[Senate Hearing 111-885]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 111-885
ESEA REAUTHORIZATION: THE IMPORTANCE OF A WORLD-CLASS K-12 EDUCATION
FOR OUR ECONOMIC SUCCESS
=======================================================================
HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT (ESEA)
REAUTHORIZATION, FOCUSING ON K-12 EDUCATION FOR ECONOMIC SUCCESS
__________
MARCH 9, 2010
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
PATTY MURRAY, Washington RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
JACK REED, Rhode Island JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina TOM COBURN, M.D., Oklahoma
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado
Daniel Smith, Staff Director
Pamela Smith, Deputy Staff Director
Frank Macchiarola, Republican Staff Director and Chief Counsel
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
STATEMENTS
TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010
Page
Harkin, Hon. Tom, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, opening statement......................... 1
Enzi, Hon. Michael B., a U.S. Senator from the State of Wyoming,
opening statement.............................................. 3
Schleicher, Andreas, Head of Indicators and Analysis Division,
Education Directorate, Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development, Paris, France................................. 4
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Roekel, Dennis Van, President, National Education Association,
Washington, DC................................................. 15
Prepared statement........................................... 16
Butt, Charles, Chairman and CEO, H-E-B, San Antonia, TX.......... 33
Prepared statement........................................... 35
Castellani, John, President, Business Roundtable, Washington, DC. 36
Prepared statement........................................... 37
Dodd, Hon. Christopher J., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Connecticut.................................................... 46
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, a U.S. Senator from the State of Tennessee 49
Murray, Hon. Patty, a U.S. Senator from the State of Washington.. 51
Reed, Hon. Jack, a U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode Island... 53
Sanders, Hon. Bernard, a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont.. 54
Merkley, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator from the State of Oregon...... 58
Franken, Hon. Al, a U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota..... 60
Bennet, Hon. Michael F., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Colorado....................................................... 61
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Senator Brown................................................ 67
Senator Casey................................................ 68
Response by Andreas Schleicher to questions of:..............
Senator Mikulski......................................... 69
Senator Casey............................................ 69
Response by Dennis Van Roekel to questions of Senator Casey.. 70
Response to questions of Senator Casey by Charles Butt....... 74
Response by John Castellani to questions of:.................
Senator Dodd............................................. 75
Senator Casey............................................ 76
(iii)
ESEA REAUTHORIZATION: THE IMPORTANCE OF A WORLD-CLASS K-12 EDUCATION
FOR OUR ECONOMIC SUCCESS
----------
TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to the notice, at 3:04 p.m., in
Room SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Tom Harkin,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Harkin, Dodd, Murray, Reed, Sanders,
Merkley, Franken, Bennet, Enzi, and Alexander.
Opening Statement of Senator Harkin
The Chairman. The Senate Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions will come to order.
I would like to thank all of you for being here today for
the first in a series of hearings focusing on reauthorizing of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Again, I apologize
for the time delays, but we had votes on the floor of the
Senate that held us up.
Testimony from educators and experts today and in
subsequent hearings will guide us as we undertake the process
to reshape this bill. Now, we have learned a lot since No Child
Left Behind was passed 9 years ago, and I look forward to
working with my colleagues here to protect the goals of the
bill while fixing the things that are not working.
I appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with our
Ranking Member, Senator Enzi, on this issue. His knowledge and
commitment on education issues make him a very valuable partner
in this endeavor. We have a lot of expertise, as a matter of
fact, on this committee, including one former Secretary of
Education on this committee.
Today's hearing on the economic importance of having a
world-class K-12 education system should remind us of the
critical importance of this reauthorization. In the coming
weeks, we will hold additional hearings to explore specific
topics related to ESEA, but today I think it is important for
all of us to remember what is really at stake as we kick off
this process: the competitiveness of our children and
grandchildren in the global marketplace and the future well-
being of our country.
Well-educated Americans are the single most important
factor in maintaining our productivity and global leadership,
and in preparing our children to contribute to their
communities and our Nation at their full potential. It is
projected that by 2014, right around the corner, 75 percent of
new jobs will require some post-secondary education. Many are
questioning whether the United States is falling behind
relative to the progress of other countries.
Well, U.S.-college completion rates are flat. Twenty years
ago, the United States was first in the world in post-secondary
attainment. Our Nation has now fallen to 12th.
In recognition of this, President Obama has set an
ambitious goal for Americans to reclaim the world's highest
rate of college attainment by 2020. And the only way that we
can meet the President's goal is to ensure that our children
are leaving high school with the tools they need to be
successful in college and beyond.
The changing global economy in the information age is
putting new demands on the workforce. Businesses are putting a
premium on workers who can think critically and problem solve,
skills that are developed and honed during a student's
formative years. Moreover, new technology makes the physical
location of workers less important, meaning American workers
are being forced to compete for jobs with workers in other
countries more than ever before.
Despite this challenge, American students are falling
behind their international counterparts. Recent studies rank
American 15-year-olds 24th in the world in terms of math
achievement. As a consequence, since 1975, we have fallen from
3rd to 15th place in the world in turning out scientists and
engineers, careers that are ever more important in today's
economy.
However, our challenges extend beyond the critical fields
of math and science. Forty years ago, the United States had one
of the best levels of high school attainment. Today we rank
19th in the world in high school graduation rates.
Until recently, the education of all students was seen more
as a civil rights or moral imperative than as an economic
issue, and quite frankly, that still is an issue. It is a moral
imperative, and I believe it is also a civil rights imperative,
but it is also an economic issue. Recent studies show that the
main reason we are falling behind other countries is because of
the achievement gap, or the difference in academic achievement
between minority and disadvantaged students and their White or
affluent counterparts.
At the same time, U.S. demographics are shifting. The
Census Bureau says that by mid-century over 60 percent of
school children will be minorities. A study by the Alliance for
Excellent Education found that if the Nation's high schools and
colleges were to raise the graduation rates of Hispanic,
African-American, and Native American students to the level of
their counterparts by 2020, the increase in personal income
across the Nation would add more than $310 billion annually to
the U.S. economy.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about these
and other issues. As we move forward with the ESEA
reauthorization process and as we immerse ourselves in the
details of this complex bill, we should keep the big picture in
mind.
And with that, I will turn it over to Senator Enzi for his
opening statement and then introduce our witnesses.
Statement of Senator Enzi
Senator Enzi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
you for starting this series of hearings on the reauthorization
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Beginning with a
hearing on the importance of world-class K-12 education for our
economic success is an appropriate way to initiate our review
of the issues surrounding reauthorization. It sets the stage as
we move forward to develop legislation that builds upon what we
have learned from No Child Left Behind and fixes what is not
working.
I know that there are those who complain about No Child
Left Behind because it seems to focus on failure rather than
success. I also know that there are those who applaud it for
the positive changes it has created in the K-12 education
system. At a minimum, it has managed to change the way we look
at the achievement of our students, emphasized teacher quality
and parental involvement, and required accountability for
results.
One thing I know everyone agrees with, however, is that our
children deserve to receive the best education our country can
provide for them. Yet, too many of our students continue to be
ill-served by the schools they attend and either fall behind
or, worse yet, drop out of school. This is not good for their
future, nor is it good for our country's future.
Our economy depends on an educated and skilled workforce to
be successful in the global market. In the United States, we
face two major challenges for students entering the workforce.
First, a growing number of jobs require more than a high school
education. Second, over the past 30 years, one country after
another has surpassed us in the proportion of their entering
workforce that has at least a high school diploma.
Every day in our country, about 7,000 students drop out of
high school. Even for those students who do stay in school and
earn a high school diploma, there is no guarantee that they
have learned the basics needed to succeed in post-secondary
education and the workforce. In fact, nearly half of all
college students must take remedial courses after graduating
from high school before they can take college-level course
work. This lack of preparation means that our college students
spend more time and money in tuition just to catch up. It is
hard for them and it is hard for our country to get ahead if we
are playing catch-up.
Each year, more than 1 million students enter college for
the first time with the hope and expectation of earning a
bachelor's degree. Of those, fewer than 40 percent will
actually meet the goal within 4 years; barely 60 percent will
achieve it in 6 years. Among minority students, remedial course
participation rates are even higher and completion rates are
even lower.
There is no question that some education and training
beyond high school is a prerequisite for employment in jobs and
careers that support a middle-class way of life. Lifetime
earnings for individuals with a bachelor's degree are, on
average, almost twice as much as high school graduates.
Once first in the world, America now ranks 10th in the
proportion of young people with a college degree. Less than 40
percent of Americans hold an associate or bachelor's degree,
and substantial racial and income gaps persist. The projections
are that within a decade, 6 out of every 10 Americans must have
a degree or recognized credential to succeed in the workforce.
This being the case, we are facing a major deficit of skilled
workers which, in turn, threatens our ability to grow
economically. We used to have the best educated workforce in
the world, but that is no longer true.
That is why I am excited about beginning our work on the
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
ESEA. Funds provided through the act assist schools in meeting
the needs of our most disadvantaged students and providing them
with a quality education. The skills students learn in the
earliest grades are the building blocks to their success in
high school, college, and in the workforce. Our country cannot
continue to be competitive in the global economy if we do not
have an educated workforce.
I want to welcome and thank all the witnesses who are here
today, and I look forward to hearing from you. Again, I thank
you for getting these hearings started.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Enzi. I look
forward to getting this reauthorization started and done.
Well, we have a good group of witnesses to kick off our
series of hearings. I thank them for being here. I will say
that your statements will be made a part of the record in their
entirety and ask each of you to sum up your testimony in order.
We will start first on my left, your right.
First is Andreas Schleicher, who is the Head of the
Indicators and Analysis Division, Directorate for Education, in
the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the
OECD. Mr. Schleicher is responsible for developing and
analyzing systems that allow the OECD to compare the relative
achievements of students internationally.
Next, we have Mr. Dennis Van Roekel, the President of the
National Education Association. Mr. Van Roekel is a 23-year
teaching veteran of high school math and a longtime activist
and, of course, advocate for our children and public education.
Then we will next hear from Charles Butt, the CEO of H-E-B
Supermarket based in San Antonio, TX. Mr. Butt's privately held
company has 315 stores, $15 billion in sales, employs 70,000
individuals, and donates 5 percent of pretax earnings to public
and charitable causes.
Finally, John Castellani will wrap up our testimony. Mr.
Castellani is President of Business Roundtable, an association
of chief executive officers of leading U.S. corporations with a
combined workforce of nearly 10 million employees and $5
trillion in annual revenues.
Again, thank you all very much for being here, and Mr.
Schleicher, welcome, and as I said, if you could sum up your
testimony in 5 or 7 minutes, we would sure appreciate it.
STATEMENT OF ANDREAS SCHLEICHER, HEAD OF INDICATORS AND
ANALYSIS DIVISION, EDUCATION DIRECTORATE, ORGANISATION FOR
ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT, PARIS, FRANCE
Mr. Schleicher. Thank you very much.
The OECD are now putting a lot more emphasis on education
because we are seeing a growing impact of skills on the
economic success of individuals and nations. We are also seeing
that the increase in knowledge workers OECD countries has not
led to a decrease in the pay, which is what happened to low-
skilled workers. And finally, the yardstick for educational
success is no longer simply improvement by national standards,
but the best performing systems globally.
If you look at international systems comparisons, they show
you what is possible. For example, the International PISA test
showed Canadian 15-year-olds to be well over a school year
ahead of 15-year-olds in the United States. They also show
socially disadvantaged Canadians to be much less at risk of
poor performance than is the case in the United States, and
even some countries as diverse as the United States come out
with a smaller achievement gap. There is a lot to be learned.
International comparisons also give you an idea of the pace
of progress that can be achieved. People often dismiss the
stunning successes of countries like Singapore or Korea because
they are hard to replicate in a western context. But think
about Poland. Poland raised the literacy skills of its 15-year-
olds by the equivalent of almost a school year in less than a
decade. Poland also succeeded in cutting the variability of
school performance in half over that period.
If the United States would do what Poland has done and
achieve a similar level of increase in performance, that could
translate into the longer-term economic value of over $40
trillion in today's GDP. If the United States would close its
large achievement gap by ensuring that the quarter of students
that, according to our accounts now, do very poorly, reach at
least the PISA baseline level 2, you would talk about $70
trillion in additional national income.
Let me add that we have very recent evidence showing that
those who do not reach this baseline level of proficiency
actually face very serious risks for the transition to work and
also for subsequent educational opportunities. The education
gap just widens as people get older.
A couple of points worth making about those systems doing
well. Many of them have developed educational standards to
establish rigorous, focused, and coherent content across the
entire system, across all levels. They have often coupled this
with actually devolving more responsibility to the front line,
encouraging schools to take much more responsibility and
responsiveness to local needs.
Of course, the United States has a decentralized system too
but, while many systems have decentralized the delivery of
educational service by actually keeping quite tight control of
the definition and management of outcomes, the United States is
quite unique in having decentralized both the delivery of
service and the control over outcomes.
Of course, the common core standards currently being
developed might change all of that and address one of the big
issues of widely discrepant State standards and also different
cut scores, which mean that a student's success depends more
than anything on where they are located, which is quite
different from many other countries.
That is just one side of the coin. The harder part actually
is to create an environment for standards to translate into
better instructions. Many countries have developed quite strong
support systems that help individual teachers to better
identify where the weaknesses are, seek to provide them as
evidence and advice on what best practices are, and finally
motivate them to make the necessary changes. That goes actually
quite well beyond material incentives.
Second, while performance data in the United States is
often used for punitive accountability purposes, other
countries tend to give greater weight to guide intervention,
reveal best practices, and identify shared problems in order to
encourage teachers in schools to develop a more productive
environment. They also seek to intervene in the most troubled
schools first rather than identifying too many schools as
needing an improvement, which you consider a drawback of the
current NCLB system by international standards.
Another drawback of the current NCLB system is sort of what
we call the ``single bar'' problem that leads to a lot of focus
on students nearing proficiency while not valuing achievement
growth through the system, and many countries address that
through accountability systems that involve progressive
learning targets that extends through the entire system, which
lay out the steps that learners follow as they advance.
The global trend here actually goes to what we call
multilayered, coherent assessment systems that extend from
classrooms to schools or local levels, regional levels,
national levels, and international levels that are part of
well-aligned instructional services and systems and provide
information that students, teachers, and administrators can
actually act on.
Third and finally, many of the high-performing systems
often do four things well. First of all, they have means to
attract the best graduates into the teaching profession,
realizing that the quality of the system cannot exceed the
quality of the teachers. You have some countries getting the
top 10 percent of graduates becoming teachers, and that is not
primarily about money and salaries. They develop those teachers
into effective instructors through, for example, coaching
classroom practices or moving teacher training much more to the
school and to the classroom, and they put in place incentives
and differentiated support systems to ensure that every child
is benefiting from that kind of instruction. And finally, they
build networks of schools that stimulate and spread in a way
you can share best practices.
Let me make one final point. Many of those policy drivers
that our analysis identify are actually not about money. In
fact, spending in the United States is actually quite high by
international standards in education. It is much more about
investing the resources where they can make most of the
difference, attracting the most talented teachers into the most
difficult schools. It is about those kinds of things. The
bottom line is that economic returns to improve learning
outcomes--I gave you some numbers--actually exceed by far any
conceivable cost of improvement.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schleicher follows:]
Prepared Statement of Andreas Schleicher
Summary
a growing impact of education for economic success
The relative importance of knowledge and skills for the economic
success of individuals and nations is rapidly increasing. In addition,
in the global economy, the yardstick for educational success is no
longer merely improvement by national standards, but the best
performing education systems internationally. International comparisons
can drive educational improvement in several ways:
By showing what is possible in education, they can help
optimize policies but also to reflect on alternatives to existing
policies. For example, the international PISA assessments show Canadian
15-year-olds, on average, to be well over a school year ahead of 15-
year-olds in the United States. They also show socio-economically
disadvantaged Canadians much less at risk of poor educational
performance than is the case in the United States.
They can assist with gauging the pace of educational
progress and help reviewing the reality of educational delivery at the
frontline. For example, Poland raised the reading performance of its
15-year-olds by the equivalent of almost a school year in less than a
decade. It also succeeded in halving performance differences between
schools. The long-term economic value of a similar improvement in
outcomes for the United States could be equivalent to over $40 trillion
in additional national income. If the United States were to catch up
with the best performing education system, Finland, the U.S. economy
could gain $103 trillion. The international and national achievement
gaps are imposing on the U.S. economy an invisible yet recurring
economic loss that is greater than the output shortfall in the current
economic crisis.
They can help set policy targets in terms of measurable
goals achieved by other systems and help to identify policy levers and
to establish trajectories for reform.
Education systems in the industrialized world have improved more
rapidly than the United States. Over the last decade, the United States
has fallen from second place to 14th in terms of its college graduation
rate. While primary-grade school children tend to do well by
international standards, the latest PISA assessments show U.S. students
performing below the OECD average. The United States also has a
comparatively large achievement gap, which signals serious risks for
students in their initial transition from education to work and of
failing to benefit from further education and learning opportunities in
their later life.
education standards
National educational standards have helped many of the top
performing education systems in important ways to establish rigorous,
focused and coherent content at all grade levels; reduce overlap in
curricula across grades; reduce variation in implemented curricula
across classrooms; and facilitate co-ordination of various policy
drivers ranging from curricula to teacher training. Countries have
often coupled the establishment of standards with devolving
responsibility to the frontline, encouraging responsiveness to local
needs. The United States is, of course, a decentralized education
system too, but while many systems have decentralized decisions
concerning the delivery of educational services while keeping tight
control over the definition of outcomes, the design of curricula,
standards and testing, the United States is different in that it has
decentralized both inputs and control over outcomes. Moreover, while
the United States has devolved responsibilities to local authorities,
schools themselves have less discretion in decisionmaking than is the
case in many OECD countries.
The establishment of ``common core standards'' in the United States
is an important step that could address the current problem of widely
discrepant State standards and ``cut'' scores that have led to non-
comparable results and often mean that a school's fate depends more
than anything else on what State it is located. Do you want to focus
this on students' fates, too?
accountability systems in other countries
While performance data in the United States are largely used for
punitive accountability purposes, other countries tend to give greater
weight to guide intervention, reveal best practices and identify shared
problems in order to encourage teachers and schools to develop more
supportive and productive learning environments. They also seek to
intervene in the most troubled schools, rather than identifying too
many schools as needing improvement--a drawback of the current NCLB
system.
Another major drawback of the current NCLB system, the ``single
bar'' problem that leads to undue focus on students nearing proficiency
rather than valuing achievement growth, is addressed in many countries
through assessment and accountability systems that comprise progressive
learning targets which delineate pathways characterising the steps that
learners typically follow as they become more proficient and establish
the breadth and depth of the learner's understanding of the domain at a
particular level of advancement. The global trend here is leading
towards multi-layered, coherent assessment systems from classrooms to
schools to regional to national to international levels that: support
improvement of learning at all levels of the system; are increasingly
performance-based; add value for teaching and learning by providing
information that can be acted on by students, teachers, and
administrators; and are part of a comprehensive and well-aligned
instructional learning system that includes syllabi, associated
instructional materials, matching exams, professional scoring and
teacher training.
an effective teaching force
Third, many high performing systems share a commitment to
professionalized teaching. To achieve this, they often do four things
well: First, they attract the best graduates to become teachers,
realizing that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the
quality of its teachers. For example, countries like Finland or Korea
recruit their teachers from the top 10 percent graduates. Second, they
develop these teachers into effective instructors, through, for
example, coaching classroom practice, moving teacher training to the
classroom, developing strong school leaders and enabling teachers to
share their knowledge and spread innovation. Third, they put in place
incentives and differentiated support systems to ensure that every
child is able to benefit from excellent instruction. Fourth, they place
emphasis on building various ways in which networks of schools
stimulate and spread innovation as well as collaborate to provide
curriculum diversity, extended services and professional support and
foster strong approaches to leadership that help to reduce between-
school variation through system-wide networking and to build lateral
accountability.
______
introduction
The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)
is placing increasing emphasis on education and training, as the
relative importance of knowledge and skills for the success of advanced
economies is rapidly increasing. In addition, in the global economy,
the yardstick for educational success is no longer merely improvement
by national standards, but the best performing education systems
internationally. International comparisons have thus become an
important tool to assess and drive educational change:
By showing what is possible in education, they can help to
optimise policies but also to reflect on more fundamental alternatives
to existing policies, which become apparent when these are contrasted
with policies and practices pursued by other countries. For example,
the OECD PISA assessments\1\ show Canadian 15-year-olds, on average, to
be well over a school year ahead of 15-year-olds in the United States
in key subjects such as mathematics or science. They also show socio-
economically disadvantaged Canadians much less at risk of poor
educational performance than is the case in the United States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ PISA stands for the OECD Program for International Student
Assessment, a test of student knowledge and skills that are
administered by the OECD on behalf of participating governments on a 3-
yearly basis in now 70 countries.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
They can help set policy targets in terms of measurable
goals achieved by other systems and help to identify policy levers and
to establish trajectories for reform. Just on February 24, for example,
the United Kingdom's Prime Minister announced the goal to raise student
performance in the United Kingdom to Rank 3 on the international PISA
mathematics assessment and Rank 6 on the PISA science assessment,
together with a range of policies to achieve these targets.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The announcement was made on February 24, 2010, see http://
www.number10.gov.uk/Page22580.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
They can assist with gauging the pace of educational
progress and reviewing the reality of educational delivery at the
frontline. For example, Poland raised the performance of its 15-year-
olds in PISA reading by the equivalent of almost a school year in less
than a decade. It also succeeded in halving performance differences
between schools. The long-term economic value of a similar improvement
in student performance for the United States could be equivalent to
over $40 trillion in additional national income.
Last but not least, they can support the political economy
of educational reform, which is a major issue in education where any
pay-off to reform almost inevitably accrues to successive governments
if not generations.
This paper (1) provides an analysis of where the United States
stands, compared with the principal industrialized countries
internationally, (2) quantifies the economic value of improvements in
learning outcomes, and (3) identifies some policy levers for
educational improvement that emerge from international comparisons and
transcend economic and cultural settings.
the united states is losing its educational advantage
Among the 30 OECD countries with the largest expansion of college
education over the last decades, most still see rising earnings
differentials for college graduates, suggesting that an increase in
knowledge workers does not necessarily lead to a decrease in their pay
as is the case for low-skilled workers (OECD, 2008). The other player
in the globalization process is technological development, but this too
depends on education, not just because tomorrow's knowledge workers and
innovators require high levels of education, but also because a highly
educated workforce is a pre-requisite for adopting and absorbing new
technologies and increasing productivity. Together, skills and
technology have flattened the world such that all work that can be
digitized, automated and outsourced can now be done by the most
effective and competitive individuals, enterprises or countries,
wherever they are.
No country has been able to capitalize on the opportunities this
``flat world'' provides more than the United States, which can draw on
the most highly educated labor force among the principal industrialized
nations, at least when measured in terms of formal qualifications.
However, this advantage is largely a result of the ``first-mover
advantage'' which the United States gained after Word War II by
massively increasing enrollments. That advantage is now eroding quickly
as more and more countries reach and surpass United States
qualification levels. In fact, many countries are now close to ensuring
that virtually all young adults leave schools with at least a high
school degree (OECD average 82 percent), which the OECD indicators
highlight as the baseline qualification for reasonable earnings and
employment prospects. Over time, this will translate into better
workforce qualifications in these countries. In contrast, the United
States (78 percent) stood still on this measure and among OECD
countries only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey, and Mexico now have lower
high school completion rates than the United States. Even when
including qualifications such as the GED (Graduate Equivalent Degree)
that people can acquire later in life to make up for unsuccessful
school completion, the United States has slipped from rank 1 among OECD
countries for adults born in the 1940s to rank 11 among those born in
the 1970s. Again, that is not because completion rates in the United
States declined, but because they have risen so much faster in many
other countries. Two generations ago, South Korea had the economic
output of Afghanistan today and was at rank 24 in terms of educational
output among today's OECD countries. Today it is the top performer in
terms of the proportion of successful school leavers, with 96 percent
of an age cohort obtaining a high school degree. Similar trends are
visible in college education, where the United States slipped between
1995 and 2005 from rank 2 to rank 14, not because U.S. college
graduation rates declined, but because they rose so much faster in many
OECD countries. Graduate output is particularly low in science, where
the number of people with a college degree per 100,000 employed 25- to
34-year-olds was 1,081 compared with 1,376 on average across OECD
countries and more than 2,000 in Australia, Finland, Korea and Poland
(OECD, 2009a). Whether the United States can continue to compensate for
this, at least in part, through utilizing foreign science graduates
will depend on the development of labor-markets in other countries. The
developments will be amplified over the next decades as countries like
China or India are raising their educational output at an ever-
increasing pace.
quality of educational outcomes in the united states
Quantity matters, but quality is even more important. The OECD
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) extends the picture
that emerges from comparing national degrees with the most
comprehensive international assessment of student knowledge and skills.
PISA represents a commitment by 70 countries that together make up
close to 90 percent of the world economy to monitor the outcomes of
education systems in terms of student achievement on a regular basis,
within an internationally agreed framework, and in innovative ways that
reflect judgments about the skills that are relevant to adult life.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ PISA seeks to assess not merely whether students can reproduce
what they have learned in science, mathematics, and reading--which is
easy to teach and test--but also how well they can extrapolate from
what they have learned and apply their knowledge in novel situations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the 2006 PISA science assessment of 15-year-olds, the United
States ranked 21st among the 30 OECD countries \4\ (OECD, 2007).
Moreover, while the proportion of top-performers in the United States
was similar to the OECD average, the United States had a comparatively
large proportion of poor performers: 24.4 percent of U.S.-15-year-olds
did not reach Level 2, the baseline level of achievement on the PISA
scale at which students begin to demonstrate the science competencies
that will enable them to participate actively in life situations
related to science and technology.\5\ A longitudinal follow-up of
29,000 PISA students in Canada suggests that the absence of foundation
skills below the PISA Level 2 signals serious risks for students in
their initial transition from education to work and of failing to
benefit from further education and learning opportunities in their
later life. For example, the odds of Canadian students who had reached
PISA Level 5 in reading at age 15 to achieve a successful transition to
post-secondary education by age 19 were 16 times higher than for those
who had not achieved the baseline Level 2, even after adjustments for
socio-economic differences are made (OECD, 2010a).\6\ By age 21, the
odds were even 20 times higher, suggesting that the advantages of
success in high school are growing further as individuals get older.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ The confidence interval extends from the 18th to the 25th rank.
\5\ To reach Level 2 requires competencies such as identifying key
features of a scientific investigation, recalling single scientific
concepts and information relating to a situation, and using results of
a scientific experiment represented in a data table as they support a
personal decision. In contrast, students not reaching Level 2 often
confuse key features of an investigation, apply incorrect scientific
information, and mix personal beliefs with scientific facts in support
of a decision.
\6\ No such data are available for the United States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Students who did not surpass the most basic performance level on
PISA were not a random group. The results show that socio-economic
disadvantage has a particularly strong impact on student performance in
the United States. Indeed, 18 percent of the variation in student
performance in the United States is explained by students' socio-
economic background--this is significantly more than at the OECD
average level and contrasts, for example, with just 8 percent in Canada
or 7 percent in Japan. This is not simply explained by a socio-
economically more heterogeneous U.S. student population, but mainly by
an above-average impact of socio-economic differences on learning
outcomes. In other words, the United States is among the OECD countries
where two students of different socio-economic background show the
largest difference in learning outcomes. Other countries with similar
levels of disparities included only France, New Zealand, the Czech
Republic, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany. It would perhaps be
tempting to attribute the performance lag of U.S. students to the
challenges which socio-economic disparities and ongoing immigrant
inflows pose to the education system. However, while the integration of
students with an immigrant background poses significant challenges in
many countries, among the countries that took part in the latest PISA
assessment there are several with a larger immigrant intake than the
United States which, nevertheless, scored better.
the cost of the achievement gap
The international achievement gap is imposing on the U.S. economy
an invisible yet recurring economic loss that is greater than the
output shortfall in what has been called the worst economic crisis
since the Great Depression. Using economic modelling to relate
cognitive skills--as measured by PISA and other international
instruments--to economic growth shows that even small improvements in
the skills of a nation's labour force can have very large impacts on
the future well-being of countries. A recent study carried out by the
OECD in collaboration with the Hoover Institute at Stanford University
suggests that a modest goal of having the United States boost its
average PISA scores by 25 points over the next 20 years--which is less
than the most rapidly improving education system in the OECD, Poland,
achieved between 2000 and 2006 alone--could imply a gain of U.S.D 41
trillion for the U.S. economy over the lifetime of the generation born
in 2010 (as evaluated at the start of reform in terms of real present
value of future improvements in GDP). Bringing the United States up to
the average performance of Finland, the best performing education
system in PISA in the OECD area, could result in gains in the order of
U.S.D 103 trillion. Narrowing the achievement gap by bringing all
students to a level of minimal proficiency for the OECD (i.e. reaching
a PISA score of 400), could imply GDP increases for the United States
of U.S.D 72 trillion according to historical growth relationships
(OECD, 2010b). The predictive power of student performance at school on
subsequent successful education and labour-market pathways is also
demonstrated through longitudinal studies (OECD, 2010a). In either
case, the evidence shows that it is the quality of learning outcomes,
as demonstrated in student performance, not the length of schooling or
patterns of participation, which contribute most to economic outcomes.
The gains from improved learning outcomes, put in terms of current
GDP, far outstrip today's value of the short-run business-cycle
management. This is not to say that efforts should not be directed at
issues of economic recession, but it is to say that the long-run issues
should not be neglected.
some lessons from high achieving countries
Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from PISA is that
strong performance, and indeed improvement, is possible. Whether in
Asia (e.g., Japan and Korea), in Europe (e.g., Finland) or in North
America (Canada), many countries display strong overall performance
and, equally important, show that poor performance in school does not
automatically follow from a disadvantaged socio-economic background and
that the achievement gap can be significantly narrowed. Furthermore,
some countries show that success can become a consistent and
predictable educational outcome: In Finland, the country with the
strongest overall results in PISA, the performance variation between
schools amounts to only 5 percent of students' overall performance
variation, so that parents can rely on high and consistent performance
standards in whatever school they choose to enroll their children.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ For the United States, the corresponding figure is 29 percent,
the OECD average is 33.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Performance on international comparisons cannot simply be tied to
money, since only Luxembourg spends more per primary student than the
United States and only Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Norway spend more
per middle and high school student. The results for the United States
reflect rather a range of inefficiencies. That point is reinforced by
the fact that in international comparisons of primary grade school
children the United States does relatively well by international
standards which, given the country's wealth, is what would be expected.
The problem is that as they get older, children make less progress each
year than children in the best performing countries. The issue is
therefore not just poor kids in poor neighbour-
hoods, but about many kids in many neighbourhoods. It is noteworthy
that spending patterns in many of the world's successful education
systems are markedly different from the United States. These countries
invest the money where the challenges are greatest rather than making
resources contingent on the economic context of the local communities
in which schools are located, and they put in place incentives and
support systems that attract the most talented school teachers into the
most difficult classrooms. They have often reformed inherited,
traditional and bureaucratic systems of recruiting and training
teachers and leaders, of paying and rewarding them and of shaping their
incentives, both short-term and long-term. They often also devote a
higher share of spending to classroom education than is the case in the
United States and, different from the United States, often favor better
teachers over smaller class sizes (OECD, 2009a).
Looking beyond financial resources, PISA suggests that schools and
countries where students work in a climate characterized by high
performance expectations and the readiness to invest effort, good
teacher-student relations, and high teacher morale tend to achieve
better results. Interestingly, U.S.-15-year-olds usually rate
themselves comparatively highly in academic performance in PISA, even
if they did not do well comparatively. In part that may be due to
culture, but one interpretation is also that students are being
commended for work that would not be acceptable in high performing
education systems. Many countries have pursued a shift in public and
governmental concern away from the mere control over the resources and
content of education towards a focus on outcomes. This has driven
efforts to articulate the expectations that societies have in relation
to learning outcomes and to translate these expectations into
educational goals and standards. Educational standards have influenced
many of the top performing education systems in various ways, helping
them to establish rigorous, focused and coherent content at all grade
levels; reduce overlap in curricula across grades; reduce variation in
implemented curricula across classrooms; facilitate co-ordination of
various policy drivers ranging from curricula to teacher training; and
reduce inequity in curricula across socio-economic groups. The
establishment, by States, of ``common core standards'' in the United
States, which can be considered among the most innovative and evidence-
based approaches to standard-setting in the field, is an important step
in that direction that could address the current problem of widely
discrepant State standards and cut scores that have led to non-
comparable results and that often mean that a school's fate depends
more than anything else on what State it is located and, perhaps even
more importantly, that students across the United States are left on an
unequal footing as to how well they are prepared to compete in the U.S.
labor-
market.
Coupled with this trend have been efforts in countries to devolve
responsibility to the frontline, encouraging responsiveness to local
needs, and strengthening intelligent accountability (OECD, 2009a). The
United States is, of course, a decentralized education systems too, but
while many systems have decentralized decisions concerning the delivery
of educational services while keeping tight control over the definition
of outcomes, the design of curricula, standards and testing, the United
States is different in that it has decentralized both inputs and
control over outcomes. Moreover, while the United States has devolved
responsibilities to local authorities, schools themselves have less
discretion in decisionmaking than is the case in many OECD countries.
In this sense, the question for the United States is not just how many
charter schools it establishes but how to build the capacity for all
schools to assume charter-like autonomy, as happens in some of the best
performing education systems (OECD, 2007).
What further distinguishes the approaches to professional
accountability developed in Finland, the use of pupil performance data
and value-added analyses in England, or the approaches to school self-
evaluation in Denmark, is that these strike a different balance between
using accountability tools to maintain public confidence in education,
on the one hand, and to support remediation in the classroom aimed at
higher levels of student learning and achievement on the other. These
countries have gone beyond systems of test-based external
accountability towards building capacity and confidence for
professional accountability in ways that emphasize the importance of
formative assessment and the pivotal role of school self-evaluation,
the latter often in conjunction with school inspection systems that
systematically intervene with a focus on the most troubled schools
rather than dispersing efforts through identifying too many schools as
needing improvement which one could consider another drawback of the
current NCLB system. In some systems, strategic thinking and planning
takes place at every level of the system. Every school discusses what
the national standards might mean for them, and decisions are made at
the level of those most able to implement them in practice. Where
school performance is systematically assessed, the primary purpose is
often not to support contestability of public services or market-
mechanisms in the allocation of resources. Rather it is to provide
instruments to reveal best practices and identify shared problems in
order to encourage teachers and schools to develop more supportive and
productive learning environments.
Another major drawback of the current NCLB system, the ``single
bar'' problem that leads to undue focus on students nearing proficiency
rather than valuing achievement growth, is addressed in many countries
through assessment and accountability systems that incorporate
progressive learning targets which delineate pathways characterising
the steps that learners typically follow as they become more proficient
and establish the breadth and depth of the learner's understanding of
the domain at a particular level of advancement. One of the earliest
approaches in this direction, the ``key stages'' in England, for
example, provides a coherent system that allows measuring individual
student progress across grades and subjects, thus also avoiding the
problems associated with the ``multiple measures'' defining annual
yearly progress in NCLB that have tended to lead to an undue emphasis
on reading and mathematics.
The global trend is leading towards multi-layered, coherent
assessment systems from classrooms to schools to regional to national
to international levels that:
support improvement of learning at all levels of the
education system;
are increasingly performance-based and make students'
thinking visible;
add value for teaching and learning by providing
information that can be acted on by students, teachers, and
administrators;
and that are part of a comprehensive and well-aligned
instructional learning system that includes syllabi, associated
instructional materials, matching exams, professional scoring and
teacher training.
Drawing a clearer line between assessments, on the one hand, and
individual high-stakes examination systems helps countries to avoid
sacrificing validity gains for efficiency gains, which tends to be an
issue for the United States that is also mirrored in, by international
standards, an unusually high proportion of multiple choice items.
Second, in most of the countries that performed well in PISA, it is
the responsibility of schools and teachers to engage constructively
with the diversity of student interests, capacities, and socio-economic
contexts, without having the option of making students repeat the
school year, or transferring them to educational tracks or school types
with lower performance requirements. To achieve this, education systems
seek to establish bridges from prescribed forms of teaching, curriculum
and assessment towards an approach predicated on enabling every student
to reach their potential. Many high performing education systems have
developed elaborate support systems that, first of all, help individual
teachers to become aware of specific weaknesses in their own practices,
and that often means not just creating awareness of what they do but
changing the underlying mind set. They then seek to provide their
teachers with an understanding of specific best practices and, last but
not least, motivate them to make the necessary changes with instruments
that go well beyond material incentives. Of course, the United States
has some of the most innovative schools and teachers that have tailored
curriculum and teaching methods to meet the needs of children and young
people with great success for many years. However, what distinguishes
the education systems of, for example, Victoria in Australia, Alberta
in Canada, or Finland is the drive to make such practices systemic,
through the establishment of clear learning pathways through the
education system and fostering the motivation of students to become
independent and lifelong learners. Obviously such ``personalized
learning'' demands both curriculum entitlement and choice that delivers
a breadth of study and personal relevance. But the personalization in
these countries is in terms of flexible learning pathways through the
education system rather than individualized goals or institutional
tracking, which have often been shown to lower performance expectations
for students and tend to provide easy ways out for teachers and schools
to defer problems rather than solving them.
Third, many high performing systems share a commitment to
professionalized teaching, in ways that imply that teachers are on a
par with other professions in terms of diagnosis, the application of
evidence-based practices, and professional pride. To achieve this, they
often do four things well: First, they attract the best graduates to
become teachers, realizing that the quality of an education system
cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. For example, countries like
Finland or Korea recruit their teachers from the top 10 percent
graduates. Second, they develop these teachers into effective
instructors, through, for example, coaching classroom practice, moving
teacher training to the classroom, developing strong school leaders and
enabling teachers to share their knowledge and spread innovation.
Singaporean teachers, for example, get 100 hours of fully paid
professional development training each year. Third, they put in place
incentives and differentiated support systems to ensure that every
child is able to benefit from excellent instruction (McKinsey, 2007).
The image here is of teachers who use data to evaluate the learning
needs of their students, and are consistently expanding their
repertoire of pedagogic strategies to address the diversity in
students' interests and abilities. Such systems also often adopt
innovative approaches to the deployment of differentiated staffing
models. Examples include teacher selection processes as seen in
Finland, highly specified professional development programmes as with
the National Literacy Strategy in England, and teacher promotion based
on professional competence as in Canada or Sweden.
These efforts move away from traditional educational models that
often still operate like a heavy bureaucratic production chain, where
year after year new reform ideas are placed on top; where in the middle
layers unfinished and incoherent reforms pile up; and where at the
bottom, schools and teachers are confronted with incoherent regulation
and prescription that they cannot make sense of and for which they feel
no responsibility. High performing education systems tend to create a
``knowledge rich'' education system, in which teachers and school
principals act as partners and have the authority to act, the necessary
information to do so, and access to effective support systems to assist
them in implementing change. Of course, everywhere education is a
knowledge industry in the sense that it is concerned with the
transmission of knowledge, but a recent OECD study on teachers,
teaching and learning suggests that education is often still quite far
from becoming a knowledge industry in the sense that its own practices
are being transformed by knowledge about the efficacy of its own
practices (OECD, 2009b). In many other fields, people enter their
professional lives expecting their practice to be transformed by
research, but that is still rather rare in education. There is, of
course, a large body of research about learning but much of it is
unrelated to the kind of real-life learning that is the focus of formal
education. Central prescription of what teachers should do, which still
dominate today's schools, may not transform teachers' practices in the
way that professional engagement, in the search for evidence of what
makes a difference, can.
External accountability systems are an essential part of all this,
but so are lateral accountability systems. Among OECD countries, there
are countless tests and reforms that have resulted in giving schools
more money or taking money away from them, developing greater
prescription on school standards or less prescription, or making
classes larger or smaller, often without measurable effects. What
distinguishes top-performer Finland is that it places the emphasis on
building various ways in which networks of schools stimulate and spread
innovation as well as collaborate to provide curriculum diversity,
extended services and professional support. It fosters strong
approaches to leadership and a variety of system leadership roles that
help to reduce between-school variation through system-wide networking
and to build lateral accountability. It has moved from ``hit and miss''
policies to establishing universal high standards; from uniformity to
embracing diversity; from a focus on provision to a focus on outcomes;
from managing inputs and a bureaucratic approach to education towards
devolving responsibilities and enabling outcomes; and from talking
about equity to delivering equity. It is a system where schools no
longer receive prefabricated wisdom but take initiatives on the basis
of data and best practice.
conclusion
In one way, international educational benchmarks make disappointing
reading for the United States. But they also indicate a way forward.
Results from PISA show that strong performance is possible. Whether in
Asia (e.g., Japan and Korea), in Europe (e.g., Finland) or in North
America (Canada), many countries display strong overall performance
and, equally important, show that poor performance in school does not
automatically follow from a disadvantaged socio-economic background,
even if social background is an important challenge everywhere.
Furthermore, some countries show that success can become a consistent
and predictable educational outcome, with very little performance
variation across schools. Last but not least, Poland demonstrated that
it is possible to achieve performance gains equivalent to three-
quarters of a school year within less than a decade. This paper has
identified some of the policy levers that are prevalent in high
performing education systems.
The international achievement gap is imposing on the U.S. economy
an invisible yet recurring economic loss that is greater than the
output shortfall in what has been called the worst economic crisis
since the Great Depression. Using economic modelling to relate student
performance--as measured by PISA and other international instruments--
to economic growth shows that even small improvements in the skills of
a nation's labour force can have very large impacts on future well-
being. A modest goal of having the United States boost its average PISA
scores by 25 points over the next 20 years--which is less than the most
rapidly improving education system in the OECD, Poland, achieved
between 2000 and 2006 alone--implies a gain of U.S.D 41 trillion for
the U.S. economy over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010 (as
evaluated at the start of reform in terms of real present value of
future improvements in GDP). Bringing the United States up to the
average performance of Finland, OECD's best performing education system
in PISA, could result in gains in the order of U.S.D 103 trillion.
Closing the achievement gap by bringing all students to a level of
minimal proficiency for the OECD (i.e., reaching a PISA score of 400),
could imply GDP increases for the United States of U.S.D 72 trillion
according to historical growth relationships. The predictive power of
student performance at school on subsequent successful education and
labour-market pathways is also demonstrated through longitudinal
studies. In both cases, the evidence shows that it is the quality of
learning outcomes, as demonstrated in student performance, not the
length of schooling or patterns of participation, which makes the
difference. The gains from improved learning outcomes, put in terms of
current GDP, far outstrip today's value of the short-run business-cycle
management. This is not to say that efforts should not be directed at
immediate issues of economic recession, but it is to say that the long-
run issues should not be neglected.
Addressing the challenges will become ever-more important as the
best education systems, not simply improvement by national standards,
will increasingly become the yardstick to success. Moreover, countries
such as the United States will not simply need to match the performance
of these countries, but actually do better if their citizens want to
justify higher wages.
References
OECD (2004). What Makes School Systems Perform. Paris: OECD.
OECD (2006). Assessing Scientific, Reading and Mathematical Literacy. A
Framework for PISA 2006. Paris: OECD. OECD (2007). PISA 2006.
Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World. Paris: OECD.
OECD (2008). Education at a Glance--OECD Indicators 2008. Paris: OECD.
OECD (2009a). Education at a Glance--OECD Indicators 2009. Paris: OECD.
OECD (2009b). Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments.
Paris: OECD.
OECD (2010a), Pathways to Success. Paris: OECD.
OECD (2010b), The High Cost of Low Educational Performance. Paris:
OECD.
McKinsey and company (2007). How the world's school systems come out on
top. New York: McKinsey.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Schleicher.
Now we will turn to Mr. Van Roekel, National Education
Association.
STATEMENT OF DENNIS VAN ROEKEL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL EDUCATION
ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Van Roekel. Thank you, Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member
Enzi, and members of the committee. Thank you very much for the
opportunity to be with you here today.
As a 23-year high school math teacher, I have the honor to
represent 3.2 million people who absolutely believe in the
power of education to transform lives. The passion and the
commitment that brought them into the profession is what they
bring to classrooms from pre-K to graduate every single day
despite incredible challenges.
As you deliberate about the reauthorization of ESEA, I hope
you spend some time reflecting on a very fundamental or basic
question. What do you believe is the purpose of public
education for the United States for today in the 21st century?
When I think of my grandchildren, I think about what it is
it ought to provide them for their life. I want to visualize a
circle divided into four quadrants. One of those quadrants I
would assume would be academics, and when I think about what
might be in there, I think of a very broad curriculum, 21st
century skills, understanding what a student needs to know and
be able to do in this coming century. It would be rich with
arts and science, geography, history, health, and PE. As we
talk about a global society, we must make sure that they have
the ability to compete. I know there would be foreign language
in there.
Yet, when you look at the current system, the entire
quadrant for academics has been narrowed to a very small sliver
and we look at math and reading as if somehow measuring that
will determine the success of a student, a school, or even a
district.
I would think one of the other quadrants for the purpose of
American public education has to do with justice and equal
opportunity. For someone who grew up in a small rural community
in Iowa with 1,700 people in my town, I have the opportunity to
be here today. The system that Government provided gave me the
opportunity to my American dream, and so part of that purpose
is to ensure that every student in America has access to that
possibility and those opportunities.
I would hope that another quadrant in that purpose would be
to take the ideas and the ideals and the responsibility of
citizenship in a democratic society and move them to the next
generation. I would hope that part of that purpose would
reflect the development of the whole child not just the
academic as they grow into productive adults who can balance
work and family and faith and community but as part of all of
that.
It is so important to reflect on that purpose because until
you do that, it is very difficult to determine the standards
for accountability and assessment of the system.
In my written testimony, I spoke in detail of the
inextricable link between investment in education and a strong
economy and a competitive Nation. Education is the driver for
individual and national success. Students in impoverished
communities too often do not attend safe schools, do not have
safe passage to and from, and do not have access to great
teachers on a regular and consistent basis. Our challenge in
reauthorizing ESEA is to ensure those benefits reach all
students in all communities.
Three things I would mention in the reauthorization:
No. 1, codify those things that we know work based on
research and the people who work there. Children are not
experiments. Policies on accountability, assessments, and
transforming schools should follow research not dogma.
Accountability and flexibility are not mutually exclusive. We
are encouraged by Secretary Duncan's remarks about being tight
on goals and loose on means, providing flexibility of how to
achieve it, and we would encourage Congress to make laws that
honor that pledge.
No. 2, the Federal Government should only incentivize
initiatives in which collaborative plans from beginning to end
involve all essential stakeholders. In the last 25 years, one
thing we know, as we look at places that succeed, there is a
common thread that you must have collaboration. You must have
management, the board, the employees and their unions sit down
together and say what is it that we need to do to transform and
make it right for the students in our school. They must then
reach out to parents and the community. We cannot afford to
fail. Our students cannot afford us to fail, and the status quo
is unacceptable.
And finally, in the true spirit of the original ESEA from
1965, Federal law and regulations are the only way to eliminate
vast disparities. There is a corridor of shame in every State.
Therefore, as a condition of receiving Federal money, all
States should be required to submit a plan for remedying those
disparities in all the key areas that make a great public
school, publish them, post them on the Web, total transparency,
and then allow the citizens to hold the State and local
governments accountable for implementation of that plan.
The road is a difficult one, but it is worth the effort. I
want you to know that 3.2 million people stand ready to move on
this journey and work with our partners to transform public
education.
Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Van Roekel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dennis Van Roekel
summary
The public education system is critical to democracy. Its purpose
is to:
maximize the achievement, skills, opportunities and
potential of all students by promoting their strengths and addressing
their needs, and
ensure all students are prepared to thrive in a democratic
society and diverse changing world as knowledgeable, creative and
engaged citizens and lifelong learners.
Our public schools need a wholesale transformation with the
resources to match our commitment. We cannot leave a generation of
students behind by continuing to deny them the best education this
country has to offer.
k-12 education in the u.s. economy
There is no disagreement that there is an inextricable link between
investment in education and a strong, competitive nation. Individuals
who go further in school see higher earnings throughout their lifetime.
But, the spill-over effects of a quality public education extend beyond
individuals. The higher earnings of educated workers generate higher
tax payments at the local, State, and Federal levels. Consistent
productive employment reduces dependence on public income-transfer
programs and all workers, regardless of education level, earn more when
there are more college graduates in the labor force. In today's
economy, investing in education will help prevent harmful cuts in
programs, preserve jobs and reduce unemployment.
revitalizing the public education system
We must address opportunity gaps to strengthen our economy and
build the educated workforce necessary for the 21st century. We should
codify those things that we know work based upon research and the
guidance of those closest to children. Children are not experiments.
Policies on accountability, assessments, and turning around schools
should follow research, not dogma.
redesigning schools for 21st century learning
Educating every student so they can succeed is not enough. We live
in a global society and our students will have to compete with people
from across the world. We need a world class education system that will
prepare students to become critical thinkers, problem solvers, and
globally competent.
revamping accountability systems for 21st century learning
States should have well-designed, transparent accountability
systems that authentically assess student learning and the conditions
for its success, focus on closing achievement gaps, help to monitor
progress, and identify successes and problems. We should not continue
the unhealthy focus on standardized tests as the primary evidence of
student success. Educator voices are key to any successful
transformation. We cannot discount the experience and knowledge of
those who work in classrooms every day. The Federal Government should
only incentivize initiatives in which collaborative plans--designed
from start to finish by all essential stakeholders--are assured.
ensuring sustainability of public education
If we are to be true to the spirit of the original ESEA, Federal
law and regulations are the only way to eliminate vast disparities in
educational opportunity. As a condition of receiving Federal money, all
States should be required to submit a plan for remedying disparities in
the key areas that make a great public school. Transforming America's
public schools is a daunting task. It will take the concerted efforts
of all stakeholders and the commitment to continue the effort until
every student has access to a great public school.
______
Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Enzi, and members of the committee,
thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about the
essential role of preparing students for success in the 21st Century
and how the Elementary and Secondary Education Act must be redesigned
to achieve this goal. I commend the committee for convening a hearing
on this very important issue.
As a 23-year veteran classroom math teacher, I have the great honor
of being here today representing 3.2 million members who all believe in
the power of education to transform lives. NEA members include teachers
and education support professionals, higher education faculty and
staff, Department of Defense schools' educators, students in colleges
of teacher education, and retired educators across the country.
Today, I will talk about K-12 education in the U.S. economy. I will
also present NEA's views on revitalizing the public education system,
redesigning schools and revamping accountability systems for 21st
century learning, and ensuring sustainability of public education.
The public education system is critical to democracy. Its purpose
is to:
maximize the achievement, skills, opportunities and
potential of all students by promoting their strengths and addressing
their needs, and
ensure all students are prepared to thrive in a democratic
society and diverse changing world as knowledgeable, creative, and
engaged citizens and lifelong learners.
However, today, students' success in school depends in large part
on the zip code where they live and the educators to whom they are
assigned. There are great teachers and education support professionals
at work every day in this country who show up excited to teach students
and feed them nutritious meals, help them travel safely to and from
school, and make sure they attend schools that are safe, clean, and in
good repair.
Students who struggle the most in impoverished communities too
often don't attend safe schools with reliable heat and air
conditioning; too often do not have safe passage to and from school;
and far too often do not have access to great teachers on a regular and
consistent basis. We must address these opportunity gaps if we are to
strengthen our economy, prepare our students to compete, and build the
educated workforce necessary.
What we have today is an interdependent, rapidly changing world,
and our public school system must adapt to the needs of the new global
economy. Every student will need to graduate from high school, pursue
post-secondary educational options, and focus on a lifetime of learning
because many of tomorrow's jobs have not even been conceived of today.
I think we can all agree that our public schools need a wholesale
transformation with the resources to match our commitment. We cannot
leave a generation of students behind by continuing to deny them the
best education this country has to offer. Instead of being first in the
world in the number of inmates, let's work to be first in the world in
the number of high school and college graduates.
As President John F. Kennedy said in 1961 and it still holds true
now:
``Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our
progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership,
our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship
itself in an era such as this all require the maximum
development of every young American's capacity. The human mind
is our fundamental resource.''
Simply put, we need a new vision of 21st century learning. My
testimony today will lay out the inextricable link between investment
in education and a strong, competitive nation and will discuss how we
must approach ESEA reauthorization from an economic development
framework.
But I would be remiss if I did not point out that the best laid
plans for 21st century learning will not succeed without a true
partnership of change between educators, school boards and school
districts. Simply put, reform in schools does not succeed without true
collaboration among all those involved in creating, funding, and
delivering quality education services to our students. We have to all
shoulder the responsibility and hard work it will take to be sure
schools improve dramatically, particularly for students who need the
most. And we cannot continue to shun proven school improvement models
because they don't generate as much press coverage as others.
We know schools improve when educators are respected, treated as
professionals, and given the tools they need and the opportunity to
improve as a team for the benefit of their students. For example, Broad
Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland is a high-poverty,
previously low performing school. In April 2001, all staff at Broad
Acres Elementary School had the option to make a 3-year commitment to
the school and its students. This commitment included working the
equivalent of 15 extra days paid by a supplement to be used to extend
the workday every Wednesday until 6 p.m. for planning sessions, study
groups, and examining student work. Sixty percent of the staff elected
to stay. According to the school district's Web site, students met the
proficiency standards for adequate yearly progress in math and reading
for the most recent year available. The student body is 99 percent
minority and 88 percent qualify for free and reduced price meals.
Furthermore, at Broad Acres, 30 percent of the teachers have more than
15 years of experience, 52.7 percent have 5-15 years, and only 16.4
percent have less than 5 years of experience. It appears from those
numbers that Broad Acres has successfully retained experienced
educators and probably also attracted newer ones who are staying.
k-12 education in the u.s. economy
Every child and young adult has surely heard the following: ``To
get ahead in life, get an education.'' This is a belief often repeated
among noted economists and education experts, and is borne out by
numerous studies. As Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and Nobel
Prize winner has said, ``If you had to explain America's economic
success with one word, that word would be `education' . . . Education
made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.''
Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has also stated, ``The best
approach is to give people access to first-rate education so they can
acquire the skills needed to advance.''
Besides the benefits to individuals, society as a whole also enjoys
a financial return on the investment in higher education. In addition
to widespread productivity increases, the higher earnings of educated
workers generate higher tax payments at the local, State, and Federal
levels. Consistent productive employment reduces dependence on public
income-transfer programs and all workers, regardless of education
level, earn more when there are more college graduates in the labor
force. (Education Pays, The College Board, 2007.)
The provision of a quality K-12 public education plays a crucial
role in the individual and economy-wide acquisition of ``human
capital.'' The economic payoff to individuals of increased schooling is
higher earnings throughout their lifetime--a market-based individual
benefit. In addition, a considerable number of benefits from a quality
K-12 public education--the spillover effects extend beyond individuals.
Wolfe and Haveman (2002), economists noted for their efforts to put a
monetary value on some of education's spillover effects, argue that the
value of these spillovers for individuals and the economy is
significant and that it may be as large as education's market-based
individual benefits. For example:
Cutting statewide public K-12 expenditure by $1 per $1,000
State's personal income could: (1) reduce the State's personal income
by about 0.3 percent in the short run and 3.2 percent in the long run;
(2) reduce the State's manufacturing investment in the long run by 0.9
percent and manufacturing employment by 0.4 percent. Cutting statewide
public K-12 education per student by $1 would reduce small business
starts by 0.4 percent in the long run. Cutting statewide public K-12
expenditure by 1 percentage point of the State's personal income would
reduce the State's employment by 0.7 percent in the short run and by
1.4 percent in the long run.
A reduction in a State's aggregate home values is likely
if a reduction in statewide public school spending yields a decline in
standardized public school test scores, if in the long run people leave
or do not enter the State because of test-score declines. A 10 percent
reduction in various standardized test scores would yield between a 2
percent and a 10 percent reduction in aggregate home values in the long
run.
Reduction in a State's aggregate personal income is also
likely if a reduction in statewide public school spending yields a
decline in ``quality'' of public education produced and a long-run
decrease in earning potential of the State's residents. A 10 percent
reduction in school expenditures could yield a 1 to 2 percent decrease
in post-school annual earnings in the long run. A 10 percent increase
in the student-teacher ratio would lead to a 1 to 2 percent decrease in
high school graduation rates and to a decrease in standardized test
scores.
Investing in education will help prevent harmful cuts in programs,
preserve jobs and reduce unemployment, thereby strengthening State and
local economies.
According to the National Governors' Association, ``Long-
term prospects for strong economic growth are hampered by the high
school dropout crisis . . . Dropouts costs the United States more that
$300 billion a year in lost wages and increased public-sector expenses
. . . the dropout problem is a substantial drag on the Nation's
economic competitiveness.''
The latest study from the Alliance for Excellent
Education, The Economic Benefits from Halving the Dropout Rate makes a
powerful connection between easing the dropout crisis and strengthening
local economies. Over time, for example, budgets that provide education
and other basic services to economically disadvantaged people can
increase their chances for solid jobs and productive lives and thereby
reduce income inequality. Social spending, including education
spending, often has a positive effect on GDP, even after weighing the
effects of the taxes used to finance it.
A series of careful studies presented at the Teachers
College Symposium on Educational Equity at Columbia University found
that, among other things that a high school dropout earns about
$260,000 less over a lifetime than a high school graduate and pays
about $60,000 less in taxes. These same studies also found that America
loses $192 billion--1.6 percent of our Gross Domestic Product--in
combined income and tax revenue with each cohort of 18-year-olds who
never complete high school. In other words, for each year's high school
graduating class, the amount they would contribute to this Nation's
economy over their lifetime in terms of their income and the taxes they
pay would be larger by $192 billion if all of their same-age peers
completed high school as well. The annual loss of Federal and State
income taxes associated with the 23 million U.S. high school dropouts
(ages 18-67) is over $50 billion compared to what they would have paid
if they had graduated.
A survey for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston showed
that an educated, qualified workforce was by far the most important
consideration of firms when deciding where to locate.
And a study for the World Bank showed that public
investments in K-12 education yielded an annual return of 14.3 percent
in additional revenue and reduced expenses, while the long-term return
on common stocks was only 6.3 percent a year.
Two Harvard economists, Lawrence F. Katz and Claudia
Goldin, studied the effect of increases in educational attainment in
the U.S. labor force from 1915 to 1999. They estimated that those gains
directly resulted in at least 23 percent of the overall growth in
productivity, or around 10 percent of growth in gross domestic product.
(What's the Return on Education, Anna Bernasek, The New York Times,
December 11, 2005). They found education programs have contributed to
economic growth while also increasing opportunities for individual
advancement. Near-universal public education has added significantly to
U.S. economic growth, boosted incomes, and lowered inequality (Goldin
and Katz, 2008).
It is clear that when faced with the choice of: (1) increasing
revenue statewide to continue supporting the provision of quality
public K-12 education; or (2) cutting support statewide to public K-12
education to forestall a tax increase, a State's long-term economic
interests are better served by increasing revenue. (NEA Working Paper,
K-12 Education in the U.S. Economy: Its impact on Economic Development,
Earnings, and Housing Values. Thomas L. Hungerford and Robert W.
Wassmer, April 2004). Yet, according to NEA's own research, almost no
States are currently funding their educational systems adequately and
most States are around 25 percent short of funding their systems at a
level adequate.
These findings take on a particular significance in the current
economy. State budgets typically lag any national economic recovery by
a year or longer and, as a result, budget gaps will continue into
fiscal year 2011 and beyond. In fact, the aggregate budget gap for
fiscal year 2012 is expected to be larger than the 2011 gap, largely
due to diminishing Federal stimulus funds. For many States, 2011 will
mark the third consecutive year in which budget balancing actions will
be needed to close sizable budget gaps. According to the Congressional
Budget Office's (CBO) just issued Policies for Increasing Economic
Growth and Employment in 2010 and 2011,
``Many States have experienced a high degree of fiscal stress
and are expected to have large budget gaps in the next few
years. Eighteen States have budget gaps larger than 20 percent
of general fund expenditures. . . .''
The Federal Government, which, unlike most State governments, is
not prohibited from running an annual budget deficit, is best suited to
help State and local governments maintain educational funding during
cyclical downturns. According to CBO,
``Federal aid that was provided promptly would probably have
a significant effect on output and employment in 2010 and 2011.
Such aid could lead to fewer layoffs, more pay raises, more
government purchases of goods and services, increases in State
safety-net programs, tax cuts, and savings for future use.''
The evidence is clear that investment in education is essential for
a strong economy and a well-prepared workforce, and that the Federal
Government must step up at this critical juncture. This sort of
investment in education as a means to stimulating economic growth is
not unprecedented. In the last century, both the G.I. bill and the
National Defense Education Act of 1958, which appropriated $1 billion
for science education, helped propel economic growth.
Leaving States to cut education more deeply to balance their
budgets without additional Federal aid is short-sighted. Lessening the
quality of education a student receives today as a result may be
irreversible. Long-term productivity growth and a higher standard of
living are dependent on an educated workforce. Investing in education
is investing in the future growth of the country.
Additional funding for public primary and secondary schools,
however, will not generate greater student achievement unless the funds
are used wisely. The remainder of this testimony will focus on how we
must retool our education system for the 21st Century.
revitalizing the public education system
It is important to recall that 1965 was one of the notable years in
the history of education in America. That year, as part of his War on
Poverty, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA) to reduce inequity by directing resources to poor
and minority children and signed the Higher Education Act (HEA) to
provide more opportunities and access to post-secondary opportunities
for lower- and middle-income families. ``Poverty has many roots,''
Johnson said, ``but the taproot is ignorance.''
Poverty is still an issue in this country, and unfortunately we
still have schools that lack resources, committed and effective
leadership, and enough great teachers and education support
professionals to reach every student. Schools in struggling communities
too often have high dropout rates, and the cycle of poverty continues.
The Federal Government must be engaged in these issues, offering
the only remaining leverage point to hold States accountable for
remedying these untenable inequities. Later in this testimony, I will
address our recommendation that the Federal Government require States
to put together adequacy and equity plans that outline how they will
address these inequities.
NEA also stands ready to help do something about it--we must break
this cycle of poverty. And we are ready to work with our partners,
community by community, to revitalize the public school system and
redesign schools for the 21st century.
redesigning schools for 21st century learning
To be clear, however, educating every student so they can succeed
in this country is not enough today. We live in a global society and
our students will have to compete with people from across the world.
We need a world class education system that will prepare students
to become critical thinkers, problem solvers, and globally competent.
To prosper, graduates must learn languages, understand the world, and
be able to compete globally, and we must benchmark our educational
goals against other nations with strong education systems. If we
collectively work toward that outcome, it is expected that the United
States gross domestic product will be more than one-third higher in the
next 70 years.
To meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must transform the
system by demanding sweeping changes that changes the dynamic--
significantly higher student achievement and significantly higher
graduation rates for all groups of students.
Our vision of what great public schools need and should provide
acknowledges that the world is changing and public education is
changing too. NEA's Great Public Schools (GPS) criteria require not
only the continued commitment of all educators, but the concerted
efforts of policymakers at all levels of government. These criteria
will prepare all students for the future with 21st century skills;
create enthusiasm for learning and engaging all students in the
classroom; close achievement gaps and increase achievement for all
students; and ensure that all educators have the resources and tools
they need to get the job done.
The criteria are:
Quality programs and services that meet the full range of
all children's needs so that they come to school every day ready and
able to learn.
High expectations and standards with a rigorous and
comprehensive curriculum for all students. Curriculum and assessments
must focus on higher order thinking and performance skills, if students
are to meet the high standards to which we aspire. Students will be
better prepared for the rigors of life and citizenship after school if
they have had access to a broad, rigorous, relevant curriculum that
prepares them for a variety of post-secondary educational and career
options. Students' access to core academic content areas that
incorporate 21st century skills as well as fine arts, civics, and
career and technical education helps inspire their creativity, helps
connect their school work to their outside interests, and can help keep
them engaged in school.
We must support innovative public school models of education that
inform and accelerate school transformation efforts and prepare
students for citizenship, lifelong learning, and challenging post-
secondary education and careers. The Federal Government can play a
critical role in increasing educational research and development and
providing a clearinghouse for innovative promising practices.
Quality conditions for teaching and lifelong learning. In
an effort to obliterate the ``corridors of shame'' that exist and
repair or rebuild crumbling schools, we also must focus resources on
infrastructure. President Obama's administration and Congress already
have taken a giant leap forward in this respect when they passed the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). ARRA included billions
of dollars in aid that can be used to help update schools. We are
pleased that both the House and Senate have passed legislation to
extend and strengthen this program.
We also know that if we are to revitalize our public schools, we
must address the design of public schools. Schools today must work for
students in rural, urban, suburban, and exurban areas. In rural areas,
for example, broadband access is key to ensure students have access to
virtual, supplemental material and support that is not available in
their physical location. By creating this technology gateway, educators
can also obtain high-quality professional development to which they
might otherwise not have access.
Schools and classrooms designed for 21st century learning also must
be designed for universal access to ensure the inclusion of the widest
spectrum of students. Every effort should be made to reduce the
barriers to learning so that every student reaches his or her potential
and dreams.
A qualified, caring, diverse, and stable workforce.
Investments in teachers' and leaders' knowledge and skills are
essential to all other reforms, and pay off in higher achievement.
Strong preparation, mentoring, and professional development, as well as
collaborative learning and planning time in schools, are the building
blocks of any successful reform. We must ensure students have access to
accomplished educators by requiring high standards for entry into the
profession and by offering incentives to teach in hard-to-staff
schools. We recommend creating a prestigious national education
institute and provide incentives to States to create world-class
teacher preparation programs that attract the top tier of college
graduates nationally.
Teachers and education support professionals must be respected as
professionals by ensuring they are part of critical decisions affecting
students, schools and themselves. We also need to encourage school
leadership to be effective in both operational and instructional
leadership.
Shared responsibility for appropriate school
accountability by stakeholders at all levels. We must obtain the full
commitment from all policymakers--at the Federal, State, and local
levels. We also must involve our communities and partners, including
governors, State legislators, mayors, county officials, business
partners, the faith-based community, the civil rights community, and
parents and families, to name a few. It will take the concerted effort
of all of these stakeholders working with superintendents, school
boards, and educators to ensure that all of our schools become the
modern, safe, vibrant centers of the community that they can become.
Parental, family, and community involvement and
engagement. Through more than 125 initiatives in 21 States, NEA's
Public Engagement Project is demonstrating the essential role of
school-family-community partnerships in student achievement. Our
findings echo those of a 6-year-long study of multiple data sources
conducted by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown
University: such partnerships contribute to increased student
attendance, improved performance on standardized tests, higher high
school graduation rates, and college-going aspirations.
Adequate, equitable, and sustainable funding. Resources
must be adequate and equalized across schools. We cannot expect schools
that lack strong and prepared leaders, well-qualified teachers, and
high-quality instructional materials to improve by testing alone. We
must ensure adequate and equitable funding for schools and fully fund
critical programs such as title I and IDEA and we must help States and
districts to identify disparities in educational resources, supports,
programs, opportunities, class sizes and personnel (including the
distribution of accomplished educators) through required Equity and
Adequacy plans.
NEA is part of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills--a unique
public-private organization formed in 2002 to create a successful model
of learning for this millennium that incorporates 21st century skills
into our system of education. The members of this Partnership believe
that policymakers today have an opportunity--and an obligation--to move
forward with a new direction for teaching and learning in the 21st
century (The Road to 21st Century Learning: A Policymakers Guide to
21st Century Skills, Partnership for 21st Century Skills).
As laid out in the Partnership's guidebook, The Road to 21st
Century Learning: A Policymakers Guide to 21st Century Skills http://
www.21stcenturyskills.org/downloads/P21_Policy_Paper.pdf) we see:
``. . . a growing sense of urgency that the Nation must act
now to ensure that future generations of Americans can
participate fully in the democratic process and the competitive
global economy. Education is the foundation of democratic
institutions, national security, economic growth and
prosperity--and Americans cannot be complacent about improving
the quality of education while competitors around the world are
focusing on preparing students for the demands of this century.
Only recently, the National Science Board, a Federal advisory
panel established by Congress, warned that the United States
faces a major shortage of scientists because too few Americans
are entering technical fields and because of the burgeoning
ranks of highly competent scientists in other nations.
``. . . America risks losing its long-standing pre-eminence
in science, engineering, technology, medicine, defense,
business and even democracy. Without many more highly educated,
highly skilled young people to carry the torch of inquiry,
innovation and enterprise into the future, American dominance
in these and other endeavors may fade. . . .
``There is broad consensus among educators, policymakers,
business leaders and the public that schools today must do a
better job of preparing young people for the challenges and
expectations of communities, workplaces and higher education.
Moreover, there is broad consensus about the knowledge and
skills that are essential in the world today--and about the
educational model that would make schools more relevant to the
world again as well. This model emphasizes that students today
need 21st century skills to guarantee America's success
tomorrow.''
Incremental changes yield incremental results. We must be bolder. A
legislative tweak here or a regulatory toggle there will not lead to
the fundamental and transformative changes in education we all seek.
When we address change, we have to focus on significant and sustainable
improvement in the rates of achievement for all students, but
especially poor and minority students.
According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, integrating
21st century skills into K-12 education will empower students to learn
and achieve in the core academic subjects at much higher levels. These
skills, in fact, are the learning results that demonstrate that
students are ready for the world. It is no longer enough to teach
students the 3Rs; we must also teach the 4Cs of creativity,
collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.
The Partnership calls on policymakers to imagine:
A place where all children master rigorous core academic
subjects.
A place where teaching and learning are relevant to life
outside of school.
A place where all children understand and use the learning
skills--information and communication skills, thinking and problem-
solving skills, and interpersonal and self-directional skills--that
lead to high performance in school and in life.
A place where vital new academic content is part of the
common core curriculum.
A place where professional development and teaching
strategies enable educators to help students gain the knowledge and
skills they need.
A place where every student, teacher and administrator has
on-demand access to 21st century tools and technologies and uses them
to work productively.
A place where 21st century tools and context are embedded
in core subjects and assessments.
A place where all students--including those with learning
or physical disabilities and those who are learning English--can show
what they know and can do with all of the knowledge and skills that are
valued in the world.
The Partnership members know that schools like these would be
intellectually stimulating environments for students, teachers and
administrators alike. Communities, employers, colleges and universities
would be proud to welcome graduates of 21st century schools as the best
prepared generation of citizens in American history. Reaching this
vision is both important and possible--and it rests in the hands of
policymakers today. It is this vision that Congress should have at the
forefront as you reauthorize ESEA.
revamping accountability systems for 21st century learning
In order to support public school improvement, States should have
well-designed, transparent accountability systems that authentically
assess both student learning and the conditions for its success, focus
on closing achievement gaps, help to monitor progress, and identify
successes and problems. We should not continue the unhealthy focus on
standardized tests as the primary evidence of student success.
Achievement is much more than a test score, but if test scores are
still the primary means of assessing student learning, they will
continue to get undue weight. This is especially problematic because
the tests widely in use in the United States, since NCLB narrowed the
kinds of tests in use, typically focus on lower level skills of recall
and recognition measured with multiple-choice items that do not
adequately represent higher order thinking skills and performance.
These are unlike the assessments that are used in high-achieving
nations that feature essays, problem solutions, and open-ended items
and more extensive tasks completed in classrooms as part of the
assessment system. Achievement must take into account accomplishments
that matter in the world outside of school, such as: Are you prepared
for college or trade school? Can you form an opinion about something
you read and justify your opinion? Are you creative? Are you inventive?
Can you come up with a variety of solutions when you're faced with a
problem?
The Federal Government should use the ESEA implementation process,
along with those associated with other Federal programs, as mechanisms
to incentivize States to devise comprehensive accountability systems
that use multiple sources of evidence (including rich, meaningful, and
authentic assessments, such as developing and/or using native language
assessments as appropriate for students until they gain proficiency in
English as determined by a valid and reliable measure). Instead of the
current NCLB system that has resulted in a significant narrowing of the
curriculum, State accountability systems should be designed to support
efforts to guarantee every child has access to a rich, comprehensive
curriculum. Such systems also should:
Align with developmentally appropriate student learning
standards;
Require the use of multiple, valid, reliable measures of
student learning and school performance over time and assess higher-
order thinking skills and performance skills;
Replace AYP with a system that recognizes schools that
make progress toward achieving learning goals and correctly identifies
struggling schools in order to provide needed support instead of
punishment;
Recognize the unique instructional and assessment needs of
special populations, including students with disabilities and English
language learners by designing standards and assessments that are
accessible for all students; and
Foster high-quality data systems that are both
longitudinal and complete and that protect student and educator privacy
and improve instruction.
These State systems should evaluate school quality, as well as
demonstrate improvements in student learning and closing of
achievement, skills, and opportunity gaps among various groups of
students. NEA has developed a comprehensive diagnostic tool called KEYS
to assess school climate and success using a variety of indicators.
There are also important and highly informative surveys such as the
Teacher Working Conditions survey (pioneered by the Center for Teaching
Quality) and the Gallup student survey that should inform States'
educational approach and accountability system as it relates to school
system quality.
As States design these evaluation systems, the design team must
include practicing educators to ensure that the system can yield clear
and useful results. The results of these evaluations should not be used
to punish and sanction schools. Results instead should be used to
inform State, local, and classroom efforts to identify struggling
students and problematic school programs so that States, districts, and
educators can provide appropriate interventions and supports for
improvement.
When considering individual schools that need significant reform or
turn-around efforts, I strongly urge you not to be too prescriptive--as
we believe the U.S. Department of Education's regulations in Race to
the Top have been--in outlining specific methods of transforming
schools. For example, we believe that turnaround assistance teams, such
as those so successfully employed in North Carolina and Kentucky, serve
as a highly effective, proven model of turning around low performing
schools. We also believe that teacher-led schools have shown remarkable
results in improving student learning. These two models were not
included in the RTTT rules as allowable turn-around approaches. Such
narrow prescriptions for school overhaul are predictive of one thing:
diminished opportunity and tools to reach and turn around MORE schools.
ensuring sustainability of public education
Transforming America's public schools is a daunting task. It will
take the concerted efforts of all stakeholders and the commitment to
continue the effort until every student has access to a great public
school.
At the core of this effort is ensuring the fiscal stability of the
educational system so that the energy of stakeholders can be spent on
how best to serve students.
As we have said in the past, the Federal Government should require
States, as part of their application for Federal education funds under
ESEA, to develop ``Adequacy and Equity Plans.'' Through these plans,
States will demonstrate where there are disparities in educational
tools and services, as well as opportunities and resources. The plans
will outline steps underway or planned to remedy the disparities. The
process of developing the plans should bring together stakeholders
within the State to devise a plan to meet adequacy and equity goals,
and for the first time significant Federal resources could serve as a
powerful incentive that spurs action on this issue. This effort will
help elevate the commitment to all students and build a shared
understanding of what it will take to support them.
The design of Federal approval and monitoring should be one that
sensibly supports adjustments and flexibility as States pursue their
goals and work toward eliminating disparities, without ever losing
sight of the fact that the richest country in the world can provide
every student with a quality education.
conclusion
We know the road to economic stability and prosperity runs through
our public schools, and we know that every student deserves the best we
can offer. It is now time to deliver. NEA stands ready to do its part.
Attached to this testimony are a series of fact sheets on key
elements of ESEA reauthorization, as well as NEA's overriding
principles for reauthorization.
Thank you.
______
ATTACHMENT *
NEA's Message to Members of Congress on the Reauthorization of ESEA
The purpose of public education
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* NEA's Initial Legislative Recommendations for Reauthorization of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--March 26, 2010 may be found
at www.nea.org/assets/docs/NEA_ESEA
_Proposals.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The public education system is critical to democracy and its
purpose is to:
maximize the achievement, skills, opportunities and
potential of all students by promoting their strengths and addressing
their needs, and
ensure all students are prepared to thrive in a democratic
society and diverse changing world as knowledgeable, creative and
engaged citizens and lifelong learners.
To fulfill the purpose of public education, we must:
1. Promote Innovation in Public Schools
Support innovative public school models of education that
inform and accelerate school transformation efforts and prepare
students for citizenship, lifelong learning, and challenging post-
secondary education and careers.
Increase educational research and development and provide
a clearinghouse for innovative promising practices.
2. Provide Students With Multiple Ways to Show What They Have
Learned
Require the use of multiple, valid, reliable measures of
student learning and school performance over time.
Replace AYP with a system that recognizes schools that
make progress toward achieving learning goals and correctly identifies
struggling schools in order to provide needed support instead of
punishment.
Foster high-quality data systems that are both
longitudinal and complete and that protect student and educator privacy
and improve instruction.
Recognize the unique instructional and assessment needs of
special populations, including students with disabilities and English
language learners by designing standards and assessments that are
accessible for all students.
3. Elevate the Profession: Great Educators and Leaders for Every
Public School
Respect teachers and education support professionals as
professionals by ensuring they are part of critical decisions affecting
students, schools and themselves.
Ensure students have access to accomplished educators by
ensuring high standards for entry into the profession and by offering
incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools.
Encourage school leadership to be effective in both
operational and instructional leadership.
Create a prestigious national education institute and
provide incentives to States to create world-class teacher preparation
programs that attract the top tier of college graduates nationally.
4. Champion Adequate, Equitable, and Sustainable Funding for All
Public Schools
Ensure adequate and equitable funding for schools and
fully fund critical programs such as Title I and IDEA.
Help States and districts to identify disparities in
educational resources, supports, programs, opportunities, class sizes
and personnel (including the distribution of accomplished educators)
through required Equity and Adequacy plans.
Provide support and foster research-based turnaround
strategies for high priority schools.
1. promote innovation in public schools
It is clear that if we are to achieve world-class schools for every
student within the next decade, we will need fresh approaches and ideas
that produce dramatic leaps in achievement and growth among students,
educators and communities. The Federal Government must embrace its role
as a supporter of local and State initiatives to transform schools,
rather than a micro-manager.
``Institutionalizing'' innovation is a paradoxical goal, and yet
this is the Federal Government's solemn responsibility: it must craft
policies that are strict in their flexibility, incentivize change as a
fixed concept, and establish continuity in the pursuit of continuous
transformation.
How can we promote innovation in schools?
The Federal Government should increase and sustain funding in
programs that are designed to foster innovation (such as the Investing
in Innovation (i3) program funded under the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009). Innovative proposals should be developed in
collaboration with educators and include a sustainability plan. We
believe that research, development and pilot programs in the following
areas are particularly useful and necessary:
Unique governance models for public schools, including
staff-led schools.
Wraparound, before- and after-school, summer programs and
services.
High-quality formative student assessments.
Curricular reform that includes 21st century learning
skills.
Effective and rigorous teacher preparation and induction.
Education delivery systems for students in rural or low-
income school districts.
Incorporation of education technology into classrooms and
schools.
Educator evaluation systems based on multiple, valid
measures of performance and used to improve educators' practice through
use of professional development systems that are job-embedded, aligned,
and research-based.
Longitudinal data systems that assist in determining
students' instructional and other needs.
Alternate structures to the school day and calendar year.
Magnet and themed public schools--e.g., science,
technology, the arts.
Flexible high school pathways integrating preparation for
career technical education and higher education.
In addition to incentivizing pilot activities in the above areas,
the Federal Government should sponsor its own research and establish a
public clearinghouse for innovation and promising practices.
What kinds of innovative models of education have proven successful?
We know that successful, innovative and autonomous models of public
school education already exist. Such models invariably include deep and
mutually beneficial partnerships with government, higher education,
parent and community organizations, education unions, and businesses or
philanthropic entities. These models also have produced new and
imaginative ways to develop professional development, deliver student
instruction and assessments, and offer time for team curricular
planning.
One promising example is the Math & Science Learning Academy
(MLSA), a new, union-designed, teacher-led public school within the
Denver Public School System. Other examples of innovation that feature
strong union-administrator-school district partnerships include:
Say Yes to Education Foundation (Syracuse, NY).
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation (Evansville,
IN).
Hamilton County Public Schools (Chattanooga, TN).
University of Connecticut--CommPACT Schools (Hartford,
CT).
Milwaukee Partnership Academy (Milwaukee, WI).
Seattle Flight School Initiative (Seattle, WA).
Why should we care about school ``transformation'' as part of
innovation efforts?
School ``transformation'' is not a silver bullet. Rather, it
entails numerous, coordinated and aggressive changes in policies,
programs and behavior within school systems. School transformation must
address school organization and structure; leadership and governance;
staff recruiting, development and retention; instructional and
curricular practices; support services and resources; parent and
community involvement; overall school infrastructure, culture and
climate; and other factors.
While intervention models that call for the replacement of existing
leadership and the majority of staff, reorganization as a charter
school or school closure are avenues to consider in limited
circumstances, in many communities and regions they are not feasible
options. Moreover, the choice of an intervention ``model'' alone does
not equal reform: all of these models must be accompanied by
transformation strategies described above if they are to improve and
sustain student achievement and growth.
NEA Recommendations to Congress:
Support and promote innovative public school models and
programs that accelerate school transformation efforts and prepare
students for citizenship, lifelong learning, and challenging post-
secondary education and careers.
Encourage innovation developed through partnerships--
primarily between educators' unions, administrators, and school
districts--that focus on helping students thrive and develop critical
21st century skills.
Increase educational research and development to provide a
clearinghouse for innovative promising practices.
2. provide students with multiple ways to show what they have learned
There is widespread consensus that NCLB placed a necessary focus on
the achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged student
populations. It, however, has wreaked havoc on schools by mislabeling
successful schools as failing, under-serving those schools that are
truly struggling, and placing undue emphasis on federally mandated
standardized student assessments as the accountability yardstick for
entire school systems. This has resulted in intense discontent among
educators and parents and scant, if any, gains in a narrow range of
skills and content areas among students.
The next iteration of ESEA must prize authenticity above all else.
That is, it must transparently identify and scale up valid measures of
student learning in its totality--not just student performance on a
test, and not just student growth in a series of tests, but all
essential components of student learning as demonstrated by reliable
and varied sources of evidence, beginning with the professional
``assessment'' of the classroom teacher. These valid measures of
student learning must then be analyzed as one, but not the only,
important facet of overall school effectiveness.
Accountability systems should be used primarily as part of a
continuous improvement system designed to improve instruction rather
than to punish schools. Promising instructional methods should be
shared among colleagues and scaled up, and assessment systems should be
used to identify which struggling schools are most in need of support,
with the goal of delivering that needed support. Most importantly,
accountability systems must be limited so as not to subsume the
character of education itself. We must measure school performance, but
we must do so in a way that enhances, rather than stifles, the
educational process.
Can States develop authentic assessment systems that use multiple
measures of student learning and school performance?
A complete and balanced authentic student assessment system is one
factor essential to education improvement. A complete system should
incorporate the concept of assessment purposes encompassing assessment
of, for, and as learning. This concept is espoused by several experts
in student assessment, and is used by several high-achieving countries
such as Singapore, New Zealand, and Canada.
Research and evidence show that the current test-and-label system
under NCLB is fundamentally flawed and recommend that States be allowed
to develop their own accountability systems using student growth models
instead of having to demonstrate ``adequate yearly progress'' by group
status or successive group improvement (currently NCLB ``safe
harbor''). Beginning in 2005, the U.S. Department of Education approved
a pilot program to allow States to use growth models to measure AYP.
Twenty-two States and the District of Columbia have since applied to
use growth models, and 15 States now have approved growth models:
Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and
Texas. We recommend that all States be given the option to set
attainable performance goals and be given credit for demonstrating
growth in student learning.
In addition, we recommend three important changes to the current
accountability framework:
(1) Expand the current student growth models to include other valid
indicators of student learning. Student growth on standardized
assessments is but one out of multiple indicators of student learning.
Evidence of student growth (as measured by accurate and reliable
assessments and differentiated by subgroup) must be augmented with
other measures, which may include district-level assessments; school-
level assessments; classroom-level written, oral, performance-based, or
portfolio assessments; grades; and written evaluations. All measures
must be rigorous and follow common protocols to allow comparisons
across classrooms.
(2) Require States to monitor multiple indicators of school
performance beyond student learning. These include graduation rates;
post-secondary and career placement rates; attendance rates; student
mobility or transfer rates; the number and percentage of students
participating in rigorous coursework (including honors, AP, IB, dual
enrollment, early college); and the number and percentage of students
participating in sciences, STEM, humanities, foreign languages,
creative and fine arts, health, and physical education programs. This
robust system would provide the public with a more complete picture of
the performance of schools in their community and their State, instead
of the current system, which holds schools accountable based solely on
how many students reach an arbitrary cut score on a standardized test
in reading, math, and science on a particular day.
(3) Replace the current ``AYP'' system\1\ and corrective framework
with a Continuous Improvement Plan that features multiple indicators to
help States accomplish the following goals:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ NCLB currently requires schools to attain 100 percent student
proficiency in math and literacy by the 2013-2014 school year. Schools
must demonstrate AYP by setting and attaining increasingly higher
target goals. Improvement must occur for every subgroup of students,
i.e., low socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic groups, students with
disabilities and students with limited English proficiency. Schools
that receive title I funds and consistently fail to make adequate
progress are then subject to a series of progressively harsher
sanctions that range from allowing students to transfer to higher
achieving schools and funding private tutoring to reconstitution,
dismissal of staff, or even closure.
recognize areas of growth in all schools and States as
part of a continuous improvement paradigm that all schools can improve;
identify schools and programs that may offer innovative
approaches or platforms for other schools;
provide basic feedback to all schools on areas of possible
growth or improvement (including support in one or more areas if
warranted); and
identify which schools are or are at risk of becoming high
priority (i.e., either ``persistently low-achieving'' or that
demonstrate ``significant educational opportunity gaps'') in order to
direct intensive resources and intervention supports to them.
High priority schools (as identified by the State) would be
required (and would be provided additional resources) to collect and
submit additional data related to key school climate and success
factors, including: leadership and staff experience and turnover
statistics; class size (student-teacher ratio); number of National
Board certified teachers; number of certified counselors, nurses and
other support staff per student; school building and environmental
ratings; school bullying violence statistics; descriptions of
professional development and instructional improvement strategies,
description of access to libraries, science laboratories, quality
health care in the community, nutritional meals, before- and after-
school, and community and family engagement activities. The primary
purpose of providing such additional data would be to direct
appropriate resources and interventions to such schools. Such schools
would have to provide such additional data until they are no longer
deemed a high priority school.
Can States and/or districts establish reliable longitudinal data
systems that inform student learning and instruction in a
timely manner?
The NEA supports State and local efforts to achieve high-quality
longitudinal data systems that connect early learning to post-secondary
(P-16) education systems and that provide timely and accurate
information to educators about students to improve instruction. We
support key aspects of high-functioning data systems, provided that
such data systems sufficiently protect both student and educator
privacy. No educational or performance data related to any individual
should be made public, nor should ratings or levels be made public if
there is a significant possibility that individuals could be identified
through such publication. All ratings of educators informed by data
systems that connect students to individual educators should be
developed by and with educators, based on multiple means of evaluating
educators, and should be aligned with collective bargaining agreements.
All data systems must be associated with job-embedded professional
development and planning time as an essential component in order for
the data to be used for its intended purpose of improving instruction.
Can current efforts to revamp standards and assessments actually
improve accountability systems?
The NEA supports the current effort among States to band together
in consortia to voluntarily adopt a common core of high-quality
standards and high-quality assessments aligned to those standards.
Standards and assessments must be aligned with each other and with
curricula, teacher preparation and professional development, and they
must address the whole student and foster critical and high-order
thinking skills and knowledge that will prepare students for a global
and interdependent world in the 21st century and beyond. Assessments
must include formative and summative components and be designed from
the outset to accommodate the needs of special populations, including
students with disabilities and English language learners.
Can we revise accountability systems to recognize the individual needs
of students, such as those with disabilities or who are English
language learners?
Recent developments in education have converged to create a
critical need for valid, reliable, unbiased methods for conducting
high-stakes assessments for all students, including those with
disabilities and English language learners (ELL). Foremost is the
movement toward ensuring accessibility, fairness and accountability for
all students. In this effort, assessments play a key role in supplying
evidence to parents, policymakers, politicians, and taxpayers about the
degree to which students meet high standards.
To appropriately assess students with disabilities and ELLs, States
should: (1) ensure that appropriate accommodations are available for
students who need them, (2) use the principles of universal design for
learning (UDL) in developing assessments for all students to increase
accessibility, (3) ensure that valid, alternate assessments are
available for those students who are unable to participate in regular
assessments, (4) ensure that Individualized Education Program (IEP)
teams understand the impact of alternative assessments on students'
programs and graduation options, and (5) include measures of growth
toward grade level targets, such as growth models that represent
student progress over time.
NEA Recommendations to Congress:
Require the use of multiple, valid measures of student
learning and school performance.
Use student growth over time--not simply a one-day
snapshot of standardized test performance--as one component of student
learning.
Replace AYP with a Continuous Improvement Plan system that
recognizes schools that achieve growth and correctly identifies
struggling schools in order to provide meaningful support.
Foster high-quality, longitudinal data systems that
improve instruction and protect student and educator privacy.
Recognize the unique instructional and assessment needs of
special populations, including students with disabilities and English
language learners.
3. elevate the profession: great educators and leaders in every
public school
A growing body of research confirms what school-based personnel
have known for years--that the skills and knowledge of teachers and
education support professionals (ESPs) are the greatest factor in how
well students learn. In turn, the presence of strong and supportive
school leaders is one of the most important factors for recruiting and
retaining accomplished teachers and ESPs. But for too long, we have
neglected the most important factors in ensuring a strong and healthy
pipeline of qualified educators. Today, the average person will change
jobs between three to five times in a lifetime.\2\ Half of all teachers
leave the classroom after 5 years.\3\ Fewer schools have experienced
educators. As an entire generation of educators enters retirement,
there is an urgent need to address all aspects of working in public
schools. It is time to elevate the profession.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See Department of Labor.
\3\ See National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Federal Government must assist States to help seed future
generations of educators at the earliest stages of undergraduate
education and teacher recruitment all the way through teacher placement
and retention. In particular, it is clear that we need a bold new
center of excellence to bring prestige to the teaching profession: a
national education institute to attract top college graduates and
second-career professionals from across the country.
Also, we know that even the best teachers struggle to perform well
without the presence of an effective instructional leader. Primarily
principals and other administrators, school leaders could include other
colleagues who serve as mentors and coaches. Federal policies,
therefore, must foster well-prepared and effective administrators as
well as leadership skills within school professionals of different
ranks and positions. And it is time that we recognize and support
education support professionals, without whom no school would be able
to succeed.
Finally, we must ensure that great educators exist in every school,
whether high- or low-achieving. The Federal Government must develop
policies and provide funding that enables struggling schools and
districts to offer incentives and conditions that will attract and
retain the best educators in the Nation.
Why should we focus on each stage of the pathway from undergraduate
education all the way to retention of veteran educators?
Research shows that, in order to infuse the educational system with
great educators, each segment of the educator pipeline is important,
including undergraduate education, recruitment of top graduates,
graduate preparation, rigorous standards for entry into the profession,
induction and placement, certification and licensure, mentoring,
professional development, advancement and retention. Ultimately, we
must develop systemic ways to recruit legions of top undergraduate
students and professionals leaving other professions, to prepare them
effectively, and to nurture and safeguard their path to and longevity
within the classroom.
Can we foster excellence while establishing attainable standards within
the teaching profession?
Teachers need to receive more than high-quality preparation within
schools of education. The bulk of their learning comes from their
experience in the classroom. We need policies that foster continuous
learning in the form of high-quality, job-embedded professional
development, mentoring programs, common planning and reflection time,
and timely and continuous feedback from peers and school leadership.
Funds should be provided so that more teachers receive the
opportunity to earn certification from the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards; Board-certified teachers should be
deemed highly qualified for accountability purposes.
Federal policy also should recognize that some teachers must teach
multiple subjects because of their geography or student population.
This may include rural, special education, or elementary and middle
school teachers. Therefore, teacher quality standards, while rigorous,
also must provide accommodations for teachers in special circumstances
and give them reasonable, common sense opportunities to improve or
increase their skills and breadth of certification.
What can we do to improve school leadership?
Similar to other educators, we must ensure that school principals
and other administrators receive adequate preparation, mentoring and
continuous professional development and support to improve their craft.
They must receive timely and useful feedback from school staff as well
as other administrators and be evaluated fairly and comprehensively.
And they must have the resources and the staff necessary to manage a
successful school.
We must also advance policies that advance the leadership skills of
teachers and education support professionals. All staff benefit from
opportunities to both exhibit and receive leadership and mentoring
within their specific profession or job category.
Why do we need a national education institute as well as State and
local reform within teacher and principal preparation programs?
Elevating the profession means ensuring that the most talented
individuals in the Nation have access to world-class education
preparation programs. The establishment of a National Education
Institute (NEI), a highly competitive public academy for the Nation's
most promising K-12 teacher candidates in diverse academic disciplines,
would allow the Federal Government to attract and retain top
undergraduate scholars as well as second-career professionals and
prepare them as leaders of school reform within school systems around
the Nation. NEI would provide an intensive 1-year path (free tuition,
room and board in exchange for 7-year commitment to service in select
public schools) to full licensure, school placement, induction and
lifetime professional development and mentoring opportunities from NEI
faculty/graduates/master teachers, and annual meetings with other NEA
alumni.
NEI also would partner with existing teacher preparation programs
to establish a highly competitive ``National Scholars'' program in
select universities and to foster regional and local excellence in
teacher preparation, licensure and induction.
NEI would also sponsor a principal or leadership development
program for top candidates who have served as teachers for at least 3
years and wish to enter an intensive program to become a principal or
school leader in a priority school.
Can we do more to recognize and support education support
professionals?
Education support professionals (ESPs) comprise a critical part of
the education team. They include school secretaries, custodians, bus
drivers, teacher aides, food service personnel, paraprofessional
laboratory technicians, telephone operators, medical records personnel,
bookkeepers, accountants, mail room clerks, computer programmers,
library and reference assistants, audio-visual technicians, and others.
Schools cannot function without high-functioning ESPs. The Federal
Government should create incentives and provide funds to recruit
certified and qualified ESPs, and ensure they are included in job
growth and professional development opportunities.
Can we recruit and create incentives for high-quality educators to work
in hard-to-staff schools?
The NEA supports financial and other incentives to encourage top
educators to work in hard-to-staff schools. Such incentives are most
effective when they are voluntary, locally agreed upon, and include
non-financial incentives such as the availability of continuous
professional development, mentoring, paraprofessional assistance,
effective school leadership, sufficient resources, planning time, class
size reduction, and other factors that improve job quality and
effectiveness. Inexperienced or new teachers should not automatically
be placed in hard-to-staff schools until they have attained sufficient
preparation and classroom experience.
NEA Recommendations to Congress:
Focus on intensive efforts in the areas of undergraduate
preparation and educator recruitment, preparation, certification and
licensure, induction, professional development, mentoring, tenure,
advancement and retention.
Foster continuous learning and rigorous yet attainable
standards within the teaching profession.
Prioritize school leadership at all levels and positions
within schools.
Create a prestigious national education institute and
provide incentives to States to create world-class teacher preparation
programs that attract the top tier of college graduates nationally.
Recognize and support the contributions and achievement of
education support professionals.
Offer financial and non-financial incentives to teachers
who teach in hard-to-staff schools.
4. champion adequate, equitable, and sustainable funding for all
public schools
States and local school districts play a critical role in providing
adequate and equitable resources to all of their schools. Likewise, the
Federal Government must play an active supporting role to ensure that a
student does not miss out on key opportunities by virtue of their zip
code. Programs like Title I and IDEA must be fully funded because they
are critical in providing necessary and sustained funds to schools
serving disadvantaged students and special populations. States must be
required to develop ``adequacy and equity'' plans that would measure
and address disparities in educational resources, opportunities,
programs and quality among communities and districts. Additionally, the
Federal Government should reserve a portion of its funds to provide
intensive support to struggling schools and provide research,
assistance and guidance to foster sustainability of high-quality
education programs, even in times of economic hardship.
What is the Federal role in ensuring adequacy and equity in schools?
The original goal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was
to provide educational opportunities to poor and disadvantaged
students. That goal should endure in the future. While the bulk of
educational funding comes from State and local coffers, the Federal
Government must increase, concentrate and sustain formula funding in
schools whose students lack the same opportunities and resources as
other schools. In addition, it can provide competitive funding to
encourage States to bridge gaps in educational, skills and
opportunities among schools.
Finally, it can develop policies that encourage States to play a
more active role in monitoring and addressing (through ``Adequacy and
Equity Plans'') specific success factors and disparities in schools
that are persistently low-achieving or that have significant
educational opportunity gaps. By requiring States to detail plans for
helping close these fiscal and resource gaps in their Adequacy and
Equity Plans, the U.S. Department of Education and the public can begin
to provide critical support for State and local efforts to provide
adequate and equitable funding for all schools.
Can we reserve our most intensive focus and resources for our high
priority schools?
The Title I School Improvement Grants (SIG) Program should be
revamped to require use of only research-based models of school reform
to help meet the needs of more high priority schools--those at risk of
becoming persistently low-achieving or that have significant
educational opportunity gaps. The SIG program should be modified to
allow State and local educational agencies clearer and immediate access
to use local, State or regional turnaround teams, to provide for
intensive team teaching and collaborative instructional strategies
rather than firing half of the staff, and to require parental/caregiver
and community engagement rather than closing a school or turning it
over to a charter management organization.
NEA Recommendations to Congress:
Ensure adequate and equitable funding for schools, and
sustain and fully fund critical programs such as Title I and IDEA.
Help States and districts to identify disparities in
educational resources, supports, programs, opportunities, class sizes
and personnel through Equity and Adequacy plans.
Provide support and foster research-based turnaround
strategies for high priority schools.
Principles for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA) 2010
The reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) must
focus on policies that would help transform public schools into high-
quality learning centers by recognizing the shared responsibility among
local, State, and Federal Governments. Given the law's complexity, each
proposed change must be carefully considered to fully understand its
effect on our Nation's schools and students. Therefore, the National
Education Association encourages Congress to listen to the voices of
educators in developing legislative proposals and offers these
principles for ESEA reauthorization:
The Federal Government should serve as a partner to
support State efforts to transform public schools.
The 21st century requires a partnership among all
levels of government--Federal, State and local--to make up for
the historic inequitable distribution of tools and resources to
our Nation's students.
We should support effective models of innovation
(such as community schools, career academies, well-designed and
accountable charter schools, magnet schools, inclusion of 21st
century skills, and educational technology), and create a more
innovative educational experience to prepare students for
challenging post-secondary experiences and the world of work.
The Federal Government plays a critical role in ensuring
that all children--especially the most disadvantaged--have access to an
education that will prepare them to succeed in the 21st century. The
Federal Government should focus on high-quality early childhood
education, parental/family involvement and mentoring programs, as well
as quality healthcare for children to help overcome issues of poverty
that may impede student progress. It should support community school
initiatives in an effort to address these issues comprehensively; must
invest in proven programs such as knowledge-rich curricula and
intensive interventions; and must provide resources to improve teaching
and learning conditions through smaller classes and school repair and
modernization.
A revamped accountability system must correctly identify
schools in need of assistance and provide a system of effective
interventions to help them succeed. The schools most in need of
improvement deserve targeted, effective, research-based interventions
designed to address their specific needs. States and school districts
should be given significant flexibility through a transparent process
to meet agreed-upon outcomes, using innovative data systems and a
variety of growth models based on movement towards proficiency. School
quality and student learning must be based on multiple valid and
appropriate measures and indicators.
The Federal Government should respect the profession of
teachers and education support professionals by providing supports and
resources to help students succeed. Hard-to-staff schools, especially
those with high concentrations of disadvantaged students or those that
have consistently struggled to meet student achievement targets, need
significant supports and resources, including additional targeted
funding to attract and retain quality educators; induction programs
with intensive mentoring components; and professional development for
educational support professionals.
The Federal Government should require States to detail how
they will remedy inequities in educational tools, opportunities and
resources. Funding should be targeted to schools with the highest
concentrations of poverty. To build on the historic investment through
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Federal Government
should guarantee funding for critical Federal programs, such as Title I
of ESEA and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
State and local collective bargaining for school employees
must be respected.
Targeted programs that support students and schools with
unique needs--such as English Language Acquisition, Impact Aid, rural
schools and Indian education--should be maintained and expanded.
The Federal Government should serve as a research
clearinghouse, making available to educators a wealth of knowledge
about how best to teach students and help schools improve practices.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Van Roekel. I was remiss in
not mentioning that you came from the Ice Cream Capital of the
World.
[Laughter.]
For those of you who do not know, that is Le Mars, IA.
Mr. Butt, welcome.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES BUTT, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, H-E-B, SAN
ANTONIO, TX
Mr. Butt. Good afternoon, Senator. It is truly an honor to
address this distinguished committee.
Our business had its beginning in 1905 when my grandmother
established a little grocery store to keep her family afloat,
and we are still going in Texas today.
Recently, a major manufacturer, which opened a plant in
Texas, had 100,000 job openings. Less than 5 percent of the
applicants made it through the selection process. This
illustrates our national dilemma.
A McKinsey & Company study, which has been mentioned here,
showed an education gap with the top countries such as Korea
and Finland of $3 billion to $5 billion per day. I repeat the
number because it is an astonishingly big number. In McKinsey's
opinion, the existing gap in achievement imposed the equivalent
of a permanent national recession.
Now, their methodology is based on the supposition that in
the 15 years after the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, we had
lifted student achievement to what they consider achievable
performance. They then asked what was the economic impact in
the 10 following years between 1998 and 2008 of not having
raised achievement levels. In addition to the massive gap with
global leaders in education, they identified three internal
gaps. The racial gap between whites and African-Americans and
Latinos. They estimate that at 2 to 4 percent of GDP. From
students with families below $25,000 in household income to
those with higher incomes, estimated at 3 to 5 percent of GDP.
And for States that are below the national average, if they
were brought up to the average, again 3 to 5 percent of GDP.
Now, these are big numbers and hypothetical ones, but they
do strike a responsive chord in me. A very small town, a very
poor town on the Texas/Mexican border, Hidalgo, Texas, through
great leadership has sent students to top national schools year
after year.
An urban, highly diverse, 50 percent economically
disadvantaged district in the Houston area with over 100,000
students and 98 language and dialect traditions is tied for
first place in graduation rates in the United States among the
100 largest districts. Success in large urban public school
settings is clearly possible.
Let us say the McKinsey numbers are overstated and the
economic gap is less than they say, which I personally doubt.
It is still devastatingly unaffordable for our Nation. Even if
you divide it in half, it is unaffordable.
In the success stories I mentioned, leadership is the key.
In one case, it is a long-serving mayor who is dedicated to a
great school. In the other, it is a smart, energized
superintendent who uses data well, innovates extensively, and
is not daunted by challenges.
Now, if you have sat in a high school class recently, you
will be impressed with the fact in a low-income school,
particularly, but not exclusively, that schools are inheriting
an over-entertained, distracted student. This is the product of
the shallow learning culture that we have all created. This
calls, in my view, for a more powerful role on the part of the
teacher than he or she has ever played before, what I call a
leadership teacher. Perhaps it is unfortunate that the schools
are required to play this social role, but in my view it is
important to our success.
School boards often micro-manage but they miss their macro
responsibility of choosing a superintendent and supporting her
or him. In their defense, our system has produced too few
superintendents who drive results. Our debate frequently misses
where the vital choices are made--school boards and choices of
superintendents who impact the principals and ultimately
teachers. The appropriate role of Federal, State, and municipal
government and funding are, of course, crucial issues.
Technology and full-day, quality pre-K are big missings. Title
I funds are vital.
The diversity of views from education writers is wide, from
charters to blow up the system, test more, test less. A key
point is that we have success models now but are not
replicating them. If you can find a way to stimulate the rapid
development of results-
oriented superintendents and principals, it will be impactful
because they are the ones who fight to find and keep great
teachers, which is where it counts.
Underlying it all, Senator, is America's will to win. Your
leadership and stimulation of our national thought process
about education and its vital role can be transformative. It is
crucial that we see education as an investment and not a cost.
Thank you for your service to the Nation.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Butt follows:]
Prepared Statement of Charles Butt
summary
All industries are brutally competitive today, especially during
this recession, and most companies, like ours, have multiple
productivity, process and efficiency efforts underway. Workplace-ready
high school graduates are crucial to driving these programs forward.
Firms are pushing for more college-bound people in math, science and
technology.
Companies need both and it's vital for the Nation that we produce
both.
A 2009 McKinsey & Company study showed that our education gap with
top performing nations costs the United States $3 to $5 billion per day
in GDP.
Today the existing gaps in educational achievement impose the
equivalent of a permanent national recession, as demonstrated by
McKinsey's study of the Economic Costs of the Achievement Gap.
If by 1998, 15 years after the publication of A Nation at Risk, we
had improved African-American and Latino performance to that of white
students, U.S. GDP would be $310 to $525 billion larger annually.
If we had lifted the performance of students with family incomes of
less than $25,000 to the same level of students with families earning
more than $25,000, our 2008 GDP would have been $400-670 billion
larger. And for individuals, avoidable shortfalls in academic
achievement impose heavy and often tragic consequences via lower
earnings, poor health, and higher rates of incarceration.
Only 20-25 percent of new jobs in Texas require a 4-year college
education. Nevertheless, much of the impetus continues to be focused on
the vital national goal of preparing high schoolers for college.
Developing globally competitive workplace skills calls increasingly
for ``teaching as leadership'' rather than solely communicating subject
content. Great teaching can open young minds to a wider, challenging
world.
______
Good afternoon Mr. Chairman, it's a great honor to address you and
this distinguished committee.
Our business had its beginning in 1905 when my grandmother opened a
small grocery to keep her family afloat. Since the 1930's, we've given
5 percent of our pre-tax income to public and charitable causes and
consider ourselves close to the communities we serve. We now employ
75,000 and are the largest private employer in Texas.
Recently a major manufacturer opening a large new Texas plant had
100,000 applicants. Less than 5 percent made it through the entire
selection process for these new manufacturing jobs. This illustrates
the dilemma of a society less than well-prepared for this century.
A 2009 McKinsey & Company study showed that our education gap with
top performing nations costs the United States $3 to $5 billion per day
in GDP.
In McKinsey's opinion the existing gaps in educational achievement
impose the equivalent of a permanent national recession.
The McKinsey methodology is based on the supposition that in the 15
years after the 1983 report A Nation at Risk we had lifted student
achievement to what they consider ``achievable performance.'' What
then, they asked, was the economic impact in the 10 following years,
between 1998 and 2008, of not having raised achievement levels?
In addition to the $3 to $5 billion daily gap (accumulating
annually to 9 to 16 percent of GDP) with nations that are global
education leaders, they identified three major internal gaps in our own
country.
The racial achievement gap between Whites and African-
Americans and Latinos is estimated to have been 2 to 4 percent of GDP--
$300 to $500 billion annually.
The achievement gap between students from families with
income under $25,000 and those with higher incomes is estimated to have
been 3 to 5 percent of GDP or $400 to $600 billion.
If States performing under the national average had
reached the average we would have gained 3 to 5 percent in GDP-- again
in the range of $500 billion based on McKinsey's model.
Obviously, these are big numbers and hypothetical ones but they
strike a responsive chord with me.
Nevertheless, a small, very poor town on the Texas/Mexico border,
Hidalgo, TX, through great leadership, has sent students to top
national schools year after year.
An urban, highly diverse, 50 percent economically disadvantaged
district in the Houston area with over 100,000 students and 98 language
and dialect traditions is tied for first place in graduation rates in
the United States among the 100 largest districts. Truly inspiring!
Success in large urban public school settings is clearly possible!
Senators, these things jump out at me.
Let's say the McKinsey numbers are overstated and the economic gap
is less than they say, which I seriously doubt-- it's still
devastatingly unaffordable.
In the success stories I mentioned, leadership is the key. In one
case a long serving, dedicated Mayor, in the other a smart, energized
superintendent who uses data well, innovates extensively, and isn't
daunted by challenges.
School boards often micromanage but miss their macro responsibility
of choosing a superintendent and supporting her or him. In their
defense our system has produced too few superintendents who drive
results.
Our debate is too often missing where the vital choices are made:
school boards and choices of superintendents who impact principals and
ultimately teachers.
The appropriate role of Federal and State Governments and funding
are, of course, key issues. Technology and full-day, quality pre-k are
big missings. Title I funds are vital.
The diversity of views from education writers is wide--from
charters to ``blow up the system,'' test more, test less. We have
success models now but we aren't replicating them.
In the business world leadership is key. Many business ideas don't
apply to education but I believe this one does.
If you can find a way to stimulate the rapid development of
results-oriented superintendent and principal leadership it will be
impactful because they are the ones who fight to find and keep great
teachers--which is where it counts.
Underlying it all is America's will to win--your leadership and
stimulation of the national thought process about education's vital
role can be transformative.
As a nation, it's crucial we see education as an investment, not a
cost.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Butt.
Now we will turn to Mr. Castellani.
STATEMENT OF JOHN CASTELLANI, PRESIDENT, BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE,
WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Castellani. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Enzi,
members of the committee. I very much welcome the opportunity
to appear before you today to address this vitally important
task of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act.
I am appearing on behalf of the Business Coalition for
Student Achievement. BCSA is a business-based education reform
coalition jointly led by my organization, the Business
Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The coalition is
chaired by Accenture's CEO, Bill Green; State Farm CEO Ed Rust;
and the former CEO of Intel, Craig Barrett. Our members include
business leaders that represent every sector of the U.S.
economy, all of whom believe that improving America's K-12
education system is necessary to provide a strong foundation
for both U.S. competitiveness and for individuals in the
country to succeed in today's rapidly changing world.
The Business Coalition includes grassroots involvement from
local and State chambers, roundtables, and business groups in
rural, suburban and urban communities across the country.
The recent deep recession and the currently painfully high
rates of U.S. unemployment have cast longstanding U.S. weakness
in education into sharp relief. Lagging U.S.-education
attainment has real-world consequences for individuals and for
the economy as a whole. Workers with less education suffer the
highest rates of unemployment and an under-educated workforce
reduces economic growth.
The current U.S. unemployment rate announced last week is
9.7 percent, which we know all too well. For Americans who do
not have a high school diploma, it is 15.6 percent compared to
5 percent for college graduates, an almost 11 point
differential. In the world that our companies and our members
face every year, which has been cited by other panelists, where
the gap between what we are able to achieve here in the United
States and what our competitors are able to achieve around the
world--it is a gap that is not standing still. It is not
static. The world is not standing still. Despite the recession
that is global in scope, the worldwide knowledge-based economy
continues to advance and more and more of today's jobs require
an even higher level of skill and education, not just the high-
tech and professional jobs but all jobs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the fastest-
growing occupations are those that require higher levels of
education and greater technical competence.
We all have a stake in the success of the American public
schools and the students, and that is why our coalition used
reauthorizing ESEA as a top priority for Congress. Today we are
releasing our principles for reauthorization, and they are
included in my written testimony.
The No Child Left Behind Act focused attention on the need
to close the achievement gap and help all students reach the
highest grade level proficiency in reading and math. Now we
believe is the time to ramp up evidence-based reforms and
innovations to close the two achievement gaps. We need to close
the gap in education performance between poor and minority
students and their more advantaged peers in the United States.
We also need to close the gap between U.S. students and their
international peers.
The bottom line is that U.S. students should graduate from
high school ready for post-secondary education and training
without the need for remediation by post-secondary educators,
employers, or the military.
Education reform is in our view an economic security issue,
a national security issue, and a vital social and moral issue.
We believe it is not the time to point fingers and play a blame
game because we believe we all can and must do better.
On behalf of the Business Coalition for Student
Achievement, I urge you and your colleagues to move ahead with
a bipartisan approach to reauthorization of ESEA. I would point
out that we come to this--and I certainly come to this--not as
an education expert but as employers who understand the
importance of strong and successful public schools.
We look forward to working with you and the members of the
committee to enact reform that does right by our students and
prepares America's future workforce for the jobs of tomorrow.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Castellani follows:]
Prepared Statement of John Castellani
summary
Mr. Chairman, Senator Enzi, members of the committee, my name is
John Castellani and I serve as President of Business Roundtable, an
association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies. I
welcome the opportunity to address the vitally important task of
reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) on
behalf of the Business Coalition for Student Achievement. BCSA is a
business-based education reform coalition jointly led by Business
Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Business Coalition
includes grassroots involvement from local and State chambers,
roundtables and business groups in rural, suburban and urban
communities across the country.
The recent deep recession and current painfully high rates of U.S.
unemployment have cast longstanding U.S. weaknesses in education into
sharp relief. Lagging U.S. education attainment has real-world
consequences for individuals and for the economy as a whole.
Workers with less education suffer the highest rates of
unemployment and an undereducated workforce reduces economic growth.
The current U.S. unemployment rate announced last week is 9.7 percent,
but for Americans who don't have a high school diploma it is 15.6
percent compared to 5.0 percent for college graduates--a 10 point
differential. According to a McKinsey analysis, if America had closed
the international achievement gap between 1983 and 1998 and raised its
education performance to the level of nations such as Finland and
Korea, U.S. economic output would have been between $1.3 trillion and
$2.3 trillion higher in 2008, an increase equal to 9 to 16 percent of
GDP.
More and more of today's jobs require ever-higher levels of skill
and education--not only high-tech and professional jobs, but all jobs.
The Bureau of Labor statistics reports that the fastest growing
occupations are those that require higher levels of education and
greater technical competence.
That is why the Business Coalition for Student Achievement views
reauthorizing ESEA as top priority for Congress. Today we are releasing
Principles for Reauthorization--they are included in my written
testimony. Now is the time to ramp up evidence-based reforms and
innovations that close two achievement gaps. We need to close the gap
in education performance between poor and minority students and their
more advantaged peers in the U.S. We also need to close the gap between
U.S. students and their international peers.
The bottom line: U.S. students should graduate from high school
ready for post-secondary education and training without need for
remediation by post-secondary educators, employers or the military.
Education reform is an economic security issue, a national security
issue and a vital social and moral issue. This is not the time to point
fingers and play the blame game. We all can and must do better. On
behalf of the Business Coalition for Student Achievement, I urge you
and your colleagues to move ahead with a bipartisan approach to ESEA
reauthorization.
______
Mr. Chairman, Senator Enzi, members of the committee. Good morning.
My name is John Castellani and I serve as President of the Business
Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S.
companies with more than $5 trillion in annual revenues and more than
12 million employees. Business Roundtable member companies comprise
nearly a third of the total value of the U.S. stock markets and pay
more than 60 percent of all corporate income taxes paid to the Federal
Government.
I welcome the opportunity to appear before you today to address the
vitally important task of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act on behalf of the Business Coalition for Student
Achievement (BCSA), a business-based education reform coalition jointly
led by Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The
coalition is chaired by William (Bill) D. Green, Chairman & CEO of
Accenture, Edward B. Rust Jr., Chairman & CEO of State Farm, and Craig
Barrett, former Chairman & CEO of Intel.
BCSA's members include businesses of every size and grassroots
business organizations, including local and State chambers of commerce
and business roundtables. The small, medium and large businesses that
comprise the coalition represent every sector of the U.S. economy in
rural, suburban and urban communities. They have joined the coalition
because they believe that improving America's K-12 education system is
necessary to provide a strong foundation for both U.S. competitiveness
and for individuals to succeed in today's rapidly changing world.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that you are holding this hearing today
because BCSA believes that reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act--or ESEA--should be a top priority for Congress. The No
Child Left Behind Act, as the most recent iteration of the 1965
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, helped focus attention on the
need to close the achievement gap and help all students throughout the
Nation reach at least grade-level proficiency in reading and
mathematics. It put a spotlight on the need to improve results for
special needs students and English Language Learners.
We believe that now is the time to build on No Child Left Behind
and ramp up evidence-based reforms and innovations that close two
achievement gaps. We need to close the gap in education performance
between poor and minority students and their more advantaged peers in
the United States as well as the achievement gap between U.S. students
and their international peers.
The recent deep recession, the current painfully high rates of U.S.
unemployment and underemployment, and the reordering of the world's
economy in the wake of a global financial crisis have cast longstanding
U.S. weaknesses in education into sharp relief. America's low high
school graduation and college completion rates represent systemic
failure that leaves our children inadequately prepared in an
increasingly competitive world.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 19 percent of
American ninth graders graduate from high school and then enter and
graduate from college on time. Only 28 percent of American students
pursuing associates degrees complete them in 3 years and only 56
percent of American college students complete a bachelor's degree
within 6 years. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), the United States, which once enjoyed the
world's highest rate of high school completion--a status it lost 40
years ago--ranks 18th out of 24 developed nations in terms of high
school graduation rates. Similarly, as recently as 1995, America was
tied for first place in terms of college graduation rates but now ranks
14th. Worse, the United States is now the only developed nation with a
younger generation that has a lower level of high school or equivalent
education than the older generations.
Lagging U.S. educational attainment has real-world consequences for
individuals and for the economy as a whole. Workers with less education
suffer the highest rates of unemployment. According to the most recent
data released last week, the current U.S. unemployment rate is 9.7
percent, but unemployment among Americans with less than a high school
diploma is 15.6 percent while unemployment among college graduates is
5.0 percent. The difference is staggering--and we know those workers
with less education will be the last hired as the economy recovers.
McKinsey and Company has modeled the impact of low educational
attainment on national economic performance. According to their
analysis, if America had closed the international achievement gap
between 1983 and 1998 and raised its performance to the level of
nations such as Finland and Korea, U.S. economic output would have been
between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher in 2008, an increase
equal to 9 to 16 percent of GDP.
Two months ago, the Alliance for Excellent Education released a
study of the economic impact of reducing the dropout rate by half in 45
major metropolitan areas. The impact on personal earnings, consumer
spending and local and regional job creation is undeniable. I would
expect to see similar results in rural communities.
The world is not standing still. Despite a recession that was
global in scope, the worldwide knowledge-based economy continues to
advance. More and more of today's jobs require ever-higher levels of
skill and education--not only high-tech and professional jobs, but all
jobs. In December, Business Roundtable released the findings and
recommendations from The Springboard Project--an independent commission
it convened--to ensure that American workers thrive after the economy
rebounds. As part of the project we conducted a survey of employers in
July of last year which revealed that employers perceive a large and
growing gap between the educational and technical skills requirement of
the positions they need to fill and the preparedness of U.S. workers to
fill them. Their perception is, in fact, reality. The Bureau of Labor
statistics reports that the fastest growing occupations are those that
require higher levels of education and greater technical competence.
The situation is clear. Jobs increasingly require higher levels of
educational attainment and technical proficiency and Americans are
increasingly less qualified to fill them. It is this growing mismatch
that motivates business leaders like Bill Green, Craig Barrett and Ed
Rust to become so personally involved in education reform. They,
together with many other U.S. business leaders, have rolled up their
sleeves and joined BCSA's effort to advocate for an ESEA
reauthorization that does a better job for America's children.
In many respects, the education reform landscape is very different
since the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law 8 years ago.
Consider these four noteworthy developments:
The Common Core State Standards Initiative, led by the
National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School
Officers, is finalizing a draft of K-12 standards in math and English/
Language Arts. This voluntary effort by States to develop a common set
of internationally-benchmarked, college- and career-ready standards
that all students, in every grade, in every State and community across
the United States should meet in two core subjects, with science coming
next, is truly remarkable.
Better transparency and public reporting of student
achievement data have put a spotlight on high school graduation rates,
and particularly on the approximately 2,000 high schools (about 12
percent of American high schools) that produce more than half of all
U.S.-high school dropouts.
Likewise, it is no longer acceptable to obscure
achievement gaps by reporting a school's average student achievement
without disaggregating the data on performance results for all groups
of students. States and school districts have deployed new data systems
to measure and track student, teacher and school performance.
The stimulus bill included $100 billion in Federal support
for new and existing K-12 education programs at the State, school
district and individual school levels. Since the Administration
established performance-based requirements to obtain competitively
awarded ``Race to the Top'' and ``Investing in Innovation'' Federal
education grants, we have seen how competitive grants can provide
incentives to change long-standing education policies.
Taking account of this changed landscape, and the need to get more
than incremental improvement BCSA has developed principles for
effective, results-oriented education reform in the context of ESEA
reauthorization. We are releasing the following principles today:
Expect Internationally Benchmarked Standards and Assessments to
Reflect Readiness for College, Workplace and International
Competition.--The standards and assessment provisions in a reauthorized
ESEA must:
Incorporate challenging State-developed common
internationally benchmarked standards and aligned assessments tied to
college and workplace readiness.
Continue annual assessments of student achievement in math
and reading, while working to establish annual assessments of student
achievement in science.
Invest in R&D to develop a next generation of assessments
to measure progress in other subjects and skills needed for college and
workplace readiness.
Base annual progress measurements on rigorous measures of
year-to-year growth in academic achievement tied to specific goals,
including goals for specific subgroups of students.
Provide for the fair and comprehensive participation of
special needs and English language learning students with particular
focus on ``at-risk'' students and schools.
Hold All Schools Accountable While Putting a Laser-like Focus on
Ending ``Dropout Factories.''--Schools must continue to be accountable
for getting all students (and subgroups) proficient in at least
science, mathematics and reading. In addition, special attention must
be placed on the less-than-3 percent of high schools that produce half
of America's dropouts. Specifically, this must include:
Maintaining the current law's consequences for schools
that are chronically under-performing and ensuring that States and
districts undertake proven interventions to put an end to ``business as
usual'' at chronically low-performing schools.
Increasing support for the School Improvement Grants
program, while simplifying current Federal guidance to target resources
and support to those schools in most dire need of reform.
Supporting initiatives to develop new personnel and
governance policies in low-performing schools.
Targeting distribution of effective educators to high-
needs schools through updated incentive programs.
Measure and Reward Teacher and Administrator Success.--High-
performing schools need highly effective teachers and administrators,
and the best way to do that is to:
Change the current law's definition of ``highly qualified
teachers'' to the definition of ``highly effective teachers'' used in
the Race to the Top Fund.
Redesign and strengthen ineffective professional
development programs to make them more ``teacher-driven'' using
research proven strategies that boost student achievement.
Improve the use of data systems to measure teacher
effectiveness and design compensation systems based on pay for
performance models, not just seniority and additional training.
Implement policies and practices to fairly and efficiently
remove ineffective educators.
Continue to focus on policies that promote equal
distribution of highly effective teachers. Align teacher preparation at
the post-secondary level with expectations for teacher effectiveness
and common, internationally benchmarked, college- and career-ready
standards.
Invest in high quality alternative certification
initiatives and programs that bring talented individuals, including
majors in STEM fields and second career teachers, into the teaching
pool.
Expand the Teacher Incentive Fund with a priority on STEM.
Foster a ``Client-Centered Approach'' by Districts and Schools.--
Good organizations, whether public or private, know that without an
intensive focus on its clients, long term success is impossible. ESEA
should require the following ``client-centered'' provisions:
Easy to understand report cards that include data on the
performance of each student group and that do not rely on the use of
statistical gimmicks and sleights-of-hand to sugar-coat results and
undermine accountability measures.
High quality Supplemental Educational Services (SES)
programs that require districts to provide students and parents with
timely and easily understood information on their options to choose
either free tutoring or the ability to move to higher performing public
schools.
Increased support for parent involvement programs.
Additional involvement of community and business groups in
school improvement, transformation, and turnaround activities.
Leverage Data Systems to Inform Instruction, Improvement, and
Interventions.--The use of data to inform and improve student learning
has been one of the most important developments in education reform
over the past decade. ESEA reauthorization should build upon these
efforts, including recent efforts supported by the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and develop fully functioning statewide
data systems that:
Enable teachers to access user-friendly data to help
support instruction.
Offer timely, accurate collection, analysis and use of
high quality longitudinal data that align to district systems to inform
decisionmaking and improve teacher effectiveness and student
achievement.
Provide educator training on the use of data to
differentiate instruction for students, especially for those who are
not yet proficient and those who are more advanced.
Integrate existing data systems so that teachers and
parents get a comprehensive and secure profile that includes
information necessary to customize instruction.
Provide leadership with the full range of information they
need to allocate resources or to develop, enhance or close programs.
Invest in School Improvement and Encourage Technology and Other
Innovations to Improve Student Achievement.--Improving schools in the
21st century is not a static process, it requires constant innovation
and research focused on what works. ESEA must include support for high-
quality research and proven reform initiatives by:
Using the competitive approach in the Race to the Top and
Investing in Innovation funds to support the next generation of
partners (non-profit and for-profit) to assist with school reform
efforts.
Supporting R&D to improve school, educator, and student
performance as well as reforms that revamp unproductive school
governance, compensation regimes, and building use.
Supporting expansion of high-quality charter schools and
virtual schools and holding them accountable for improved academic
achievement with the same expectation that we have for public schools.
Supporting academic-focused extended learning time
initiatives (including after school and summer programs) for at-risk
students.
Reforming secondary schools and holding them accountable
for increasing the graduation rate (using the common definition adopted
by the Nation's governors), and graduating students who are ready for
college and work.
Offering opportunities for students to enroll in advanced
coursework (such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate),
early-college high schools, or dual enrollment programs that prepare
students for college and careers.
Engaging students by demonstrating that standards based
curriculum has real world applications in acquisition of knowledge and
increased opportunities for career exploration and exposure.
Utilizing advanced communications technologies to improve
delivery and increase effectiveness for students and teachers with
optimization of online learning tools and multi-platform devices and
systems.
Encourage parent engagement by using technology to provide
information about their child's achievement and how to best support
remediation or determine the need for increased support where
appropriate.
Establish a Dedicated Strategy and Funding Stream to Improve STEM
Education.--For students to graduate from high school with the
foundation, knowledge, and skills they need in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM), ESEA should:
Support a targeted ``innovation fund,'' which focuses
funds towards taking proven STEM programs to scale while encouraging
the development and research of new strategies to increase student
achievement in STEM subject areas.
Support collaborations (schools, districts, States,
communities and businesses along with other partners) to develop high-
quality online and in-person professional development for STEM
teachers.
Continue development and support of student curricula,
inquiry-based learning, project-based learning and hands-on activities
in addition to other proven strategies to improve student achievement
in STEM.
As you can see from these principles Mr. Chairman, BCSA has gone to
some length to develop comprehensive recommendations for ESEA
reauthorization. We believe this is one of the most important issues
you will address this year. We strongly endorse ESEA reauthorization.
Education undergirds everything we do, as individuals and as a society.
We cannot make sustained progress on creating stable, long-term
employment, on boosting economic growth or in solving our greatest
national challenges, such as responding to terrorism or addressing
climate change and the need for energy security without addressing the
underlying weakness of our educational system. Absent serious,
effective, results-oriented reform, America's underperforming
educational system will continue to fail many of America's youth and
hold back the U.S. economy. Education reform is an economic security
issue, a national security issue and a vital social and moral issue.
This is not the time to point fingers and play the blame game. We all
can and must do better.
Mr. Chairman, I applaud you for holding this hearing today. On
behalf of the Business Coalition for Student Achievement, I urge you to
move ahead with a bipartisan approach for ESEA reauthorization. We come
to this not as education experts but as employers and taxpayers who
understand the importance of strong and successful public schools.
Companies and local, State and national business organizations are
committed to ensuring U.S. high school graduates are prepared for post-
secondary education, careers and participation in our democracy. We
look forward to working with you and the members of this committee to
enact reform with bipartisan support that does right by our students
and prepares America's future workforce for the jobs of tomorrow.
Thank you again Mr. Chairman, Senator Enzi and members of the
committee. I appreciate this opportunity to express Business
Roundtable's views on this important legislation. I welcome your
questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Castellani. Thank
you all for your excellent testimony and for being here.
We will start a 5-minute round of questions.
Mr. Schleicher, you pointed out that in some of the OECD
countries--I do not know how many, but they tend to track the
top 10 percent of their graduating classes to be teachers. I
assume you are talking about the top 10 percent--is that out of
college or out of high school?
Mr. Schleicher. College.
The Chairman. Out of college. Now, I do not know how they
do that because, Mr. Van Roekel, you talked about the fact that
it is teachers who are going to impact our students and we want
to have the best teachers. I do not understand how you do that.
How do they attract the top 10 percent when in this country, if
you are in the top 10 percent, you go out and make a lot of
money. How do they do that? You said it was not just payment.
Mr. Schleicher. You have countries where it is payment. If
you look to Korea, Korea pays its teachers about twice GDP per
capita, twice as much as the United States in relative terms.
Finland, the country that has the most attractive teaching
profession, does not pay teachers very well but creates a set
of incentives and a working environment that is very attractive
for knowledge workers, a working environment that offers lots
of opportunities for professional development, has well-defined
career paths. It is not sort of a single job, but you can move
up, and it is very open outward and inward mobility. The field
of work is very, very attractive for people who are knowledge
workers despite average pay. They are not that well paid, but
they get 9 to 10 applicants for each post now.
The Chairman. Mr. Van Roekel, how do we attract the top 10
percent into teaching?
Mr. Van Roekel. I think there are two things that we should
be looking at. No. 1, we will have to deal with the issue of
compensation because in our economy here in the States, we are
competing with other occupations that require a college degree,
and we simply are not competitive. A friend of mine who is an
attorney--we both started the same year. As an associate, he
started at $11,000. I started at $6,100. I asked him just about
6 months ago, what does an associate make in your law firm now
in Phoenix, and he said about $125,000. We cannot get teachers
at $35,000 starting. It is four times as much. That is one
thing.
The second thing is that within the teaching profession, we
have many first-generation college graduates. Many of my
colleagues--we were the first in our family to have the honor
and privilege of going to college. The top achieving one-third
of students who are in the poor category have the same
probability of going to college as the lowest one-third in
academic ability for those who have resources. I think there is
a great potential in reaching out to those very high achieving
who have commitments to their community, they are first-
generation, and would love to have an opportunity to go to
college, and I believe that is a great source of future
teachers.
The Chairman. In all my years dealing with education and
being involved in different experiments and trials and things
like that, the one thing that has always come through--every
time I talk to teachers--I am talking about elementary school
teachers, not so much high school--especially those that are
just starting out--they have just been there 1 year, 2 years.
We have a big drop-off. They are there 1 or 2 years and then
they leave. The biggest single factor that has come through to
me time and time and time again is the size of the classroom.
It is how many students they have to teach. I cannot tell you
how many times I have talked to teachers who have in elementary
school, first, second, third, fourth grades, 10 or 12 kids and
it is wonderful. You talk to others that have 25 and they are
just inundated. They just give up.
We had a goal one time. This Congress stated the goal of
reducing elementary classes down to, in the early grades, less
than 15, if I am not mistaken. I could be corrected on that,
but something like that. Do you find that as a factor, Mr. Van
Roekel?
Mr. Van Roekel. Absolutely. One of the longstanding
research projects came out of Tennessee, and at the beginning
of that, all teachers and all students were selected for this
research were all totally done by random. The only variable was
the size of the class in K through 3, and they tried to keep it
below 20. They have done over a 25-year follow-up with all of
these students, by every measure, high school graduation,
college-attending, graduation from college. By every one of
those measures, they do better. Class size makes a huge
difference, especially in those lower grades.
I can tell you right now, as you go across the country with
the economic situation the way it is, and with States facing
their biggest challenge in 2010-2011, because the State
stabilization funds that were the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act will not be there--layoffs are starting to
come through. There are schools now with class sizes up to 40.
I always said that I can teach just about any size group,
but how I teach and what I am able to do varies immensely.
The Chairman. Mr. Schleicher, you did not address this.
What are the class sizes in OECD countries? I am talking about
in the early years, first, second, third, fourth, fifth grades.
Mr. Schleicher. Actually the United States has below
average class sizes. The United States would be a country that
has relatively small class sizes. If you look at some of the
best performing systems, they actually trade in better
salaries, better working conditions, more professional
development against larger classes. If you look, for example,
at some of the best performing systems like Finland, like
Korea, they do actually have larger classes than the United
States and they use that money to actually buy other things
like more attractive environments for teachers, more individual
personalized learning opportunities.
The Chairman. Do these countries allow every child into
those classes? Kids with disabilities, kids with learning
disabilities are all in these classes too just like in America?
Mr. Schleicher. There are different philosophies in
countries. There are some countries where they are in special
classes in schools, some in which they are integrated. If you
look at the Nordic countries in Europe, you have a much higher
degree of personalized learning opportunities. You have large
classes in general, but then you have 30 percent of instruction
time that is devoted outside formal classrooms, not just for
students with disabilities, but also for students with special
talents. It is just engaging with diversity in a different way.
Our research actually does not support that smaller classes
are the most effective investment to raise learning outcomes.
That is not something that international comparisons would
support. You can spend your money only once, and you have to
make choices between better salaries, more learning time,
smaller classes. Smaller class size is not often the most
effective choice. That is what our comparisons would tell you.
The Chairman. Well, I will have to take a look at that
data. I went over my time.
Senator Enzi.
Senator Enzi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate the testimony of all of you, particularly your
complete testimony. There are a lot of good ideas in there.
Mr. Butt, the McKinsey report highlighted NAEP scores in
both Texas and California, and Texas outscored California on
all fronts, but also spends about $900 less per student. In
your opinion, what changes could be made today in educational
systems that would cost little but have a big impact on closing
the achievement gap?
Mr. Butt. I do not think I can answer that for you,
Senator, but I will try to respond by letter.
I would like to say one thing about teaching. There are two
issues in the pay issue. One is the starting pay and one is the
pay to which teachers can look forward, and you have to address
both to be competitive in the marketplace for bright leadership
people which I think are needed today.
And second, KIPP, which is so touted for its success, pays
a few thousand dollars more but the teachers are crazy about
their principal. They really follow him or her. We have
principals today, unfortunately, that when they get a bright,
new teacher, it is actually a problem for them because they
have to manage that new energy in the classroom and it is
disruptive for them. That is why I feel leadership at the
superintendent and principal level is so critical.
Senator Enzi. Thank you.
Mr. Castellani, your testimony highlights the
recommendations of the Business Coalition for Student
Achievement, BCSA, for the reauthorization. Can you talk a
little bit more about what BCSA means by a client-centered
approach? Does this translate into more involvement by business
in the schools or something else?
Mr. Castellani. Yes, I can. The good organizations, whether
public or private, know that without kind of an intense focus
on their clients, long-term success is impossible. What we have
recommended is first, easy-to-understand report cards that
include data on performance of each student group and that do
not rely on the use of statistical gimmicks and sleights of
hand to sugar-coat the results and undermine accountability
measures.
Second, SES, Supplement Education Service, programs that
require districts to provide students and parents with timely
and easily understood information about their options to choose
either free tutoring or the ability to move to higher
performing public schools.
Third, increased support for parent involvement programs
which we believe are very, very important.
And fourth, additional involvement of community and
business groups in school improvement, in transformation, and
in turnaround activities, get the communities more involved.
Senator Enzi. You also mentioned specifically recruiting
retirees as teachers and promoting teaching as a second career.
Can you elaborate on that idea?
Mr. Castellani. Yes. There are many, we believe, skilled
retired business people, retired from all sectors, who have
degrees in science, who have degrees in mathematics, who have
degrees in English and history, who are living longer, are much
more active longer, and looking for ways to give back to the
community. We think that the school systems should look at
being more flexible in teacher certification requirements and
that post-secondary education particularly be expanded so
people in those circumstances who can bring both their history
and knowledge and their passion into the school room and into
the schools have a pathway to do that, whether it is a post-
retiree from the private sector or from the military sector.
Senator Enzi. Thank you.
Mr. Schleicher, in your comparison of countries, I am
wondering how similar the systems are to one another. For
example, compulsory education in some countries goes to fourth
grade, in some countries it goes to sixth grade. We do a lot of
our statistics clear through high school, even though the
compulsory education requirements often do not go that far.
When you are doing those comparisons, is that taken into
consideration? I know that it motivates kids a little bit if
they know they can be left out at fourth grade, but it is a
disservice too and we do not recognize that.
Mr. Schleicher. To get around this, we actually compare age
groups. We take an age group across countries and compare that.
For example, our PISA comparisons look at 15-year-olds.
Enrollment is universal across OECD countries except for Turkey
and Mexico. So we do have a comparable basis.
In fact, if you are very precise about it, in most OECD
countries enrollment at age 15 is higher than in the United
States. The United States takes a slight advantage out of those
comparisons. But those differences are very small.
Taking an age group gets you around the problem of having
different educational structures across countries.
Senator Enzi. It is also my understanding that your report
indicates that relatively small improvements in the skills of a
nation's labor force can have large impacts on the country's
future well-being. Can you elaborate on those findings and
explain what this means specifically to education and workforce
policy in the United States?
Mr. Schleicher. Yes. If you take the example of Poland,
over the last 6 years, Poland raised its achievement by 29
points on our PISA scale, which is three-quarters of a school
year. It is a relatively modest level of improvement. If you
would translate that in the U.S. context, you raise everybody's
performance by this rather modest amount over the next 20
years, being very generous with reform time implementation, you
are talking about $40 trillion in additional economic income
over the lifetime of people born today. You can really see how
small improvement in the skills over time translates into
better workforce qualifications, which then have a very
significant impact on the economic outcomes in terms of the
historical gross relationship. That is something that surprised
us as well, but these results come out quite consistent.
What is important in this context is that the relationship
between educational success and economic success tends to
become tighter and tighter over time. That is, the benefits for
those who are well-educated continue to rise. The penalties in
terms of labor market and earning outcomes for those who do not
succeed in school actually have become quite a bit larger as
well across OECD countries. That is a quite clear picture.
Senator Enzi. Thank you. I will certainly be paying more
attention to your report and to the work of others on the
panel. I thank you and I have exceeded my time as well.
The Chairman. Senator Dodd.
Statement of Senator Dodd
Senator Dodd. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Just great testimony, really fascinating to hear from all
of you.
First, we have got some wonderful people on this committee,
Mr. Chairman. Obviously, Lamar Alexander, former Secretary of
Education of the country, and Michael Bennet, our newest member
of the committee, was the superintendent of schools in Denver,
CO, and having talked to them, they have some wonderful and
thoughtful ideas about education as well. We have got some rich
talent here on the committee that can contribute to this
debate.
A couple of things. If somebody said to me I am going to
give you the power, Senator, to do one thing and one thing only
on education, what would you do, the one thing I would do,
would be to increase parental participation in education. If
parents could be more involved, I cannot think of anything that
would have a more salutary effect than if you could engage the
parents in their children's education. We do that with Head
Start. We have a requirement that programs encourage parents to
be involved. Yet, by the first grade in this country, parental
participation in the average family drops significantly and
continues to decline to almost zero over time.
Let me begin with you, Mr. Castellani, because I think the
business community--George David, who is a good friend of
mine--and you know him well from United Technologies--did some
remarkable things in higher education. I appreciate your
comments today about the changes we would like to see occur in
terms of the improvement of K-12.
To what extent can the business community help the people
who work for the business community? I cannot think of a better
contribution that business can make than to be supportive of
the parents that are employed by the major corporations of this
country and others to have the time and the ability to be able
to engage with their children.
I authored the Family Medical Leave Act years ago, and it
was a controversial bill. We have talked about improvements to
it over the years. In fact, Patty Murray I think made some
suggestions along these lines. Where there is an illness of a
child--people do not want to debate that and clearly, their
parents ought to be there. To what extent do we provide any
kind of time for parents to be with their children, for
instance, at an athletic contest or to be there at a parent-
teacher conference at school?
What ideas do you bring to the table on how the business
community--if you agree with me, that the parental gap that
exists in terms of being involved in their children's
education, what can the business community do about that?
Mr. Castellani. Well, as I said in my response to Senator
Enzi's question, this is one of the things that we think, among
a lot of others, that should be examined and could help improve
the quality of education. So you are absolutely spot on.
One of the problems we have in the workplace is the
mismatch in time demands, which are very considerable on any
family, but also the structure of the timing, the work day,
compared to how it is structured with the school day. The
school day and a work day do not match. The school probably has
less ability to be flexible but needs to be flexible in terms
of its timeframe to engage the parents, and clearly in the
workplace as employers, we have to be flexible.
What you are seeing more and more in the workplace, at
least within the private sector, is a greater reliance on
flexible time, on telecommuting, on changing the rules. For
example, in some organizations, we had very rigid rules about
what were sick leave days, what were vacation days, what were
personal days. And we are seeing some very innovative companies
just say here is the amount of time you have off. Wherever you
want to take it, you take it. You do not have to tell us what
the reason is.
It is providing more opportunity to use technology to be
able to work remotely. It is providing more flexibility within
the working hours. It cannot work across all. You cannot say to
an emergency room physician, you can leave in the middle of
this procedure and go off and watch a soccer game, but it is
using technology and providing more flexibility.
Senator Dodd. I would be very interested if you could ask
your members at the Business Roundtable to submit to you and
then to us what some of the ideas individual companies are
doing to expand parental involvement so we might promote some
of these ideas.
Mr. Castellani. We would be delighted.
Senator Dodd. Now, if I was given a second chance to do
something else in education, it would be with principals. I
want to commend Mr. Butt for your comments about the
superintendents and principals, but particularly principals, it
seems to me. Again, we have wonderful teachers who get elevated
to be principals. The skill sets to be a teacher and to be a
principal are very different in my view. It does not mean the
leadership is not important in the classroom, but leadership in
the school is as well. I do not think we do enough to really
train and to promote the notion of identifying people who are
good school principals.
Are there some things that you are familiar with that might
help us do a better job?
Mr. Butt. I think the schools of education have a role to
play here, Senator. I do not have a definitive comment on what
that is, but I think there is something there.
Senator Dodd. Well, if you have any ideas, let us know. I
think that is a gap that we do not address well.
Mr. Butt. Well, this is maybe an anathema to the
educational community, but some of the best superintendents
have an M.B.A. It is really an enormous management job, and it
is really quite different from teaching, as you point out. Some
people go into it from academia and do great, but others do
not.
Senator Dodd. I will come back to that at some point.
Last, you said something to Senator Harkin, Mr. Schleicher,
that I am curious about. I thought I heard you say just grades
1 through 3, the class size--I think it surprised a lot of us
here when you indicated the class size was less relevant in
other grades in your experience. Did I hear you say just in
grades 1 through 3, does class size have the greatest impact,
or through the entire K-12 comparable age group?
Mr. Schleicher. In fact, I was talking about the entire
education system. I mean, class size is important, everything
else being constant. There is no question about that. But when
you have to make a tradeoff, when you have to decide how do you
invest your money, our analysis suggested investing resources
in reducing class is often less effective than investing it in
other parts of the entire system. That is, I think, the
tradeoff to be made.
On your point on instructional leadership, I mean, that is
what our research supports as well. It is a very important
variable determining success and many countries actually do
have a separate career path for school principals, in fact,
even separate institutions to educate those people.
Senator Dodd. What about the parent thing? Do you do
anything on the parent side of this thing?
Mr. Schleicher. It is harder to measure, harder to
quantify. You do have some countries that are very successful
in this. If you look to Japan, the most powerful organization
in Japan, in terms of influence on the reality in the classroom
is the parent-teacher organization, and they sit in every
school. They have a real role to play. They are not just sort
of at the football match, but they are really involved in the
life of schools and have a major influence. It is just one
example where a country has drawn on that resource in a very
systematic way.
Senator Dodd. Thanks.
The Chairman. Senator Alexander.
Statement of Senator Alexander
Senator Alexander. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Castellani, in 2005 a bipartisan group of Members of
Congress asked the National Academies to recommend to us steps
that would help increase American competitiveness. They gave us
20. We spent a couple of years and passed most of them. One was
to increase support for advanced placement programs. That was
already going on here. Senator Harkin has long pushed that. So
has Senator Hutchison.
In the current budget, President Obama suggests eliminating
funding for this program and consolidating it into a larger,
competitive program for school districts to choose which
programs to fund. As a former Governor, I am sympathetic to
that kind of thing.
What would your advice be about whether to target advanced
placement programs or whether to turn over to States and local
districts that amount of money and let them choose how to spend
it?
Mr. Castellani. Well, one of the things that the Academies
pointed out and were dealing with--you asked the question, as
you know very well--was a very substantial gap in the
production of STEM-capable students and the needs that we have
for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics capable
students within business.
The answer is you really need both quite frankly. We very
much need a very intense focus which comes on some dedicated
funding at the Federal and quite frankly the State and local
level. Because of all of the hierarchy of what we need in terms
of output from our education system, the highest need right now
are those people who have those kinds of skills, those people
who have analytical skills. So it really is a matter of doing
both, quite frankly.
Senator Alexander. Mr. Van Roekel, 26 years ago when I was
a Governor, in a fit of naivete, I helped our State become the
first State to pay teachers more for teaching well. We created
a master teacher program, raised taxes to fund it, paid
teachers a lot more, and 10,000 teachers went up a career
ladder. It would be an underestimate to say that in doing so, I
had a street brawl with the National Education Association, not
so much with the American Federation of Teachers. Al Shanker
said, ``Well, if we have master plumbers, we can have master
teachers.'' It was hard to do because the teachers unions were
against it. The colleges of education said you could not tell a
good teacher from a bad teacher, and that left us politicians
with a very difficult job. Ten thousand teachers went up that
career ladder.
I had a pleasant experience a couple of years ago, even
though after I left the Governor's office, it was eliminated
primarily with the affiliate of the NEA urging it. Five
representatives of the Tennessee Education Association came to
see me and thanked me for it. They were all master teachers.
They said it was a good idea.
A lot has happened over that period of time. Both the NEA
and the FT worked with Governor Hunt of North Carolina and the
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to try to
find a way to encourage outstanding teaching. Many local school
districts have done that. Senator Bennet did it in Colorado,
what Senator Corker did when he was mayor of Chattanooga,
making agreements with local NEA affiliates to try to find fair
ways to reward outstanding teaching.
The Teacher Incentive Fund, which is a part of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has had a number of
success stories in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, and
North Carolina where local school districts working with
teachers unions have found fair ways to reward outstanding
school leadership and outstanding teaching. I agree with
Senator Dodd. Parents are first, but if parents are first,
teachers and school leaders are second.
My question is, have we not got to find a way to pay good
teachers and good school principals more for teaching well and
to find fair ways to reward that? Is the Teacher Incentive
Fund, which really allows local school districts to figure out
how to do it in each case, is a good way to do it? Do you
support that, or do you have another suggestion for how we
should go about it from here? Or do you still think, as the NEA
did 30 years ago, that it is just wrong to pay some teachers
more than others based on the quality of the teacher?
Mr. Van Roekel. You mentioned that much has happened in
those 25 years. The National Board of Professional Teaching
Standards--I was talking to Jim Kelly one day, and he talked
about over 20 years they had spent about $200 million
developing good assessments so that they could assess the
practice of teaching from early childhood to high school. I
think that was money well spent.
I believe very much in the profession, and there have been
many attempts to change how we pay teachers over time. We have
supported many of those. We support paying teachers who achieve
National Board certification. We differentiate pay on a lot of
different ways. The only one I would say that we really have
opposed, especially recently, is when they want to pay a
teacher based on a single high-stakes test score. I think it is
important to develop those. It is something that must be done
at the local level in cooperation.
You mentioned a career ladder. In my own experience in
Arizona, we started one in 1985. It was discontinued this year
due to finances and the lawsuit. From the time it started, it
was far more expensive, and they had 14 districts and then
allowed 20, but never more than 20. In this past year, one of
the districts sued and said we want to be in this too. They
lost in court. They said you are right. If you are going to
provide it for some, you must provide it for all, and the
legislature said, yes, it is a good idea but it costs $175
million and we are not funding it. So they eliminated it from
the 20 that had it and for the future.
The issue of compensation, as mentioned before, when I was
talking with Senator Harkin is very important. We have got to
be able to compete. I think developing good compensation
systems is very important. It just comes down to really three
steps to me. No. 1, you have to define what you are going to
pay for. Is it skills, knowledge, responsibility? In many of
those career development plans, they define those in the area
of skills and knowledge.
Senator Alexander. My time is up.
Teachers Incentive Fund. Are you for it or against it?
Mr. Van Roekel. We support what is done at the local level
by our local affiliates. The answer is----
Senator Alexander. Is that a yes or a no?
Mr. Van Roekel. Yes. It is a yes. We support what our
locals do at the local level.
Senator Alexander. Excuse me for interrupting. I saw my
time was up.
Mr. Van Roekel. That is all right.
Senator Alexander. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Senator Murray.
Statement of Senator Murray
Senator Murray. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this
very important hearing as we begin our Elementary and Secondary
Education discussions. I really want to thank all of our
distinguished witnesses today for your testimony. I am
personally glad to see we have teachers and business and the
global perspective represented here today.
Career and college readiness has long been a focus and a
passion of mine, and I think the voices we have here really are
an essential part of making sure that our students are truly
prepared for the next steps to make sure our economy is strong
and they have the skills they need. I think that that link
between education and the workforce is more important now than
ever before as we face a crisis in how many students are
actually prepared, once they get through school, to get those
jobs that we need them to have in their own communities.
For the past two Congresses, I have introduced legislation
called the Promoting Innovations to 21st Century Careers Act,
which is focused on building better connections between the
education, business, and workforce communities. By creating
these partnerships, we can provide better student access and
really do the right thing for our economy as well because the
goal of the bill really is career and college readiness. I am
fortunate my bill has been supported by a lot of diverse
groups, teachers, Chambers of Commerce, workforce development
representatives. When I was developing this bill, I went out in
my community and held roundtables to bring together K-12,
higher education, workforce, and economic development
stakeholders.
One of the things I heard when I was developing this bill
was that there is a lot of barriers to collaboration between
all these different entities. I think that we have got to have
people talk together in their own communities to make sure that
what the kids are learning in school actually helps them be
successful when they get out.
One of the things I hear from employers all the time, and
actually universities and economic folks too, is that reading
and math are important skills for kids to have, but it is not
enough, that we need students who are able to communicate and
do critical thinking and problem solving and not just learn the
core basics, but those skills as well.
My question to all of you today is what do you think
students need to be able to know today for our education system
to be considered world-class and for our students to have the
skills they need to be able to succeed? What do they need to
know? I will open it up to any of you.
Mr. Butt. I think one of the conflicts, Senator, is trying
to do workforce-ready and college-ready. A lot of the
establishment has pushed college-ready, which would be
favorable to you and all of us, during recent years. Workforce-
ready in my opinion has gotten somewhat lost in the backwash,
and it is challenging to do both in the same school. That is
clear. It requires a very specialized curriculum and great
leadership. I think that that is an issue on which you may want
to focus because the two groups are often at odds with each
other.
Now, we testified last year, along with about 10 major
national companies, for more workforce-ready people. That is
the reason that this company I quoted did not get enough people
to fill their jobs. Both are badly needed. Clearly, we want
more college graduates and community college graduates. In
Texas, only about 25 percent of the new jobs, maybe 20 percent,
require a college education.
Senator Murray. They do require some kind of skill training
is my guess.
Mr. Butt. They do. They require a good high school
education, but they do not necessarily require college.
Senator Murray. What kind of skills do they need?
Mr. Butt. Well, they need math. They need grammar and they
need interpersonal relationships.
Senator Murray. Math, grammar, interpersonal relationships.
Anybody else? Mr. Schleicher?
Mr. Schleicher. Thank you, yes. In fact, if you look at
skill utilization, which is often a good indicator for the
demand for skills, you see that actually there has been a quite
rapid decline in routine cognitive skills. Things that are easy
to teach, things that are easy to test are actually less
important now than they were in the past. The rises in demand
are, first of all, in what we call non-routine analytic skills,
the capacity not to reproduce what you have learned, but to
extrapolate from that and apply your knowledge in a novel
context. We also see sort of interpersonal skills, having a
rise in importance.
At the OECD, we use a framework that categorizes this in
sort of ways of thinking, problem solving, creativity, and
decisionmaking, and so on; ways of working, collaboration,
communication; tools for working. That is about ICT and
instruments like this. Then there is sort of living in the
world in a heterogenous world, civic competence and global
citizenship and so on. Those are four categories which we
actually do not put in contrast to math and science and reading
and so on, but we look at the intersection. When you look at
mathematics, knowing the formulas is less important today, but
understanding how mathematics----
Senator Murray. Because you can look it up on Google.
Mr. Schleicher. Yes. But understanding how mathematics is--
--
Senator Murray. You have to know how to get there.
Mr. Schleicher. Yes.
Senator Murray. You need to know how to communicate it.
Mr. Schleicher. Well, there is a global trend toward
broadening the concept of school subjects in many countries
now.
Senator Murray. Mr. Van Roekel.
Mr. Van Roekel. Senator, I would say that you really
incorporated that into your question. There is a need, I
believe, for a solid curriculum that is broad, and I mentioned
some of those in my opening from foreign language, history,
civics education. All of that is important. It should be done
in the context of 21st century skills. Creativity is something
that is very much needed. Collaboration, which requires the
interpersonal skills. Communication skills are getting more
important and it seems almost a contradiction in this age of
technology that communication is more important, but it is. And
then the critical thinking.
Using these new skills and all of these subject matters I
think is what we have to prepare students for. Young students
on a YouTube I saw the other day mentioned that in times of
old, information was very expensive. Only a few had it. It was
very valuable. Now it is for everyone. What are the skills you
need in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, as we used
to say, and figure out what is needed in a certain situation?
Senator Murray. My time is up. I would just say, Mr.
Chairman, that one of the things we try to do in my
legislation--I hope we can look at it--is try and bring local
people together from business and workforce and schools to make
sure that they are actually learning those skills that they
need to go into those jobs.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Senator Reed.
Statement of Senator Reed
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony.
Mr. Schleicher, just I think a technical question. As you
do your country comparisons, do you control for income
disparities and racial disparities?
Mr. Schleicher. Yes. Actually we do not know how to control
for racial disparities because they are hard to measure in a
global context, but we look at socioeconomic background like
parental education, parental income, and factors like this. You
can basically look at this and you can look at the impact those
have on outcomes and can you control for them. That is actually
done in many of our comparisons.
Senator Reed. Do you not--and I know it is probably very
difficult--look at the distribution of income in a country? I
would suspect if an average pay of a teacher is X in a country
but the highest pay is only one and a half times that where in
some countries it is 100 times that, that is a different
context.
Mr. Schleicher. You mean in terms of the wage distribution
for teachers?
Senator Reed. Yes.
Mr. Schleicher. Yes. That is much harder to do. Actually
the way we look at this is we look at salaries of people with
similar qualifications. For example, teachers usually have a
masters degree qualification, so you can compare with salaries
of a person with a masters qualification.
Senator Reed. Frankly, thank you for your insights. They
have been very valuable, and it is a very difficult area to
make these and as a whole sort of subject area of culture. I
think you have given us some extraordinarily good insights, and
I thank you for that.
Mr. Van Roekel, you have talked about collaboration in your
testimony, but also I think you emphasized research-based
approaches to reform. Could you identify what you consider are
some of the more promising research-based approaches to reform?
Mr. Van Roekel. Well, what I reference that is--for
example, there is a real debate right now about charter
schools. Should we remove the cap? Should we have more? I think
it is the wrong question. What does research say about whether
they are doing better or worse? Instead say, what is it in the
practice of those schools that changes that?
One of the comments earlier was that in these schools that
are highly successful, they have networks where they share the
practice. That to me is where the collaboration really works.
It is taking knowledge--if, for example, in my math class, I
get better results than others who are teaching the same class,
what we ought to do is to share that practice and figure out
why. As we look at other countries around the world, they
spend--far more of a teacher's time at school is done in
collaboration about determining the best practice and the way
of presenting lessons instead of always being isolated with
students by themselves. The value of collaboration is over all
aspects of education.
I am such a believer in the profession that it is my
practice. It is not a test score. It is what I do diagnosing
what a student needs. How am I able to adjust my instruction to
meet their needs?
If I could wave my magic wand and do just one thing, as
Senator Dodd said, I would have the adults in every building in
America connected with the parents and community members, spend
1 week together before every school year, and say, based on
where our students are, what they need, what are we willing to
do together to ensure that it changes? I believe you would
transform education.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
Mr. Butt, first, let me commend you for your public
service. You have a pretty big job running your grocery chain,
but you have spent many years in Texas, as I see from your
resume, trying as a citizen to move education forward. One of
the comments that impressed me was the notion that a lot of
this is leadership style. A lot of this is having command of
the school and command of the classroom, and those things are
not necessarily taught in education schools or measured in
terms of the performance. I wonder if you could comment on how
we can do a better job of teaching those skills and measuring
those skills.
Mr. Butt. Well, it is multifactorial, obviously. I think
State commissioners of education should be advocates for
education and they should be intimately involved in the big
districts and as many as possible in their State. In Texas, we
have 1,030 school districts. They cannot be involved in all of
them, but the commissioners should know the superintendents of
all the big and middle-size districts and have an opinion about
how they are doing, find a way to express that to board
members, and play a constructive role in raising the standard.
I think schools of education have focused mostly on
teaching. They have some programs on superintendents and
principals. I think more of that is needed. I think if our
university systems--higher education and public education have
become pretty separated in this country, and higher education
does not take much responsibility for pre-K-12. North Carolina,
I think, has a K-16 system, but few States do. I think that
would be an opportunity.
Senator Reed. Thank you, sir. And thank you, John, for your
testimony.
Mr. Chairman, my time is up.
The Chairman. Senator Sanders.
Statement of Senator Sanders
Senator Sanders. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me thank all of the panelists for their excellent
testimony.
Let me start off with Mr. Schleicher. Mr. Schleicher, in
this country, to go to a good college costs maybe $50,000 a
year at a time when many working families do not make $50,000.
How much does it cost to go to college in Germany?
Mr. Schleicher. Actually, that is an easy country. Nothing.
Senator Sanders. Ah, nothing. I see. Nothing, zero.
Mr. Schleicher. You do have wide variability. The United
States is a class in itself with very high levels of tuition.
Japan would come second, and then sort of the European
countries in the middle.
Senator Sanders. And Scandinavia is nothing or very, very
little.
Mr. Schleicher. Scandinavia actually pays you to go to
university. You get a subsidy----
[Laughter.]
Mr. Schleicher [continuing]. For your living costs.
Let me just add one point. Actually we calculate the public
investment and look at the public returns, and actually
governments get more in tax receipts, even in those countries,
than they actually spend on that.
Senator Sanders. Well, that gets back to the point that Mr.
Butt made a moment ago as to whether or not we consider
education a cost or an investment. Presumably those countries,
far removed philosophically from where we have been, actually
believe that if you have a well-educated workforce, you do
better. Everything that all four of you have said have
indicated that. But we do not do that.
In terms of child care, one of the issues, Mr. Chairman, we
have not talked about either. We are talking about kids
mysteriously at the age of 5 or 6 going into school. What
happens in their previous 5 years? In this country, one of the
untold stories that we absolutely do not focus on enough is the
disaster in child care. My guess is you got millions of kids
today right now sitting in front of a television set with an
untrained child care worker, and that is the first 5 years of
their lives. If I were in Finland right now or in Denmark and I
had a baby, what child care is available to me?
Mr. Schleicher. Coverage in some OECD countries go up to 90
percent in terms of sustained early childhood education and
child care.
Senator Sanders. Are the child care workers trained?
Mr. Schleicher. Pardon?
Senator Sanders. Are they well-trained?
Mr. Schleicher. In some countries--I mean, it is easier to
measure the pay. In some countries, they get paid and have an
education like a primary school teacher. In other countries, it
is more a child care job.
Senator Sanders. In this country, people leave child care
to get a job at McDonald's to see a raise in pay.
Mr. Schleicher. Let me just sort of put----
Senator Sanders. I do not mean to interrupt you because I
have other questions as well.
My point is, I think if you are going to talk about
education, there are millions of kids who are 10 years old who
understand they aren't ever going to go to college because they
cannot afford it. There are other kids who, by the time they
walk into the first grade, are already so far behind they are
never going to catch up. The point to be made, in comparing--I
know some of my Republican friends put down Europe, Europe,
Europe. But I think they have something. They have taught us
something, that investing in kids--what about the crime rate?
What about the percentage of young people who end up in jail
compared to the United States? Do you have any statistics on
that?
Mr. Schleicher. They exist, but I do not have them.
Senator Sanders. Well, it is far higher in this country. So
we put them in jail rather than investing in child care and an
education.
I want to ask Mr. Butt a question because, again, it talks
to a broader issue. You used the term ``shallow learning
culture.'' Now, I am going to ask you what you mean by that.
Back home in Burlington, VT, I got 50 channels on my TV and I
turn them on, go through the 50 channels. There isn't nothing
much to watch. Do you think we really are serious about--do we
respect education in this country? How do you move forward in a
serious way if we do not respect education? Maybe you want to
comment on that.
Mr. Butt. Well, if I had the answer to that, Senator, I
would have certainly shared it with you. I think it is the
challenge of all affluent nations. You know, we get a little
too big for our britches and think that we do not have to keep
doing what we used to do. I wish I had the answer to that.
Maybe this recession will make us more aware of the necessity
of going back to our roots with a hardworking attitude toward
learning.
Senator Sanders. Thank you.
Mr. Castellani, do you think we should emulate Europe and
put a great deal of money into child care and early childhood
education? In some countries, I think in France it is--I mean,
God did not create public schools at the age of 5. Now you have
70-80 percent of women who are working and kids are forced to
go to child care. Do you think we should do what Europe does
and fund child care the way we do public education?
Mr. Castellani. Senator, I think the broader question is
how do we achieve the kinds of things that make students ready
for learning, that have students that are ready for learning,
indeed, get a very strong education, and have those who get the
right education to be able to get----
Senator Sanders. No, but that was not my question.
Mr. Castellani. My answer is it has to be, as all of our
things are here, uniquely American.
Senator Sanders. Well, but uniquely American is failing. We
do not want to be the only country where our educational
standards can not compete with the rest of the world.
My question was a simple one. Is child care important in
your opinion?
Mr. Castellani. Child care is important.
Senator Sanders. Do you think an average working family can
afford child care at 300 bucks a week?
Mr. Castellani. No. I think it is very difficult.
Senator Sanders. All right. Do you think that we should
consider early childhood education as they do in many other
countries as part of the overall public policy, that we should
invest in that?
Mr. Castellani. Early childhood education?
Senator Sanders. Yes. Child care as well.
Mr. Castellani. Yes.
Child care as well? That is difficult.
Senator Sanders. Why?
Mr. Castellani. Again, it is a question of what is
affordable and what is appropriate.
Senator Sanders. All right, but many of these other
countries have said that was a good investment. Do you think
so?
Mr. Castellani. How would you pay for it?
Senator Sanders. By raising taxes on wealthy individuals.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Castellani. Fair enough.
Senator Sanders. Fair enough. All right, good. Note that
for the record, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Merkley.
Statement of Senator Merkley
Senator Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I appreciated your testimony here today. I was one of those
children who was the first in their family to go to college,
and I can tell you that I had that opportunity because I had
good public schools in a working class community. I always felt
pretty good about the chance to go to a major university and be
able to compete with folks from much more elite backgrounds. I
want to see that type of opportunity exist for every child in
America. It is a real privilege to be here for this discussion
of No Child Left Behind.
I can tell you that in the course of running for the
Senate, I talked to parents, school administrators, teachers,
school boards, and I heard a consistent set of problems with No
Child Left Behind.
The first was that the testing was mostly designed to
compare apples to oranges, that is, one class of third graders
with another class of third graders, rather than tracking an
individual student through the process so that teachers would
have the type of information able to best help them assist a
student, identify where they are struggling and advance them.
Second, the curriculum would be narrowed to those items
that were being tested, which was not necessarily in the
student's best interest, but that was driven by the test
results.
And third, there was a pressure to teach to the bubble, and
by that, I mean, children fall into three groups: those who
easily exceed the standards, those who might exceed the
standards with a lot of coaching, and those who are far away.
Teachers were focusing on the bubble boys and girls that they
might be able to get over that boundary but perhaps neglecting
the educational advancement of those who already could meet
that test or who they felt were too far away from meeting the
test.
And then finally, the system under No Child Left Behind was
penalizing schools that needed help rather than helping schools
that needed help.
I would just like to ask whoever would like to jump in to
address their perspectives on whether those concerns are
legitimate as we launch this discussion of how to improve upon
our system.
Mr. Van Roekel. Let me take a crack at that very quickly.
In the last 8 years, I have been in schools all across this
country, and I have never been in one that they did not bring
up No Child Left Behind and the things they say are exactly the
four you say, that the testing is overemphasized and the
apples-to-oranges, the timing of giving the results make it not
informative in terms of informing practice. Narrowing the
curriculum was a big deal. Teaching to the golden band or the
bubble----
Senator Merkley. What did you call that? The golden?
Mr. Van Roekel. Yes. One principal called it the golden
band.
Senator Merkley. The golden band.
Mr. Van Roekel. At the beginning of the year faculty
meeting, he said this year we know these kids are already
there, and there is a group down here who will never make it.
We are going to take this golden band, those that we think we
can push over that proficiency line, and that is going to be
the focus of all of us for all year long. And they hate that.
They believe it violates what their professional
responsibilities are to the students.
I totally agree with all four of your points.
Senator Merkley. Other folks? Mr. Schleicher?
Mr. Schleicher. Yes. In fact, I cannot comment on the
gravity of the issues that you outlined, but I think these are
all issues that can be quite easily addressed. There are many
countries that have actually successfully addressed them.
If you look at the single bar problem, that you only value
sort of people nearing proficiency, many countries have systems
that look at learning progressions, that look at sort of key
stages, how you move through the system. You look to England
and Nordic countries in Europe, lots of examples on this. They
choose a different balance between formative and salutive
assessments like you have school-based assessment plus sort of
high-stakes assessment and that balance creates a different set
of incentives for teachers to use and actually understand what
those results mean.
That also addresses part of the issue of teaching to the
test. I mean, my impression is that the United States often
sacrifices validity gains for efficiency gains in the testing
process, and that I think is something that is----
Senator Merkley. Expand on that just a little bit. Validity
versus efficiency.
Mr. Schleicher. Basically I mean measuring things that you
can measure cheaply through multiple choice tests rather than
measuring things that are really what matters, what counts.
Those things can be addressed. I do think we have many good
examples of very sort of intelligent accountability systems
that actually measure progress comprehensively and that also
measure the fields of study quite broadly, not necessarily sort
of high-stakes accountability tests. Countries usually use
multiple instruments within a coherent framework of national
standards or regional or State standards.
Senator Merkley. Mr. Chair, amazingly my time has
disappeared, but could the other folks answer this question, if
they would like to? Do we have time for them to do that? Please
be very brief, if you would like to answer, because I have
colleagues who want to--
Mr. Castellani. Sure. Very briefly, we supported No Child
Left Behind, and we do agree it can be improved. It should
reflect the experience that we have had with it, that there are
some issues. The underlying concept is something that we still
believe is vitally important if we are going to be successful,
and that is that we have to set high standards for our
education system and the outcomes of our education system and
we have to test the performance against those standards
appropriately.
Mr. Butt. We have to set high standards, but we have to
have the resources to let the students reach the high
standards.
Senator Merkley. Thank you all very, very much. I may
follow up or have my team follow up with you all to expand on
how we tackle those issues. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Franken.
Statement of Senator Franken
Senator Franken. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing, the first of, I hope, many on this reauthorization.
Mr. Butt, thank you for talking about principals and
talking about superintendents and talking about leaders and
leadership teachers. You talked about new grade teachers that
come in and are crazy about their principal maybe in a charter
school, but then you have a new grade teacher come in in some
schools and a not-so-great principal looks at the teacher as a
threat.
I believe in leaders, and I believe that principals lead
the school and they should not just be custodians or
administrators of a building.
I have introduced a bill called the School Principals
Recruitment and Training Act. What this does is it gives
competitive grants to school districts and schools to find
principals who want to work in high-needs areas. That is what
Mr. Schleicher was talking about is what they do in these OECD
countries, is they focus on these high-needs schools and
mentor.
I know Senator Dodd asked you for some ideas. One idea that
we have talked to a lot of principals about is to have a
mentoring system where for a year you recruit a principal who
wants to be a principal. Maybe the teacher comes from somewhere
else and is mentored for a year and there is follow-up.
This is not a question. I am just plugging my bill. OK?
[Laughter.]
Enough of that.
I want to get into testing. I talked to some principals a
few weeks ago, and one of the principals called the current No
Child Left Behind testing where you give the test in April and
you get it in June right as the kids are leaving--he called
these tests--he said they have a name for them--``autopsies,''
which I think is pretty significant.
Mr. Schleicher, this is a question. You are talking about
progress. There is a test in Minnesota that all the teachers
love and all the superintendents love, a computer test. You
cannot use it because in No Child Left Behind because not every
kid gets the same test because it gets harder if you answer
right and it gets easier when you answer wrong. You get the
results instantly, and they can give it three times a year. And
you can measure each kid's progress. Is this the kind of thing
they are doing in the countries that are more successful than
we are?
Mr. Schleicher. Yes. There are many electronic testing
systems that provide real and immediate feedback to a student's
teachers and schools. In some other countries, they may not use
electronic testing, but they have more school-based assessment.
Basically within a framework of national standards, schools
devise complementary international tests, their own
instruments, and have, therefore, instruments where they know
the results very quickly. They are not high-stakes
accountability tests, but basically tests for the school to
figure out what its relative strengths and weaknesses are. So
it is not all electronic. It is often just also school-based.
Senator Franken. Mr. Castellani, you said your group was in
favor of No Child Left Behind. Does it make sense to you to
maybe have three tests a year where you can use it
diagnostically? I think that is what every parent in the
country thought when they heard No Child Left Behind. I think
they went, great, my kid is going to be tested. My teacher is
going to look at the results. It will be diagnostic. My teacher
will be able to teach my kid by the results. This is great.
Instead, they get tested at the end of the year and all the
data is aggregated to see if the school is failing or not.
We had a school up in Cass County, MN that was named one of
the top 100 high schools in America by U.S. News and World
Report. Two weeks later, they failed the annual yearly
progress. This is ridiculous the way this is working.
Mr. Castellani. Senator, one of the principals or two--
actually several of the principals that I have included in our
written testimony get right to this point. We have to have
timely, accurate analysis of the testing data. We have to have
accurate and timely tests in and of themselves that are
relevant. We have to have better data systems so that teachers
can use it not only collectively but for individual students
and how they can change their approach to teaching that class.
Absolutely, improving that data, improving the value of the
data and the timeliness of the data--
Senator Franken. One thing I think everyone agrees we need
to be looking at in this new reauthorization is how we do this
testing. I would advocate for testing that can be done several
times a year and that teachers be measured on the kids'
progress. From 1 year to the next, you do not know--the
population changes. So you really cannot measure anything by
that year-end test about progress.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Senator Bennet.
Statement of Senator Bennet
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
allowing me to be part of this conversation. I cannot tell you
how much I look forward to working with you on this.
When I was superintendent of schools in Denver, I spent a
lot of time wondering why everybody in Washington was so mean
to our teachers and to our kids. What I have discovered
actually is that they are not mean, at least when it comes to
education, that everybody here is well-intentioned, and that
there is a universal agreement that we really do want our kids
to achieve. So that is good.
We also know a lot of what works. All of you have touched
on things that work here and work in other places as well, and
I have seen it.
I know that the children in America's cities have the
intellectual capacity to do the work we are asking them to do
because I have spent a lot of time with them.
Here is the question, but I am not going to let you answer
yet. The question is what do you think are the biggest
impediments to preventing these successes from scaling across
our school districts and schools?
Let me just say first when I became superintendent of
schools, on the 10th grade math test that we administer, there
were 33
African-American students proficient on that test and 61 Latino
students proficient on that test. Fewer than four classrooms of
kids proficient on a test, that if we are honest with
ourselves, measures a junior high school standard of
mathematics in Europe in a district of 75,000 children and in a
city of 550,000 children.
A fourth grader today, as we are sitting here today, in a
low-
income neighborhood, low-income ZIP code is already 2 or 3
years behind her peers. She has a 1 in 2 chance of graduating
from high school and a 1 in 10 chance of graduating from
college.
I do not think anybody in the Senate would accept those
odds for any of our kids or grandkids. In fact, probably we
would resign our seats and run home to make sure that was not
what the outcome was going to be.
In view of all that, my question to you is, what is getting
in our way to scaling the successes that we know we have in the
United States of America? We will start with you. Go ahead.
Mr. Castellani. Senator, it is a very difficult question
and I have to say I feel a little like Ebenezar Scrooge. You
are the one I fear the most, the last.
[Laughter.]
Senator Bennet. They put me here for a reason.
Mr. Castellani. No, no. I am the son of two teachers, one
of whom went to the dark side to become a school administrator
like you. My 94-year-old father who still calls me up and says,
``what do you in the business world know about teaching and
running a teaching system?''
We have had long discussions about it and we have thought
about it a long time.
Senator Bennet. All I can say, Mr. Castellani, I spent
about half my career in the business world and then half doing
this other stuff, and it probably means I do not know much
about any of it.
Mr. Castellani. That is all right. I am sure it is to the
contrary.
One of the things that strikes me that is very difficult is
the contrast between how the rush to implement the best
practices, the most innovative practices, the most successful
practices is a basic--in an operating circumstance in the
business world and it is not in a lot of other worlds,
including education because in the business world, you do not
have those kind of impediments. They tend to be just resource-
limited or time-limited because in order to be competitive, you
have to adopt them.
I think the difference is because the reward structure is
very, very different, and that is, if you adopt very rapidly
the best practices in the business context and the economic
context, the presumption is you will be rewarded because you
will get more customers, you will have higher margins, you will
be more profitable, which will result in more return for your
shareholders. We do not have a way to translate that within the
education system, and I think that in part is why people are
not rushing to do what we do in this other sector regularly.
Senator Bennet. Mr. Van Roekel? Oh, I am sorry, Mr. Butt. I
will just go right down the table here, as long as the chairman
will let us.
Mr. Butt. Thank you, Senator.
Three reasons. One, general apathy, which is due to the
culture that I mentioned. You had a big crowd for the Academy
Awards Sunday night. A teacher event, education event draws a
big yawn, not sexy, and we are nationally over-confident. So
that is one.
The second is that the establishment has moved away from
the public schools either through multiple districts, which
achieve de facto segregation, or having their kids in private
schools. In Texas, we have 5 million kids, nearly 10 percent of
the national student group, of which, 4.6 million of those are
in public school. The other 400,000, which include much of the
affluent and voters and the people that influence the
politicians, are in private schools. We have lost the
leadership of the establishment--whatever it is worth, good or
bad, and that is a matter of debate--to the public schools.
And third, parents lose interest after their kids graduate
from school. Parents and grandparents are not interested in the
schools anymore. They are opposed to raising taxes, but they
really do not care about the schools.
Those would be my three reasons that it is difficult to
penetrate and get change to elect good people to school boards
and to elect State legislators and leaders that really care
about education.
Mr. Van Roekel. Senator, I would say, No. 1, it is turnover
especially in our high-needs schools, the turnover of staff and
of principals and superintendents. It is impossible to have an
integrated, well thought-out plan that continues on for a long
enough time to really impact it.
Senator Bennet. By the way, I completely agree with your
idea about having people come early for a week or two, parents
and teachers.
Mr. Van Roekel. A second thing is that too often a new
culture or environment is created and it is personality-driven,
and when that personality leaves, so does the whole plan and a
new one comes in. It is impossible as a faculty member--it is a
new reading program, it is a new math program, it is a new
discipline program, it is new this, and we never just sit down
and put it in place.
The third thing I will say is that we tend to focus on
activities that we think will change the system, instead of
going at a systemic approach and really looking at coming up
with that common purpose of what we are trying to achieve. I
think that is where business has an advantage over us. They
know what it is they are trying to achieve in their enterprise,
and we do not talk enough about that. What happens is somebody
says, ``oh, look, this school is doing well, and they have
uniforms. Let us put uniforms in this school.'' They have no
idea why they have uniforms--the discussion is about what it is
they were trying to achieve.
That is why I talk so much about collaboration. One of the
things that happens in successful places--Syracuse, New York
where Say Yes Foundation came in and they are changing the
whole district. They do memorandums of understanding so that
the management, the school board, and union all sign onto that,
so when one of the big three players changes, they cannot
suddenly go off in a new direction. There may be better ideas,
but you have to come back and say, together, ``let us decide if
there is a better place.''
Those are my three best impediments.
Senator Bennet. Mr. Chairman, one final thought. I would
just stitch together what Mr. Van Roekel just said with what
Mr. Castellani just said, and you can put this in the
``whatever it is worth'' category. But, I do think there is
enormous reform fatigue that goes on in these school districts,
and part of it is because we have not applied the approach of
continuous improvement that you would think of in the business
world. I think it is very important for us to keep that in mind
because I think there is a lot that our school districts could
gain from a continuous improvement approach in our teachers and
our kids.
Mr. Butt, I would just say I completely agree with your
observation, and I think that we as a country are going to rue
the day unless we think about the children that are living in
poverty in the United States, no matter who we are, as our own
children. This is the next generation of Americans, and we are
not going to be able to compete in the 21st century if we do
not address these issues. The path to doing that runs right
through the urban school districts of the United States.
Thank you for being here today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for letting me go over.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Senator Franken.
Senator Franken. Mr. Chairman, thank you for indulging me.
One short question since you are here, Mr. Schleicher. I
read your written testimony and thank you for it. I just want
to know if you saw any correlation because a lot of the OECD
countries--I guess they all have universal health care. Many of
the high-needs schools that we have are under-performing, and
we have a lot of the dropouts coming from there. Kids do not
have health insurance. Is there any correlation that you saw--
maybe this was not part of your study at all--between having
health insurance as a kid and doing well in school?
Mr. Schleicher. Since, as you say, health care is universal
in most of the countries--actually I think in virtually all of
the countries--you cannot see any correlation basically. You
can only study correlations when there is variability.
Senator Franken. OK. You did not study all those countries
versus us, but they are all improving and we are not.
Mr. Schleicher. Not all countries are improving. There is
quite some variability in performance.
Senator Franken. OK. But we are falling in regard to the
rest of the OECD countries. That is fair to say, right?
Mr. Schleicher. What you can say is that social background,
socioeconomic difference in the United States make more of and
have a stronger impact on learning outcomes than is the case
in----
Senator Franken. My contention would be that a kid with an
ear infection who does not have insurance is less likely to get
it treated and more likely to miss school. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Franken.
I thank our panel. I could sit here for another hour and go
over a lot of things with you. I think we had a good discussion
here to kick off our series of hearings.
I sent down for this book. It is called The Unfinished
Agenda: A New Vision for Child Development and Education. I
remember this very well. This came out in 1990. I had just been
elected to the Senate in 1985. I was not on this committee at
the time. I came on a little bit later. President Reagan had
been re-elected that same year in 1984.
Around 1986 President Reagan wanted to find out--he said we
have all these studies on education. He said we need a study on
education on an economic basis. What do we need to do in
education today so that we will have a solid future
economically for America? I do not remember all his words, but
in his own way, the President said something like, ``I do not
want a bunch of those pointy-headed guys doing this either. I
want solid, strong business people that will tell us what we
need to do.''
The Committee on Economic Development formed this
subcommittee on education. The chair of it was James Renier,
chairman of Honeywell at the time. This has got all the
members. These are all CEOs and chairmen of some of your
largest corporations and companies, Ciba-Geigy, First Commerce,
Aetna, the Freeman Company, Texas Instruments, Smuckers, Arco
Chemical. You get the idea. And Jim Renier became the chairman.
I never met this man, but in 1990 I was chairman of the
Subcommittee on Appropriations on Education, the one I chair
now, aside from this committee. One day this person wanted to
come see me by the name of James Renier from Honeywell. Well, I
figured, Minnesota is next door, what the heck, I will see him.
He wanted to see me about education. He came into my office and
reminded me of what had been going on.
This committee had been set up in the 1980s. They had done
all these studies and interviews and panels, and they really
took their work very seriously. He handed the executive summary
to me, and on the outside it had one paragraph. ``We must
understand that education begins at birth and the preparation
for education begins before birth.'' That is in this book.
I can read it to you.
``The report urges the Nation to develop a
comprehensive and coordinated strategy of human
investment, one that redefines education as a process
that begins at birth and encompasses all aspects of
children's early development, including their physical,
social, emotional, and cognitive growth.''
Well, here are all these hard-headed business people. What
did they say? Get to those kids early. Get to them early. That
is what this whole book is.
So, I sent for it again; they found it in my file in Des
Moines, and now I am going to keep it close by.
I would like to bring this up about health care. In 1991, I
said that the problem with health care is we are patching,
fixing, and mending. We are putting all of the money into sick
care, not into health care. If we really want to control costs,
do prevention and wellness. Get at it early. Now, a lot of
private companies have done that. Talk to Pitney Bowes. Talk to
Safeway. Talk to companies that have actually done that, and
they will tell you they save a lot of money.
The same, I submit to all of you, is true in education. We
have got to get to these kids early.
What did you say, Mr. Butt? You said something that just
really caught my ear--by the way, I thought your testimony was
just great and so were your responses. Our kids coming to
school--they are over-entertained. And what was the rest of
that?
Mr. Butt. Distracted.
The Chairman. And distracted. That is right. We have to get
to these kids earlier than we are now. By the time they come,
they are already way behind. Somehow we have just got to focus
more on that. I do not have the answer. I just know where the
problem lies. The problem lies with kids before they actually
get to school. Now, I suppose some of it has to do with social
structures and things like that, but if we do not crack that
nut, we are just going to continue to patch and fix and mend,
and we are never going to get out of the hole that we are in.
I submit this to you and I would ask for your thoughts on
this later. Perhaps we need to re-define elementary and
secondary education. Does elementary education really begin
when kids enter kindergarten, or should we expand the thought
of what elementary education really involves? I invite your
thoughts on that in any regard, in any way you want to transmit
them.
This has been great. This has just been a wonderful kickoff
to a whole series of hearings that we are going to have on
this. I invite you later on, as we go through our hearings, if
anything comes up that you want to get in, get it to our
committee and to us. I could not have asked for a better
beginning of the process. Thank you all very much.
[Additional material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Prepared Statement of Senator Brown
Thank you, Chairman Harkin and Senator Enzi for kicking off
the HELP Committee's consideration of the reauthorization of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act with a focus on a
fundamental truth--a world class education for our students is
directly linked to a world class economy for our Nation.
I would also like to thank the witnesses for joining us
today. Your statements clearly illustrate that standing still
in education means losing ground in the 21st century economy.
Last month, the HELP committee held a hearing on the
reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act. We heard
testimony that between 2008 and 2018, nearly two-thirds of all
job openings would require at least some post-secondary
education and that there was a growing mismatch between the
skills of our workers and the demands of the workplace.
Our long-term jobs strategy must address education.
We know that there are persistent gaps in educational
outcomes for students based on family income, race, language,
and special needs. Ohio is no exception. National Assessment
for Education Progress results show little progress in
narrowing the gaps in math, science, and reading achievement
over the last 10 years.
We must do better.
The No Child Left Behind Act helped shine a light on the
achievement gaps. Reauthorization gives us the opportunity to
move beyond just identifying long-standing gaps in opportunity
and achievement and move towards a smart, strategic system for
closing the gaps and improving achievement across the board.
As we look to renew the law, I hope we strengthen it in
several key areas, including:
Moving from merely collecting and reporting data
to using today's sophisticated tools to harness the power of
information for improving teacher practice and personalizing
learning for students;
Building school-community partnerships to deliver
the full range of supports that students and families need to
be successful; and
Making the connection to college and careers real
for all students.
In Ohio, we have seen progress in all of these areas, but
there is more work to be done. Ohio has made great strides in
moving to a fully integrated data system that will enable us to
analyze how students progress through elementary and secondary
school to college and into the workforce.
Local philanthropies and community leaders such as STRIVE
in Cincinnati and the Cleveland Scholarship Programs have
demonstrated the power of collaboration in improving outcomes
for young people.
Just this past January, President Obama--the first sitting
president to visit Lorain County since President Truman--saw
first-hand how we can connect students to college and careers.
He visited Early College High School Students at Lorain County
Community College's Fab Lab.
After the visit, one of the students, Paula Jones, blogged,
``The FabLab is a creative and hands-on-learning
experience. It is a great resource for geometry class
because we can get accurate and precise measure of
angles and shapes by using the laser cutter and the
other utensils in the lab. There are many Fab Labs
throughout the world, and I am glad to have had the
opportunity to share this experience with not only my
peers, but the President.''
Education is more than the sum of test scores or a
collection of data points. Students must be able to apply their
knowledge and skills in the real world. The students at the Fab
Lab have already learned that lesson.
We know what success looks like. We just need to build the
capacity in our communities to deliver it for all students.
Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
is our opportunity to support success.
Thank you.
Prepared Statement of Senator Casey
Good afternoon. First, I'd like to thank Chairman Harkin
and Ranking Member Enzi for holding the first in a series of
hearings which will provide an opportunity to hear testimony,
examine data and evidence, and debate ideas for education
reform. I think it is entirely appropriate to begin with a
focus on the importance of education to the long-term economic
health of the United States, and I appreciate you providing us
with this framework.
As we move forward to reauthorize the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, there are a few areas I believe we
must address if we are to use education as the great equalizer
of opportunity and a tool to enhance U.S. competitiveness in
the global economy. First, we must expand and improve early
childhood education. As President Obama has recognized in his
Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Proposal, the early years of a child's
life, from birth through age 5, are crucial for learning. By
emphasizing early education through measures such as the
Prepare All Kids Act which I have introduced, we will ensure
that our children are ready to learn and increase their chances
for success in grades K-12. Second, we must, as Mr. Van Roekel
states in his testimony, revitalize the public education system
and ensure its sustainability. Standards and assessments that
will ensure accountability are critical and we must have a full
and healthy debate on how best to measure student achievement
and growth. Third, just as we must ensure that every child has
access to quality education in the earliest years of his or her
life, we must graduate every student from high school. The
wealth, productivity, and growth that are lost as a result of
the Nation's dropout crisis are devastating. An educated,
skilled workforce is crucial to attracting employers and jobs
to the United States.
I want to thank each of the witnesses today for their
thoughtful testimony. Your insight and observations are
fascinating and should inform our deliberations throughout the
reauthorization process. Perhaps most importantly, your
testimony makes it clear that we must think of education not
only as a moral imperative, but as an investment in our
country's future, without which we will continue to fall behind
other nations in educating our children.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to
working with you and my colleagues on the HELP Committee on
this important legislation.
Response by Andreas Schleicher to Questions of Senator Mikulski
and Senator Casey
question of senator mikulski
Question 1. I'd like to direct a question to Andreas Schleicher,
who is doing some pretty fascinating work in looking at how we're doing
relative to other countries. But, first, I'd like to thank Senator Tom
Harkin for his leadership on this committee. We've been working
together on these issues for a long time and I'm glad that education is
one of the first things he'll have to put his unique signature on. Mr.
Schleicher, through your research, I'm sure you've found that other
industrialized countries are able to outperform their American peers at
least partly due to the fact that they're in school longer. Their
school days are longer, or their school years are longer, or both.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have been studying the detrimental effects
of having such a large lag between school years for children, and
they've found that the degree to which knowledge is lost during the
summer months is more pronounced in youngsters from low-income
backgrounds. The idea of extended learning time, or using things like
after school activities, academic enrichment during the summer months,
etc., is being piloted in pockets throughout the country, including my
home State of Maryland. Could you please speak to the difference
investing in extended learning time has played in other countries and
also, what existing practices in the United States show promise for
scalability?
Answer 1. Learning outcomes are a function of the quantity and
quality of educational provision. The OECD provides comparative
measures on the quantity of educational provision but not on the
quality of instruction, other than what is measured indirectly through
student learning outcomes in PISA.
It is problematic to compare the incidence and intensity of
extended learning time through the summer months between the United
States and other countries, because most other countries have
significantly shorter summer breaks than the United States does. Among
the 30 OECD countries, only France provides fewer weeks of instruction
per year than the United States (see the attachment D4.xls, \1\
although the comparatively low number of instructional weeks and days
in the United States needs to be seen in the context of comparatively
long school days). The attached tables Tab_2.xls \2\ provides
comparative data on different types of opportunities to learn for
students at age 15 and the attached table Tab_ch3.xls \2\ breaks these
data down by socio-economic groups.
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\1\ Attachment D4.xls may be found at www.oecd.org/edu/eag2009.
\2\ The material referenced may be found at www.pisa.oecd.org.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
question of senator casey
Question 1. What are the three most important specific
recommendations you would make to this committee for reforming
education through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act?
Of all the ideas and recommendations for education reform, where do
you believe there is consensus among education professionals,
policymakers, academics, business leaders, and other stakeholders?
Answer 1. I will focus on those issues which internationally
comparative analysis suggests can be addressed successfully in complex
stakeholder environments.
First, judging from the experience of other countries, the
consistent implementation of the ``common core standards'' in the
United States could be an influential measure to address the current
problem of widely discrepant State standards and ``cut'' scores that
have led to non-comparable results and often mean that a school's fate
depends more than anything else on what State it is located. Another
policy goal could be a different balance between using accountability
tools to maintain public confidence in education, on the one hand, and
to support remediation in the classroom aimed at higher levels of
student learning and achievement, on the other. While the emphasis of
NCLB has been on test-based external accountability, many high
performing education systems make greater efforts to build capacity and
confidence for professional accountability in ways that emphasize the
importance of formative assessment and the role of school self-
evaluation, the latter often in conjunction with school inspection
systems that systematically intervene with a focus on the most troubled
schools rather than dispersing efforts through identifying too many
schools as needing improvement, which one could consider another
drawback of the current NCLB system. Where school performance is
systematically assessed in high performing countries, the primary
purpose is often not to support contestability of public services or
market-mechanisms in the allocation of resources. Rather it is to
provide instruments to reveal best practices and identify shared
problems in order to encourage teachers and schools to develop more
supportive and productive learning environments.
Second, I consider the ``single bar'' problem a major drawback of
the current NCLB system, as it leads to undue focus on students nearing
proficiency rather than valuing achievement growth. In many countries,
this problem is addressed through assessment and accountability systems
that incorporate progressive learning targets which delineate pathways
characterising the steps that learners typically follow as they become
more proficient and establish the breadth and depth of the learner's
understanding of the domain at a particular level of advancement. One
of the earliest approaches in this direction, the ``key stages'' in
England, for example, provides a coherent system that allows measuring
individual student progress across grades and subjects, thus also
avoiding the problems associated with the ``multiple measures''
defining annual yearly progress in NCLB that have tended to lead to an
undue emphasis on reading and mathematics. The global trend here is
leading towards multi-layered, coherent assessment systems from
classrooms to schools to regional to national to international levels
that: support improvement of learning at all levels of the education
system; are increasingly performance-based and make students' thinking
visible; add value for teaching and learning by providing information
that can be acted on by students, teachers, and administrators; and
that are part of a comprehensive and well-aligned instructional
learning system that includes syllabi, associated instructional
materials, matching exams, professional scoring and teacher training.
Third, drawing a clearer line between assessments, on the one hand,
and individual high-stakes examination systems could avoid sacrificing
validity gains for efficiency gains, which tends to be an issue for the
United States that is also mirrored in, by international standards, an
unusually high proportion of multiple choice items in the assessment
systems.
Response to Questions of Senator Casey by Dennis Van Roekel
Question 1. What are the three most important specific
recommendations you would make to this committee for reforming
education through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act?
Answer 1. (1) Make a decisive and immediate break from NCLB by
articulating a broad purpose for the Act that encompasses the ``whole
student'' and by creating a new accountability system that helps,
rather than impedes, school communities in their efforts to address the
whole student.
As we stated in our recent submission to the HELP Committee hearing
on Meeting the Needs of the Whole Child, NCLB shifted the emphasis of
public education from developing well-rounded individuals to testing
low-level, basic skills in reading and math. The real impact of NCLB
was in direct contradiction to its purported goals: it labeled our
schools as failures based on crude measures yet did little or nothing
to help us understand why or provide help to improve. It diminished the
educational experience for millions of students by narrowing the
curriculum and focusing the definition of success on two narrow, one-
size-fits-all tests that were given on one day during the school year.
Most significantly, NCLB failed to raise the knowledge and skills of a
generation of students--in fact, it left far too many behind, in
violation of its own name.
Therefore, immediate and dramatic change is needed to undo NCLB's
harmful effects--to refocus our education system on developing a well-
educated citizenry equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
NEA is calling on Congress to pass a new bill--the Great Public
Schools for All Act of 2010 or ``GPSA''--that would reauthorize and
amend ESEA in important and dramatic ways, beginning with a new ESEA
purpose statement:
``The public education system is critical to democracy and
its purpose, as reflected in this Act, is to maximize the
achievement, skills, opportunities, and potential of all
students by building upon their strengths and addressing their
needs, and to ensure that all students are prepared to thrive
in a democratic society and diverse, changing world as
knowledgeable, creative, and engaged citizens and lifelong
learners.''
GPSA would require schools to meet the needs of the whole child by
addressing multiple dimensions, including students' physical, social
and emotional health and well-being, and ensuring that students are
actively engaged in a wide variety of experiences and settings within--
and outside--the classroom. Under GPSA, school curricula would address
the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to master not only
core academic subjects but also career and technical skills for the
21st century; effective and engaged community and civic participation;
and physical and emotional health, well-being and self-actualization.
Let us be clear: Congress must help school communities best meet
the needs of the ``whole child'' by implementing a new foundation for
the public education system's accountability system that rests on an
authentic, reliable and valid system of assessments. The new
accountability system must eliminate AYP and replace it with a new
system designed to foster progress in student learning, close gaps in
learning among students, and improve high school graduation rates. The
new system must recognize and reward ``exemplary'' schools and
individuals who are performing well above average, and it must allow
the majority of schools that are ``on target'' to carry on without
significantly increased Federal requirements. This is not to suggest
that the majority of schools should not continue to find ways to
improve, but rather to specify that Federal requirements that are
prescriptive or punitive are not an appropriate way to foster that
improvement. The new system must also correctly identify and foster
improvements in ``priority'' schools (addressed further below).
As for student testing, we must improve assessment systems as well
as restore assessments to their proper role in the accountability
system, which is to improve instruction and enhance student learning.
Assessment systems should be aligned with high-quality standards,
curriculum and professional development and cover much broader
curricular areas (as articulated above) as well as more complex sets of
knowledge, skills and dispositions within those curricular areas. They
should comprise multiple components and offer multiple ways to
demonstrate knowledge beyond a single, standardized test. Assessments
should be developed and designed according to principles that allow
their use with students of diverse abilities and diverse cultural and
linguistic backgrounds. Finally, while State or local agencies may
choose to administer their own assessments more frequently--and likely
will do so in order to help improve instruction in a timely manner--
standardized tests mandated by the Federal Government should not occur
more than once in each of three grade spans (e.g., 4-6, 7-9, 10-12)
during a student's K-12 career.
Schools and educators must have the time, ability and resources to
complement assessment systems by establishing other systems critical to
``whole child'' development, such as:
curricular and extracurricular expansion and development;
parent, family and community engagement and partnerships;
high-quality teacher and principal induction and
professional development systems;
systems that support qualified specialized instructional
support personnel (i.e., school psychologists, school counselors,
speech language pathologists, audiologists, school social workers,
school nurses, occupational and physical therapists, music/art/dance
therapists and adaptive physical education teachers and others involved
in providing assessment, diagnosis, counseling, educational,
therapeutic, and other necessary corrective or supportive services) who
provide critical services to students;
systems that support qualified education support staff to
assist instruction, provide supplemental or wrap around services or
activities, provide nutritional meals and safe transport to students,
and maintain schools as vibrant centers for student learning;
positive behavior support systems, a school-wide approach
to improving safety and school behavior for all students;
student health, nutrition, sports, mentoring and
counseling to foster physical and emotional health and safety; and
construction and modernization to ensure that schools and
classrooms are technologically equipped and serve as comfortable and
inviting spaces and facilities that meet diverse curricular and
extracurricular needs.
Finally, to avoid overlapping and conflicting accountability
systems, upon reauthorizing ESEA Congress must immediately replace NCLB
accountability labels and requirements with a new, strengthened
accountability system as outlined in GPSA. To address the obvious need
for a transition to this new system, GPSA should specify what limited,
NCLB-era standardized assessments must be administered pending the
implementation of new assessment systems under Race to the Top and
other assessment reform efforts. Furthermore, we strongly believe NCLB-
era assessment results should no longer be used for Federal
accountability purposes after ESEA is reauthorized. The cessation of
the NCLB accountability timeline--and the all-too-often inaccurate
school labels--is critical to allow States to begin developing more
complete accountability systems comprising multiple measures of student
learning. States will also use this time to pilot and ramp up new
assessment instruments under the new accountability system so that they
may be used as soon as possible.
(2) Ensure equity, adequacy and sustainability in education funding
and resources, including intensive assistance and supports to
struggling schools to close gaps in student learning, opportunities,
and college and career readiness.
Congress should restore the original intent of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act to eliminate disparities in educational
opportunities between advantaged and disadvantaged students. It should
do this in two ways:
Adequate, equitable and sustainable funding. First,
Congress should establish that the role of the Federal Government is
to: (1) investigate and research to what extent and how education
funding policies and practices and other external influences and events
at the Federal, State and local levels lead to disparities and
fluctuations in educational opportunities, quality and performance
among students, and (2) close, to the extent possible, disparities and
eliminate fluctuations in educational opportunities, quality and
performance among students through direct Federal funding and
assistance and through policies designed to encourage adequate,
equitable and sustainable education funding and assistance at the State
and local levels. (See our legislative specifications in GPSA regarding
``equity and adequacy plans'' which should be required under a
reauthorized ESEA).
The current education jobs crisis has illuminated a dangerous and
unacceptable ebb and tide in the continuity and stability of public
education nationwide; such fluctuations also hinder education reform
efforts. Just as safeguards against harmful fluctuations in financial
institutions have been developed over time, so too should the education
system--the engine of the U.S. economy--be stabilized through
equitable, adequate and sustainable funding.
NCLB did a poor job at providing and encouraging sufficient and
stabilized education funding for all schools. Even with ARRA, NCLB
programs were never funded at their authorized levels and in the last 8
years the per-pupil funding and resource gaps between LEAs have not
narrowed or closed. The NEA proposes that Congress remedy these
problems in its legislation reauthorizing ESEA by closely monitoring
disparities between authorized and appropriated funding levels and
requiring State plans to include improvements in adequate, equitable
and sustainable funding and resources as a top priority.
For ESEA reauthorization, Congress should prioritize increases in
equitably distributed funding channels such as title I and the main
portion of the ARRA State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. These programs
enable districts to plan efficiently and provide adequate, equitable
and sustainable funding to schools. While we support the need for
innovation and improvement in education, we do not believe that
increasing overall funding of ESEA programs primarily through
competitive programs such as Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation,
and the Teacher Incentive Fund--particularly in a time of State fiscal
crisis--is a sound approach for improving education opportunities,
services, and outcomes for students or for achieving equity, adequacy
and sustainability of those opportunities in all 50 States.
Priority schools. Second, Congress should, through ESEA, address
struggling or ``priority schools'' by requiring States to adopt plans
that call for comprehensive internal and external review teams to study
the operations and systems of priority schools and, based on the
review, pursue a school transformation approach that emphasizes
collaboration, capacity-building and aggressive improvements--not the
rigid implementation of prescriptive intervention ``models,'' as
currently proposed by the Obama administration. Examples of successful
transformation models may be found in the Denver Public Schools
(Denver, CO), Hamilton County Public Schools (Hamilton County, TN) and
Putnam City West High School (Oklahoma City, OK). For more information
about successful transformation approaches, see www.nea
priorityschools.org.
(3) Address teacher and principal recruitment, retention and
effectiveness thoughtfully and comprehensively.
Research shows that infusing the educational system with great
educators requires attention be paid to each segment of the educator
pipeline--from promoting education as a career to rigorous standards
for entry into the profession. It also includes induction and
placement, certification and licensure, mentoring, professional
development, advancement, and retaining accomplished educators.
Ultimately, we must develop systems to recruit legions of top
undergraduate students and professionals leaving other professions, to
prepare them effectively, and to nurture and safeguard their path to
careers in education.
According to some estimates, a third of our Nation's public school
teachers will have retired over the next several years. To compound the
problem, a third of new teachers leave the profession within 3 years,
and some districts replace half of their new staff every 5 years. (See
www.nctaf.org.) We are also losing hundreds of thousands of teachers
and other education employees to layoffs due to the ongoing fiscal
crisis. (See NEA's synopsis of layoffs in 50 States at http://
www.nea.org/assets/docs/
State_Budgets_and_Education_50_state_chart_2010.pdf.) In short, this
country needs bold ideas for how to attract and retain talented new
teachers to address the looming national teaching shortage.
NEA has proposed that Congress establish a National Education
Institute (NEI), a highly competitive public academy for the Nation's
most promising K-12 teacher candidates in diverse academic disciplines,
which would allow the Federal Government to attract top undergraduates
as well as second-career professionals and prepare them as leaders of
school reform around the Nation. NEI would provide an intensive 1-year
path (free tuition, room, and board in exchange for a 7-year commitment
to service in select public schools) to full licensure, school
placement, induction, along with lifetime professional development and
mentoring opportunities from NEI faculty/graduates/master teachers. NEI
also would partner with existing teacher preparation programs to
establish a highly competitive ``National Scholars'' program in select
universities that would foster regional and local excellence in teacher
preparation, licensure and induction. Additionally, NEI would sponsor a
principal or leadership development program for top candidates who have
served as teachers for at least 3 years and wish to enter an intensive
program to become a principal or school leader in a hard-to-staff
school.
Teacher effectiveness begins, but does not end, at the recruitment
and preparation stages. We need policies that foster continuous
learning in the form of high-quality, job-embedded professional
development, mentoring programs, common planning and reflection time,
and timely and continuous feedback from peers and school leadership.
Congress should increase funding in title II to allow more teachers to
become certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards or similar programs.
Teacher and principal evaluation systems must be reformed to become
more useful avenues for improving professional practice. The recent
release of the Administration's Blueprint compels us to raise with you
our grave concerns about the Blueprint's call for a State-defined
system to rate the effectiveness of teachers which must be based in
significant part on student academic growth. First, it is not
appropriate for Federal policy or law to mandate the terms of an
individual teacher's employment. We do not, from the Federal level,
prescribe to Governors or mayors how to evaluate other public
employees. The Federal Government does not hire or fire public
employees; therefore, instruments that impact these decisions should
not be mandated from the Federal level.
Second, mandating the use of standardized test scores for the
assessment of teacher performance is neither psychometrically valid,
nor does it accurately capture the myriad elements of instructional
practice. This is not because we do not believe that assessments are
potentially useful instruments, or that teachers are critically
responsible for improving student learning. As an educators'
association, we do know the impact that we have on our students. We
also know that assessments--especially if they are improved to test
broader and deeper skills and to include multiple components and
stages--can serve as useful diagnostic and instructional tools for both
teachers and students to help improve instruction and learning.
Third, the Blueprint fails to address several other implementation
problems. For example, how would a teacher effectiveness definition
which is based substantially on ``student academic growth'' impact art
teachers or music teachers or other instructional personnel who teach
subjects not easily assessed by traditional methods? How would the
system take into account the fact that children learn cumulatively--
meaning that they learn skills from all of their educators--so how can
we accurately identify which educator should be ``credited'' with
specific levels of student growth?
In sum, we object to the Blueprint's mandated linkage between
student assessments and teachers for evaluative purposes for two
reasons: (1) because research does not bear out that measuring teacher
performance through his or her student's standardized test score growth
is accurate or reliable, to make such a link would have a devastating
impact not only on teacher instruction and practice but on teacher
recruitment, retention and morale nationwide; and (2) using
standardized tests in this manner would perpetuate and exacerbate the
effects of NCLB because they would increase the unwarranted premium and
emphasis placed on such tests--which has been perhaps the most frequent
criticism of NCLB voiced by our members--and divert attention and
resources away from developing the ``whole child'' through offering a
more complete curriculum as well as other activities and services.
Instead, a reauthorized ESEA should foster high-quality teacher and
principal evaluation systems that are locally and collaboratively
agreed upon built upon sound principles of professional practice--i.e.,
the essential knowledge, skills and dispositions a quality teacher or
principal should possess. (See the document entitled ``Ensuring Every
Child a Quality Teacher'' in our HELP submission on Teachers and
Leaders for more information on professional practice principles.)
Furthermore, we will never cease to point out that learning is a
process influenced by many people and factors in a child's life. As
noted conservative education historian Diane Ravitch recently noted,
``It would be good if our Nation's education leaders recognized that
teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other
influences matter, including the students' effort, the family's
encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of
poverty.'' (http://www.huffing
tonpost.com/diane-ravitch/first-lets-fire-all-the-t_b_483074.html) We
will continue to highlight the reams of studies and evidence that
supports this conclusion and urge--as we have throughout our
association's 150-year history--that Federal, State, and local policies
must acknowledge that the entire education system as well as
communities, parents, and policymakers have a shared responsibility to
address the multitude of factors that impact learning.
Teaching and learning conditions must be addressed as a key
component of increasing teacher recruitment and retention as well as
teacher effectiveness. Congress must take additional steps in
reauthorizing ESEA through school construction and modernization
funding, title II funding and other ``whole child'' reforms (see above)
to ensure that teachers and paraprofessionals receive sufficient
resources, manageable class sizes and the support of other
professionals to address student health, safety, well-being, nutrition
and parent and family engagement.
Finally, we must ensure that school principals and other
administrators--as well as teachers and education support
professionals--receive adequate preparation, mentoring, and continuous
professional development and support to improve their craft. They must
receive timely and useful feedback from school staff as well as other
administrators and be evaluated fairly and comprehensively. And they
must have the resources and the staff necessary to create and maintain
a successful school.
Question 2. Of all the ideas and recommendations for education
reform, where do you believe there is consensus among education
professionals, policymakers, academics, business leaders, and other
stakeholders?
Answer 2. There is broad consensus that we need to identify and
learn from exemplary schools that are successful at sustaining high
levels of student learning, graduating high rates of students, and
closing gaps between student subpopulations. There is also widespread
agreement that we must rally together as a community and provide
intensive support to address our ``priority'' or lowest-achieving
schools. While the ideas on how to showcase exemplary schools or help
priority schools may differ, we agree that NCLB has done little to
benefit either end of the school performance spectrum. Therefore, we
ask Congress to reauthorize ESEA by devoting substantial attention to
supporting and recognizing achievement and progress in both exemplary
and priority schools.
We also agree that none of the improvements needed to create world-
class centers for learning is possible without great educators and
education support professionals who staff our public schools. That's
why NEA is calling on Congress to stanch the current tide of layoffs
and to establish policies through ESEA reauthorization that will
stabilize education funding and resources and attract and retain
millions of new, talented educators and education support professionals
to serve the next generation of American students.
Response to Questions of Senator Casey by Charles Butt
Question 1. What are the three most important specific
recommendations you would make to this committee for reforming
education through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act?
Answer 1. (1) If funds were available, full day Pre-K for all low-
income and ESL children with a teacher certified in early childhood,
and an aide, in a class size of no more than 22. All studies of the
efficacy of Pre-K are based on these criteria.
(2) Encourage the entry of leadership individuals into
superintendent and principal roles and, importantly, include continued
developmental assistance throughout their careers.
(3) Enhance curriculum design to provide courses that are relevant
and rigorous for students who choose not to go to college or at least
not pursue a 4-year college degree. This should not involve tracking
but should provide true choice for each student. In recent years the
focus has been on students that plan to go to college and this effort
should be enhanced not diminished. At the same time we need to combat
the drop-out rate by having available more relevant courses for other
students. Both can be done well if curriculum planning and school
leadership are effective.
Question 2. Of all the ideas and recommendations for education
reform, where do you believe there is consensus among education
professionals, policymakers, academics, business leaders, and other
stakeholders?
Answer 2. Virtually everyone agrees that superior ``leadership
teaching'' is the underlying requirement to move American education
ahead. This includes:
Longer term career-pay opportunities that are competitive
with business and finance. Starting pay has improved in some States but
few have pay for longer service teachers of outstanding ability that is
competitive with other professionals.
Currently the bottom third of SAT scoring college
applicants choose teaching as a career. In the top achieving nations
globally only the top 5-20 percent of all college graduates are
admitted to teaching. If we aren't able to attract our strongest young
people into the field all other efforts will be only modestly effective
at best.
Although there are many ineffective teachers not serving
students well, by whom they are replaced is the crucial question.
Rewarding a few master teachers with very high pay is still untested as
a concept but even if it proves successful the starting pay and long-
term career pay for a broad spectrum of teachers will be key to
changing the profession. Even this will be of limited value unless the
screening and admission procedures are raised significantly and adhered
to in a highly disciplined way.
Schools should be allowed to replace ineffective teachers.
Response by John Castellani to Questions of Senator Dodd
and Senator Casey
question of senator dodd
Question 1. Mr. Castellani, as I have said on numerous occasions,
parental involvement is vital to a child's success in school. The
Family and Medical Leave Act, which I authored, allows parents to care
for their newborn or adopted children or when their children are sick.
However, we still need to allow parents the time they need to be
involved with their children's schooling. I think business has a role
to play in encouraging and increasing parental involvement. How can
businesses help promote parental involvement for children of all ages?
What do businesses in your coalition currently do to increase employee
flexibility to allow for more parental involvement in schools? What are
some innovative ideas that your members have on how to promote this in
the future?
Answer 1. Companies are using innovative strategies to encourage
and support parental involvement in education. For example:
Prudential holds a series of 2-hour seminars for employees
called ``Prudential CARES About Education,'' that focuses on empowering
employees to engage with and become informed consumers of public
education. The seminar is streamed to Prudential employees who cannot
attend at the company's headquarters in Newark, NJ. The most recent
forum addressed what parents can do to help their children succeed in a
global economy.
State Farm provides a yearly paid Education Support (ES)
day to volunteer in a local school. This provides a way for all
employees--not just parents--to get involved in their schools.
Procter & Gamble's flexible work options have resulted in
employees reporting that their morale has increased and they appreciate
the opportunity to attend parent activities at their children's
schools.
Over 200 companies in Maryland link to the Maryland
Business Roundtable for Education's PARENTS COUNT Web site that
provides information to their employees who are parents on how they can
help their children succeed in school.
Recent research on workplace flexibility initiatives for
hourly workers sponsored by Corporate Voices for Working Families found
they are as successful as those designed for professional staff. In
fact, businesses that offer hourly employees flexible work options find
that they enhance recruitment, retention, engagement, cost control,
productivity and financial performance. While companies' use of
workplace flexibility is not exclusively to provide time for parental
involvement in schools, case studies demonstrate that employees feel
comfortable using the flexibility for this purpose.
questions of senator casey
Question 1. What are the three most important specific
recommendations you would make to this committee for reforming
education through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act?
Answer 1. The Principles for Reauthorization of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, developed by the Business Coalition for
Student Achievement and included in my testimony, provide a set of
recommendations that work together to reform education and improve
student achievement. This is not a menu where you can select just three
items. However, there are three basic elements that are absolutely
essential: continue the focus on disaggregated data with accountability
for all groups of students; incent States to raise their content and
performance standards to college and career ready levels instead of
lowering them to create a false impression of success; and shift from
``highly qualified'' to ``highly effective'' teachers to attract,
retain and compensate top-notch teachers.
Question 2. Of all the ideas and recommendations for education
reform, where do you believe there is consensus among education
professionals, policymakers, academics, business leaders, and other
stakeholders?
Answer 2. If our goal is consensus on education reform among all
stakeholders, it is likely that reauthorization would turn back the
clock rather than make any of the significant reforms needed to improve
student achievement. Given that caveat, I believe there is consensus on
the need for more emphasis on high schools, the need to remove the
unintended consequence of States lowering their definitions of
proficiency, and the need to measure student growth over time instead
of the current comparison of the current year's students to the prior
year's students at that grade level.
[Whereupon, at 4:55 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]