't gotten into trouble. That is very--that is
an indictment, I think, of how things are at the moment.
So to bring parents in, to work in partnership with the
school, but also, in relationship to graduation for all, to
have the community and the parents in the community look at how
their school is doing, and get indicators of how the school is
doing, and have parents have easily accessible information.
We have been working with a community in El Paso and a
community in the Rio Grande Valley that is doing marvelously,
making sure that parents have the information that they need to
support the school in keeping all kids in school.
Mr. Hinojosa. I agree with you on all of the keys that you
described, particularly that of reading both at the elementary
school as well as at the high school, because certainly a lot
of the students are not at reading at grade level when they get
into high school.
And I also like to approach the parental involvement
because I am a very strong proponent of that. I obviously
realized that sometimes the resources, the financial resources,
are not there. Elaborate on your proposal to dedicate 5 percent
of NCLB funding to dropout prevention.
Dr. Robledo Montecel. Well, I mentioned before, sir, that I
think this is going to take more than tinkering at the edges,
and therefore funding will be crucial.
The Governor was speaking about the new money that needs to
be invested. I think as well it would be very important to look
at how each of the existing titles of No Child Left Behind can
focus on graduation for all so that in terms of Title I, for
example--and most of the money, as you know, goes to elementary
education--if there were created a 5 percent stream not to
replace, but in addition to the new moneys, that would focus on
graduation for all, then this would help to really shift the
paradigm of, oh, well, 30 percent of our kids are going to drop
out, and, oh, well, one out of two Latinos will do the same.
Taking also, for example, in terms of Title III English
language learners, we know the dropout rate among 16- to 19-
year-olds of English language learners is 69 percent. It would
be hugely important both in terms of the new money as well as
within Title III to encourage those efforts that look at how to
assure that English language learners not only learn English,
but also learn the content that is being taught, have access to
the curriculum and graduate from high school.
Mr. Hinojosa. Governor Wise, you and Dr. Robledo have
mentioned and certainly emphasized the point that the No Child
Left Behind emphasizes K-6 and not enough emphasis in the
secondary schools, and both of you seem to have a really good
grasp of the fact that No Child Left Behind has been
underfunded each of the last 6 or 7 years.
So would you please tell me your thinking about funding for
grades 7 to 12, which is, according to your material, close to
$5 billion. Tell us what would be the right amount.
Mr. Wise. The right amount--well, what we believe would
start the process of intervention particularly with a lot of
the areas that Dr. Montecel was referring to would be a
strategic fund of $2\1/2\ billion a year targeted to high
schools and possibly as well to middle schools that are the
lowest performing, and to use the research-backed models that
are proven to work.
Quite frankly, Congressman, I am not advocating to this
committee that we simply put more money into already
dysfunctional systems, but that we look towards a systematic
restructuring so we get the rewards we want, the outcomes. And
we are singing, I think, chapter and verse, because obviously
reading is such an incredible part of this, that whether or not
you are able to enact this reform, which we hope you would, you
would also consider a Striving Readers Initiative that would
target monies to many of these school districts that have such
high--or have such low, I should say--reading rates, according
to NATE, 70 percent or less--or more reading below grade level,
plus the fact that one out of five of our students is an ELL
student. Clearly we need a reading initiative that accompanies
this.
But in terms of dollars I would say we can start in a
serious way for somewhere around $3 billion a year. And
interestingly enough, if we did that, that would only bring to
about $8 billion for grades 6 to 12 versus the 33 billion.
The reality is there isn't enough at any level. And if I
could add just real quickly, to provide justification in the
economic sense, once we move past the obviously moral case is
the recent Columbia Teachers College study out that looks at
some of these initiatives we talked about today and shows if we
can simply cut the dropout rate in half, we would bring $45
billion more in the Federal Treasury either through increased
tax revenues, because people are earning more, or through
reduced social costs.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Governor.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much, Mr. Hinojosa.
This has been an outstanding hearing. All of you obviously
have great knowledge, and you have great care for young people,
and that is very important. Some have knowledge and don't have
the care. You obviously--you really motivated us up here.
You know, this meeting started at 3 o'clock Monday
afternoon. Governor, you know how hard it is to get people back
here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Twenty-two Members
showed up for this. I think that is a record. Twenty-two
Members showed up for this hearing because we knew that this is
very important. We knew we were going to have people here who
really had that knowledge and that care for people. And you
have done an outstanding job, and you can leave here today
feeling that you have influenced us who have a moral obligation
to do more for children. You have informed us, and you have
motivated us, and I personally appreciate that. I know all the
Members on both sides deeply appreciate that. This has been
outstanding.
And I will, without objection, say that Members will have
14 days to submit additional materials for the record, and any
Member wishes to submit follow-up questions in writing to the
witnesses should coordinate with the Majority staff within the
requisite time.
[The information follows:]
[The prepared statement of Mr. Altmire follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Jason Altmire, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Pennsylvania
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on enhancing
school safety and reducing the number of students who drop out of high
school.
I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of the witnesses. I
appreciate the time you took to be here today and look forward to your
testimony.
The rate at which high school students in this country are dropping
out of school is a crisis. Nationally, only 70% of students whom enter
high school graduate with a regular high school diploma four years
later. These numbers are even more disturbing for minority students,
with only 55% of Black students and 52% of Hispanic students graduating
with regular high school diplomas in four years.
The impact of these students dropping out of high school has severe
consequences both for the students who drop out and for our nation as a
whole. Students who do not earn a high school diploma on average make
significantly less money than their peers who graduate and have a much
greater chance of being incarcerated.
As several of the witnesses pointed out in their written testimony,
NCLB was structured and implemented in a way that has not been
effective in preventing students from dropping out. Part of the issue
is that less than a third of federal money that goes to primary and
secondary schools goes to students in grades 7-12. Another part of the
problem is that school interventions have not been adapted for high
schools and graduation rates have not been disaggregated or accurately
measured on a school by school basis.
Today, I am looking forward to hearing from our witnesses about how
NCLB can best be modified to best deal with the growing high school
drop out crisis.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing and
shedding light on this important issue. I yield back the balance of my
time.
______
[Questions for the record submitted by Mrs. McCarthy to Mr.
Trump follow:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
------
[Responses to Mrs. McCarthy's questions from Mr. Trump
follow:]
Responses to Questions for the Record From Mr. Trump
no. 1 background
Mr. Trump, in 1990, Congress enacted the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of
Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. The ``Clery
Act'' is named in memory of 19 year old Lehigh University freshman
Jeanne Ann Clery who was assaulted and murdered while asleep in her
residence hall room on April 5, 1986. Jeanne's parents, Connie and
Howard, worked to enact the law after they discovered that students
hadn't been told about 38 violent crimes on the Lehigh campus in the
three years preceding her murder. With the passage of the Clery Act,
higher education institutions across the country were required for the
first time to release campus crime statistics to their current and
prospective students and employees. Under the Clery Act, colleges and
universities are required to provide an annual security report to
students and prospective students on security policies and crime
statistics. The report must include data collected by campus security
and local law enforcement. Additionally, under Clery the Education
Department makes summary crime statistics available on its website. As
you note in your testimony, there is no similar crime data system in K-
12, rather, K-12 uses inferior, unreliable data in program
administration.
QUESTION: How would a more Clery-like crime tracking system be
useful for K-12? Do you think parents of K-12 students would like to
have access to crime data? How would K-12 crime data be helpful to
policymakers?
RESPONSE: A Clery-like crime tracking system for K-12 schools is
sorely needed. Currently, the majority of data published by the U.S.
Department of Education is based upon a collection of a half-dozen or
so academic research-type studies, self-report surveys, etc., not
actual incident-based data. Congressional leaders must take a ``best-
guestimate'' approach in making policy and funding decisions, since the
data provided to them by the Department of Education is primarily
survey data.
Contrast the Education Department's survey data for K-12 schools
with the type of data required by the Clery Act, and the difference is
one of night and day. And when making policy and funding decisions on
Department of Justice issues, Congress has not only victimization and
other surveys, but most importantly has Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and
associated data compiled based upon actual criminal incidents reported
to law enforcement. Yet when it comes to the safety of our children in
K-12 schools, there is a lower standard than what we have for colleges
and universities, and the broader society in general: Mostly surveys.
Unfortunately, parents do not know what they do not know--and no
one is rushing to tell them what they do not know. K-12 schools have
historically operated in a culture of ``downplay, deny, deflect, and
defend,'' where protecting school image often takes precedent over
honestly, accurately, and openly informing parents about the extent of
crime, violence, and discipline problems in their childrens' schools.
Schools have also enjoyed a history of ``inherent trust'' given to them
by parents, a trust where the silent majority of parents send their
kids to school each assuming that schools are safer, less disruptive,
more crime-and-violence free, and better prepared for emergencies than
may actually be the case.
Sadly, few organizations are advocating for improved school crime
reporting. The education organizations seem to prefer surveys over hard
incident-based data, presumably because they perceive that many of
their members, while perhaps more open today than in decades past, are
still caught up in the ``downplay, deny, deflect, and defend'' culture
previously referenced. Parent organizations, like the education
organizations and others in our society, have been fed the questionable
U.S. Department of Education data and ``schools are the safest place in
the community'' mantra that has been the sound byte since the 1999
Columbine tragedy, that their knowledge of the questionable data is
limited, and thus is their advocacy for improvement of the data.
We have a saying that we use regularly when training educators and
others on school safety: We can't change the climate if we don't change
the conversation. It is far past time for changing the conversation
from one based upon academic research studies and surveys, to one based
upon actual incident-based data.
no. 2 background
Mr. Trump, you attended the White House Conference on School Safety
in October 2006, which came in the wake of a rash of tragic school
shootings last fall. Although we do not have any national data from law
enforcement on weapons in schools, according to the Indicators report,
which as we know is based on survey and not actual crime data, in 2005
students surveyed throughout the nation reported that between 4 to 11
percent of those surveyed carried a weapon to school, including guns,
knives and clubs. The Indicators report also found that there was no
measurable change in the percentage of students who carried a weapon at
school between 1999 and 2005.
QUESTION: Did the President's Conference address the issue of
reducing the amount of weapons in schools? Were they are new policies
and funding announcements resulting from this Conference?
RESPONSE: As I recall, one young man asked the Attorney General's
panel about the issue of firearms in schools. Panelist responses to
this question, and in the earlier panel member presentations, included
discussions of enforcement of existing firearms laws in and around
schools, changes needed in the broader society, and the need to provide
climates where students feel comfortable in reporting weapons on
campus.
The White House Conference on School Safety focused upon reviewing
and discussing ``best practices.'' There were no new policy or funding
announcements during this conference, or to my knowledge, none after
the conference as well. In a number of conversations with attendees and
others during and after the conference, many individuals, including
myself, were hoping to see announcements of restoration and expansion
of recent funding cuts to school safety programs such as the Safe and
Drug Free School Program state grants, the Emergency Response and
Crisis Management (ERCM, now Readiness and Emergency Management for
Schools--REMS--grants), COPS in Schools program in the Justice
Department, and other federal school safety resources. Unfortunately,
this did not occur.
no. 3 background
Mr. Trump, as you know the Gun Free Schools Act requires States to
report firearm incidents, including school names, to the Secretary
annually. ED however, is not collecting data on the names of schools,
citing the Paperwork Reduction Act. As Chairman Miller told one of the
Reading First witnesses last week during the hearing, you don't get to
ignore the law. I agree, and so in March I wrote a letter to the
Secretary asking her to explain what appears to be non-compliance with
NCLB.
QUESTION: Do you know what the ED does with the GFSA data the
States send them? Do parents have access to this information? Do you
think parents would like to have access to information about firearms
in their child's school?
RESPONSE: As a parent, I would certainly want to have access to
information about firearms in my children's school. And I would easy
access, not something I would have to do a FOIA or other public records
request to receive, or dig through a million web pages to find it
buried deep on a government web site, if it is there at all. This is
yet another example of the, ``Parents don't know what they don't
know,'' situation I have repeatedly referenced in connection with this
hearing.
I would be interested in hearing why the Education Department
apparently arbitrarily decided to exclude the names of schools in the
annual federal report. While I have no firsthand knowledge of what they
were really thinking in doing so, based upon my experience of nearly 25
years in working in school safety, my gut feeling tells me that the
real underlying reason may have to do with the historical culture in
the education community of protecting schools' images by downplaying
incidents of crime and violence.
I do believe, however, that the individual(s) who made the decision
to dismiss the intent of Congress in the GFSA to include the names of
schools should be called upon to formally explain himself/herself in
this decision, and asked some pointed questions.
no. 4 background
Mr. Trump, I have heard from concerned parents all over the country
who have children who were the victims of crimes. In one case, a mother
named Bonnie Levine from California contacted our office to tell us
that her son, had been violently assaulted in school. Even though her
son had been assaulted by another student at the school on school
grounds, the school refused, upon Ms. Levine's request, provide her son
with the option to transfer to another public school in the district.
In fact, the school never even told the family that they had the right
to transfer under the law, Ms. Levine discovered this through her own
research.
QUESTION: Do you think it is important for parents to be given
notice of the transfer option?
RESPONSE: Almost every week I hear from parents across the country
who are frustrated with issues of discipline, crime, and/or violence n
their children's schools. One of the most common frustrations voiced by
parents is that they feel school officials are downplaying and even
covering up these offenses. While the majority of school administrators
are good people doing a tough job, parents and our broader society fail
to see just political an issue school safety really is, and how these
administrators are often pressured by their school boards and central
office administrations to downplay discipline and crime issues.
Parents like Ms. Levine and the many others I receive emails and
contact from almost weekly need to know the truth. Contrary to what far
too many school officials still believe, parents hear from students,
school employees, and others that there are problems with discipline
and crime in their schools. They just don't know the true extent of it.
Ironically, the negative image many school officials fear they will
receive by admitting and tackling school crime and discipline problems
head-on is actually created by their downplaying and denying of crime,
and in turn creating a fear of the unknown within parents.
Parents also should be notified of their right to transfer their
children under the law. If my child is trapped in an unsafe situation
I, as a parent, should easily be made aware of my options to remove my
child from an unsafe situation. How we define ``unsafe'' is a tough
issue, i.e., the quandary we face with ``persistently dangerous
schools,'' but if the law is such that a transfer option exists,
parents should not be kept in the dark about their options to transfer,
in my opinion.
no. 5 background
Mr. Trump, in your testimony you raise concern about schools and
school buses as potential terrorist targets. In fact, less than one
month ago the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued an
advisory to local law enforcement about foreign nationals with
extremist associations who have obtained licenses to drive buses and
who have purchased school buses. The terrorist siege of a school and
subsequent murder of hundreds of children in Beslan, Russia, in 2004 is
still fresh in our minds.
QUESTION: From your professional perspective, what would be the
potential impact of a terrorist threat or attack against our schools?
What needs to be done to better prepare our nation's schools against a
potential terrorist-related attack?
RESPONSE: Most elected and administrative officials, from inside
the Beltway down to our local schoolhouses, are terrified (in my
opinion) of openly discussing the potential for schools and school
buses to be targets of terrorism. Simply put, they are afraid of
creating fear and panic among parents, so this whole issue has been
swept under the rug and out of public discourse.
As a nation, we acknowledge the terrorist threat against our
airports. We acknowledge the potential terror threat against our
government office buildings. We acknowledge the potential for a
terrorist threat against monuments, bridges, military facilities,
financial institutions, retail malls, and about every other place--
except our K-12 schools. When it comes time to discuss schools,
``downplay, deny, deflect, and defend'' seems to become the mantra over
our homeland security philosophy for elsewhere in society of openly
discussing the threat and better preparing.
Fear is reduced by education, communication, and preparation--not
Ostrich syndrome or government spin to downplay the problem.
And no only are we not candidly having this conversation within our
governments, with our parents, and within the education community to
the extent which we should be doing, but our resources for better
preparing for this potential threat have actually been cut. As noted in
my April 23, 2007, hearing testimony, the funding for the Education
Department's Emergency Response and Crisis Management (ERCM), now
Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) grant, has been
cut almost 40% since 2003, from a pithy $39 million in 2003 to $24
million in 2006 and a quoted $24 million again now in 2007.
A terrorist attack upon our nation's schools would have an
emotionally and financially crippling impact on this country. If the
``business'' of education is shut down like the business of the
airlines was shut down for weeks after 9/11, our economy would suffer a
severe blow, not to mention the shockwave impact elsewhere in other
businesses from parents who have to stay home from their jobs to take
care of their children who they would not be sending to school. And of
course, emotionally parents would be shocked and paralyzed by a
terrorist attack upon their children's schools.
In short, we need to have our nation's leaders acknowledge the
threat of terrorism that could potentially face our schools and school
buses. It needs to be openly discussed in a balanced, calm, rational,
and contextual manner. And the federal resources for preventing and
preparing our schools for such emergencies certainly need to be
restored and expanded, not cut as has been repeatedly done in recent
years.
no. 6 background
Mr. Trump, you note in your testimony, and have even included an
exhibit with a chart from an Education Department official's
presentation, that the Department's Emergency Response and Crisis
Management (ERCM) program (renamed this year as the Readiness and
Emergency Management (REMS) for Schools program) funding has been cut
almost 40% from 2003 to 2006. We also know that when NCLB passed in
2001, it authorized $650 million for FY2002 for the state grants, but
that since then actual appropriations have been much less and that the
President proposed zeroing out the state grants in his FY2007 budget.
Your testimony raises the need for better prevention and preparedness
for school shootings and other violence. You also stress the need to
have more focused attention and preparedness for potential acts of
terrorism against our schools and school buses, an area you believe has
been given inadequate attention.
QUESTION: How do the dramatic funding cuts for the ERCM and, Safe
and Drug Free School program, impact local school violence preparedness
and preparedness for emergencies? How are these grant programs used by
schools and what is their value to school administrators?
RESPONSE: It makes no sense to me, my fellow school safety
professionals, our educators, our public safety officials, and anyone
else I talk with across the country that at a time when our federal
government has put additional resources into protecting airports,
bridges, monuments, and even the very hallways of government offices in
which our Congressional hearings on this matter are held , that funding
for protecting the hallways in which we send our kids and teachers each
day has been repeatedly cut.
It is critically important for the House Education and Labor
Committee to understand that the state grant program of Safe and Drug
Free Schools is a totally separate and distinct line item from the
Emergency Response and Crisis Management (ERCM, now Readiness and
Emergency Management for Schools, REMS grant) line item under the
national programs of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. In other
words, restoring funding for the state grant component of the Safe and
Drug Free Schools overall program would not automatically restore the
funding for the ERCM/REMS grant since ERCM/REMS is considered a
national program line item program under the Office of Safe and Drug
Free Schools.
Regarding the state grant program component of the Safe and Drug
Free Schools Program, while critics have said that the amount of
dollars going to local school districts is too small to be effective,
my experience of over 25-years in the school safety field shows just
the opposite. Have there been cases of misuse and abuse? Absolutely.
But should we throw out the baby with the bath water? Absolutely not!
It is often said that the ``average'' school district will receive
about $10,000 in state grant program funding from Safe and Drug Free
Schools. Can this make a difference in local schools? While critics say
``no,'' they are just plain wrong. Many schools have stretched a little
money a long way to support violence prevention curriculum, staff
awareness and training to recognize early warning signs of violence and
assess threats, simple security needs, and many other initiatives to
make schools safer.
Additionally, the proposal to redirect this state grant component
money of the Safe and Drug Free School Program from local districts to
state education agencies, as is reportedly being proposed for the FY08
budget, is illogical and counterproductive. The proposed $99 million,
to be distributed among all states and DC, would likely see the pithy
$2 million or less per state be siphoned off largely for state
administrative costs, a costly conference or two (that the majority of
school districts in the states would not even send representatives),
and other minimally effective state programs. The vast majority of
local schools would lose the already little, but important, amount of
money they have been receiving to do important things on the frontlines
in their local schools and communities. In short, this proposal, in my
professional opinion, is ludicrous.
The ERCM/REMS school emergency planning grants have been
exceptionally helpful to schools. The model includes elements focused
on prevention, mitigation, preparedness, and response. Schools must
have activities in their proposals to address all of these components,
but unlike many other federal and state grants, they can tailor the
emphasis on one or more of these categories to meet the current needs
and planning levels unique to their school districts.
Some districts may be stronger in prevention and less organized and
ready for preparedness and response. Others may be just the opposite.
ERCM/REMS grants allows school officials to support their strengths
while building upon their weaknesses with programming and resources in
this one-stop grant.
Recipients of this grant have also told me that their receipt of
the grant has also served to help push school emergency planning higher
on the agenda of upper level school administrators and boards who are
so busy with meeting the educational standards resulting from No Child
Left Behind that school safety and emergency planning has
unintentionally been pushed to the back burner in their districts. The
ERMC/REMS grant requires schools to have firm commitment and
participation by the critical community organizations, ranging from
public safety agencies (police, fire, emergency medical services,
emergency management agencies, etc.) to community partners (mental
health, public health, etc.), in their schools' emergency planning
process. The grant encourages, and actually gently forces, these
relationships to be built prior to an actual crisis.
The ERCM/REMS grant helps schools get dusty crisis plans off the
school office shelves and updated, tested and exercised, and staff
trained, on school emergency preparedness. The grant takes a
comprehensive and balanced approach, yet is flexible to meet the needs
and gaps unique to each local school district applicant. In my 25-years
of school experience, it is the most balanced and comprehensive school
safety grant program I have ever encountered, and one in which I have
seen school districts consistently do meaningful, practical, cost-
effective, and useful things.
As noted in my full written testimony, the number of applications
for the ERCM grant were well over 550 the first year it was available
(FY03). However, the Department of Education, for reasons that baffle
many of us who have looked at this issue, started issuing the request
for proposals for this program extremely close to the end of each
school year, such as in the May through July period. School officials
are overwhelmed with year-end testing, graduations, close of the school
year, summer vacations, etc., and their public safety and community
partners are often hard to locate due to late spring and summer
vacations, so many have been unable to apply that I truly believe would
pursue this grant program if proposals were opened at a more reasonable
and school-friendly time of the year, such as between October and
February, versus ED's recent practice of May through July time period.
I encourage the House Education and Labor Committee to actively and
in united, bipartisan fashion:
1. Restore cuts in funding in recent years to bring the state grant
program of the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program back to its original
level;
2. Restore cuts in funding for the national program, under the
Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, now known as the Readiness and
Emergency Management (REMS) grant, formerly Emergency Response and
Crisis Management (ERCM), back to its original FY03 funding level of
over $39 million, and expand funding for this project no less than five
times that original amount, to better prepare our nation's schools for
preventing, preparing for, and responding to emergencies of all types
(natural disasters to school shootings to terrorist attacks).
and to make sure that funding for both of these separate and
distinct programs are included in the reauthorization of No Child Left
Behind in this Congressional session.
no. 7 background
Mr. Trump, your testimony addresses threats to safety coming from
within our schools such as school shootings, weapons offenses, and
other serious disciplinary offenses. You talk at length about schools
and school buses as potential targets for terrorist, a threat from
outside of the school. We also know that in the Fall of 2006, an adult,
non-student stranger took hostages in a Colorado school, killing one
young girl and himself, which was followed a few days later by an adult
stranger who killed the children in an Amish school in rural
Pennsylvania.
QUESTION: Should we place our emphasis for safe school policy and
funding on the threats from within our schools or the threats from
outside our schools? Has our funding and programmatic focus been
balanced on both internal and external threats, and prevention and
preparedness?
RESPONSE: Schools must take an ``all hazards'' approach to
considering, and preparing for, threats to school safety. Threats to
school safety come from both within and outside of the school, not
``either--or''. Potential threats may include weather and natural
disasters, HAZMAT spills on roadways or railroads adjacent to schools,
or utility failures. Potential threats of crime and violence range from
non-custodial parent abductions at elementary schools to school
shootings and even acts of domestic or foreign terrorism. Schools must
be prepared for preventing and managing all of these threats, both
internal and external.
Historically, federal funding has tended to come in the form of
grants that are narrowly focused on one or a few issues (gangs,
suicide, drug prevention, mental health, etc.) rather than offering a
one-stop, comprehensive grant that requires schools to address all
components from prevention to preparedness and response, with an
emphasis on those components where they need more help and less
emphasis on those for which they are already fairly well prepared. The
Emergency Response and Crisis Management (ERCM), now Readiness and
Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) grant, is one of the few, if
not the only, federal school safety grant that is so comprehensive and
balanced within one grant itself; thus the reason I believe that
Congress needs to fully restore and significantly expand funding for
this program.
no. 8 background
Gangs are a growing concern in my district. Gang violence has also
been identified as a concern in other communities throughout the
nation. Your biographical information indicates that you created and
supervised a Youth Gang Unit in the Cleveland City School District back
in the 1990s which reduced school gang crimes and serious incidents
over 39% in three years. It also indicates that you served as assistant
director of a DOJ-funded anti-gang project, one of four model projects
in the nation at that time, for three southwest Cleveland suburbs.
QUESTION: Mr. Trump, based on your experience in working with gangs
and your current role as a school safety consultant nationwide, are you
seeing any recent trends in gang activities around the nation? How does
an increase in gang activity in our communities impact safety in our
schools? What can we do to better prevent and respond to gang violence
in our communities and schools?
RESPONSE: Gang violence tends to be cyclical; that is, we tend to
see it rise and fall over time in a given decade, with variances
community-to-community based upon the uniqueness of each community and
history of gangs in that community.
We are, however, unquestionably seeing an increase in gang activity
in many communities across the nation in the past three years or so.
Department of Justice efforts have acknowledged and responded to the
rise in gangs in a number of acknowledgements in the past year or two,
in particular. Media stories of gang influences and activities in
communities and in schools across the nation have also been steadily
increasing, in my observations, in the past couple years.
The biggest obstacle for schools, and communities for that matter,
is their tendency to deny gangs. There is a good deal of academic
research, and whole lot of practical experience, in the gang prevention
and enforcement field to support this observation. Schools, police,
government agencies, social services, and communities themselves must
acknowledge gangs early on when they surface in a community, or the
official denial will help fuel the growth of gangs and gang violence.
Gang violence in schools and elsewhere is different from non-gang
violence in several ways:
1. Gang violence typically involves a larger number of individuals;
2. Gang-related violence tends to be more retaliatory and escalates
much more quickly than non-gang violence; and
3. Gang activity is usually more violent in nature and often
involves a greater use of weapons.
School and public safety officials must look at gang activity
differently and not as one-on-one, isolated incidents. Otherwise, the
problem can escalate so quickly that a school lunchroom fight between
rival gang members will escalate into a potential drive-by shooting
just hours later at school dismissal.
School and community responses require a balanced approach of
prevention, intervention, and enforcement strategies. Schools must work
very closely with law enforcement to share information on gang activity
since what happens in the community spills over into the schools and
vice versa. Communication and coordination among schools, police,
probation, parole, social services, mental health, courts, and
community re-entry for ex-offenders is critical to make sure our
``systems'' communicate and function in as organized, or hopefully more
organized, manner than the gangs themselves.
Practical steps schools can take include:
1. Communicate to staff, students, and parents that schools are
neutral grounds and that gang, drug, and weapon activities will receive
priority response
2. Apply discipline in a timely, firm, fair, and consistent manner
3. Institute student anti-gang education and prevention programs
4. Establish a mechanism for student conflict mediation
5. Train school personnel and parents in gang identification,
intervention, and prevention techniques
6. Obtain input from youth on violence-related concerns and
prevention strategies
7. Establish cooperative relationships and communication networks
with parents, law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies,
social services, and other community members. Set up mechanisms and
structures to promote information-sharing and coordination among
agencies addressing youth, gangs, and related public safety efforts.
Gangs are a community problem, but schools are a part of that
community and cannot operate in isolation while hoping that the gang
members will drop their gang alliances and activities once they cross
the schoolhouse door.
Congress can help in providing resources from a law enforcement
perspective, as is appropriate and necessary, and can be found in a
number of Department of Justice programs. But the House Education and
Labor Committee can also help by looking at school-based gang
prevention, intervention, and enforcement program funding to help
schools develop specific programs and strategies to prevent and manage
gang activities on campus. Justice Department resources typically go to
law enforcement and other public safety agencies, yet K-12 schools need
gang-specific program funding to address prevention, security, and
preparedness issues related to gang violence in our schools
______
[The statement of the Delaware Statewide Academic Growth
Assessment Pilot follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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Mr. Kildee. And again, thanks to you, and without
objection, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]