[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RAISING THE BAR: THE ROLE OF
CHARTER SCHOOLS IN K 12 EDUCATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 12, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-49
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/
committee.action?chamber=house&committee=education
or
Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov
____________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
86-827 PDF WASHINGTON : 2016
________________________________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free).
E-mail, [email protected].
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin George Miller, California,
Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Senior Democratic Member
California Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Virginia
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Tom Price, Georgia Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Kenny Marchant, Texas John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Duncan Hunter, California Rush Holt, New Jersey
David P. Roe, Tennessee Susan A. Davis, California
Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Tim Walberg, Michigan Timothy H. Bishop, New York
Matt Salmon, Arizona David Loebsack, Iowa
Brett Guthrie, Kentucky Joe Courtney, Connecticut
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio
Todd Rokita, Indiana Jared Polis, Colorado
Larry Bucshon, Indiana Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,
Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Northern Mariana Islands
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Frederica S. Wilson, Florida
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon
Susan W. Brooks, Indiana Mark Pocan, Wisconsin
Richard Hudson, North Carolina
Luke Messer, Indiana
Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director
Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 12, 2014................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Kline, Hon. John, Chairman, Committee on Education and the
Workforce.................................................. 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Miller, Hon. George, senior Democratic member, Committee on
Education and the Workforce................................ 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
Statement of Witnesses:
Graham Keegan, Lisa, Partner, Chair of the Board, National
Association of Charter Schools Authorizers, Peoria, AZ..... 17
Prepared statement of.................................... 19
Linzey, David, Executive Director, Clayton Valley Charter
High School, Concord, CA................................... 25
Prepared statement of.................................... 27
McGriff, Deborah, Chair of the Board, National Alliance for
Public Charter Schools, Milwaukee, WI...................... 7
Prepared statement of.................................... 9
Rosskamm, Alan, Chief Executive Officer, Breakthrough
Schools, Cleveland, OH..................................... 40
Prepared statement of.................................... 42
Whitehead-Bust, Alyssa, Chief of Innovation and Reform,
Denver Public Schools, Denver, CO.......................... 31
Prepared statement of.................................... 33
Additional Submissions:
Chairman Kline, questions submitted for the record to:.......
Mrs. Keegan.............................................. 76
Mr. Linzey............................................... 83
Dr. McGriff.............................................. 87
Mr. Rosskamm............................................. 93
Ms. Whitehead-Bust....................................... 97
Holt, Hon. Rush, a Representative in Congress from the State
of New Jersey, questions submitted for the record to:......
Mrs. Keegan.............................................. 76
Mr. Linzey............................................... 83
Dr. McGriff.............................................. 87
Mr. Rosskamm............................................. 93
Ms. Whitehead-Bust....................................... 97
Hudson, Hon. Richard, a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina, questions submitted for the record
to:........................................................
Mr. Rosskamm............................................. 93
Response to questions submitted:.............................
Mrs. Keegan.............................................. 77
Mr. Linzey............................................... 84
Dr. McGriff.............................................. 88
Mr. Rosskamm............................................. 94
Ms. Whitehead-Bust....................................... 98
Messer, Hon. Luke, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana...........................................
Prepared statement of........................................ 67
Hinojosa, Hon. Ruben, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Texas.............................................
Prepared statement of.................................... 46
RAISING THE BAR: THE ROLE OF CHARTER
SCHOOLS IN K-12 EDUCATION
----------
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Education and the Workforce,
Washington, D.C.
----------
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:38 a.m., in Room
2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Kline [chairman
of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Kline, Foxx, Roe, Thompson,
Walberg, Salmon, Guthrie, DesJarlais, Rokita, Bucshon, Heck,
Brooks, Hudson, Messer, Miller, Scott, Hinojosa, Tierney, Holt,
Davis, Grijalva, Bishop, Fudge, Polis, and Pocan.
Staff present: Janelle Belland, Coalitions and Members
Services Coordinator; James Bergeron, Director of Education and
Human Services Policy; Nancy Locke, Chief Clerk; Daniel Murner,
Press Assistant; Krisann Pearce, General Counsel; Mandy
Schaumburg, Senior Education Counsel; Dan Shorts, Legislative
Assistant; Alex Sollberger, Communications Director; Alissa
Strawcutter, Deputy Clerk; Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director;
Brad Thomas, Senior Education Policy Advisor; Tylease Alli,
Minority Clerk/Intern and Fellow Coordinator; Kelly Broughan,
Minority Education Policy Associate; Jacque Chevalier, Minority
Education Policy Advisor; Jamie Fasteau, Minority Director of
Education Policy; Scott Groginsky, Minority Education Policy
Advisor; Brian Levin, Minority Deputy Press Secretary/New Media
Coordinator; and Megan O'Reilly, Minority General Counsel.
Chairman Kline. A quorum being present, the committee will
come to order.
Well, good morning. Thank you to our witnesses for joining
us today to discuss how successful charter schools can
strengthen our nation's education system. We appreciate your
flexibility, given our need to reschedule the hearing due to
last week's snowstorm. And for once, it wasn't just a single
snowflake that shut this down, so we appreciate that very much.
The charter school model began in 1991 in my home state of
Minnesota. We passed legislation to create the nation's first
charter schools. In the years that have followed, more than
6,000 charter schools have opened in 42 states and the District
of Columbia, serving almost 2.5 million children each year.
As you know, charter schools are public schools that
operate under a contract, or charter, negotiated with the local
school board or other authorizer. The charter school agrees to
meet certain student achievement goals and metrics, and in
exchange, the institution will be exempt from certain state
laws and regulations. This enhanced flexibility encourages
charter schools to pioneer new programs and teaching methods
that are meeting the unique needs and students and getting real
results.
In Indianapolis, for example, the Charles A. Tindley
Accelerated School expects every student--no matter his or her
background or circumstance--to have a college acceptance letter
upon graduation. The school's rigorous curriculum and laser
focus on preparing students for higher education has helped
more than 80 percent of its alumni earn a bachelor's degree.
Yes Prep Public Schools in Memphis and Houston also have an
impressive record of success. The schools, which primarily
serve low-income families, offer SAT prep courses and classes
that help students learn the financial aid system and practice
writing college application essays. And the hard work pays off:
For 15 years in a row, every Yes Prep graduate has been
accepted into college.
For many children and their parents, charter schools are a
beacon of hope for a better education and a better life. The
schools are extraordinarily in demand. Wait lists for charter
schools have grown steadily in recent years, reaching a new
record of 920,000 students in 2012.
As we work to help more students access a quality
education, we must support charter schools as a valuable
alternative to failing public schools and work together to
encourage their growth. Expanding choice and opportunity
remains a key pillar in the committee's education reform
efforts.
Last Congress, we advanced the Empowering Parents Through
Quality Charter Schools Act. The legislation, which passed the
House with bipartisan support, would reauthorize the charter
school program and allow successful charter schools to be
replicated across the country.
Similar language to support charter schools was included in
last year's Student Success Act, our legislation to reauthorize
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and revamp the
nation's education system. However, the Student Success Act has
been awaiting Senate consideration for more than 6 months. Each
day without Senate action is another day thousands of students
remain trapped in underperforming schools.
We cannot make these families wait any longer for the
education their children need and deserve. If the Senate
refuses to bring education reform legislation up for a vote,
then the House will explore opportunities to advance targeted
legislation to encourage charter school growth.
Recent news highlights the challenges the charter school
model faces and underscores the importance of reauthorizing and
strengthening the charter school program to help ensure these
institutions can continue raising student achievement levels
nationwide.
I look forward to discussing with my colleagues and our
excellent panel of witnesses ways the House Education and the
Workforce Committee can help strengthen the charter school
model and support the expansion and growth of these innovative
institutions.
I now recognize my distinguished colleague, Mr. Miller, for
his opening remarks.
[The statement of Chairman Kline follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. John Kline, Chairman, Committee on Education
and the Workforce
The charter school model began in 1991 when my home state of
Minnesota passed legislation to create the nation's first charter
schools. In the years that have followed, more than 6,000 charter
schools have opened in 42 states and the District of Columbia, serving
approximately 2.5 million children each year.
As you know, charter schools are public schools that operate under
a contract, or charter, negotiated with the local school board or other
authorizer. The charter school agrees to meet certain student
achievement goals and metrics, and in exchange, the institution will be
exempt from certain state laws and regulations. This enhanced
flexibility encourages charter schools to pioneer new programs and
teaching methods that are meeting the unique needs of students and
getting real results.
In Indianapolis, for example, the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated
School expects every student - no matter his or her background or
circumstance - to have a college acceptance letter upon graduation. The
school's rigorous curriculum and laser-focus on preparing students for
higher education has helped more than 80 percent of its alumni earn a
bachelor's degree.
Yes Prep Public Schools in Memphis and Houston also have an
impressive record of success. The schools, which primarily serve low-
income families, offer SAT prep courses and classes that help students
learn the financial aid system and practice writing college application
essays. And the hard work pays off: for fifteen years in a row, every
Yes Prep graduate has been accepted into college.
For many children and their parents, charter schools are a beacon
of hope for a better education - and a better life. The schools are
extraordinarily in demand; wait lists for charter schools have grown
steadily in recent years, reaching a new record of 920,000 students in
2012.
As we work to help more students access a quality education, we
must support charter schools as a valuable alternative to failing
public schools, and work together to encourage their growth. Expanding
choice and opportunity remains a key pillar in the committee's
education reform efforts.
Last Congress, we advanced the Empowering Parents through Quality
Charter Schools Act. The legislation, which passed the House with
bipartisan support, would reauthorize the Charter School Program and
allow successful charter school models to be replicated across the
country.
Similar language to support charter schools was included in last
year's Student Success Act, our legislation to reauthorize the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act and revamp the nation's
education system. However, theStudent Success Act has been awaiting
Senate consideration for more than six months. Each day without Senate
action is another day thousands of students remain trapped in
underperforming schools.
We cannot make these families wait any longer for the education
their children need and deserve. If the Senate refuses to bring
education reform legislation up for a vote, then the House will explore
opportunities to advance targeted legislation to encourage charter
school growth.
Recent news highlights the challenges the charter school model
faces, and underscores the importance of reauthorizing and
strengthening the Charter School Program to help ensure these
institutions can continue raising student achievement levels
nationwide.
I look forward to discussing with my colleagues and our excellent
panel of witnesses ways the House Education and the Workforce Committee
can help strengthen the charter school model and support the expansion
and growth of these innovative institutions.
______
Mr. Miller. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for holding this hearing and agreeing to re-establish the
hearing after it was originally canceled.
I want to thank our distinguished panel for their
participation in today's hearing, and I look forward to your
testimony. I am also eager to hear about the great work being
done to improve our nation's education system. I am looking
forward to today's discussion about how charter schools are
benefiting students, parents and communities.
I especially want to thank Mr. David Linzey, the executive
director of Clayton Valley High School in Concord, California,
who is with us today. The story of Clayton Valley's
transformation in just 1 year is truly inspirational testament
to the role charter schools can play in the K-12 system.
I have seen this transformation firsthand, and let me tell
you that Clayton Valley is a bright light in the 11th District.
Students and parents are engaged. Teachers are supported.
Student achievement is up, and the community is reaping the
benefits. Mr. Linzey, thank you for traveling all this way
today to tell the story of Clayton Valley's success.
This school year, more than 2.5 million of our nation's
students are attending nearly 6,400 public charter schools. In
many ways, charter schools have been teaching us what is
possible when it comes to educating kids, and their work helps
break down many of the stereotypes that have all-too-often
plagued kids who happen to be from the wrong ZIP Code.
What started as a small movement just over 20 years ago has
grown at breakneck speed. Now some school districts are
enrolling significant percentages of their overall student
population at public charter schools, but I worry that rapid
growth will come at a cost of quality and accountability.
Charters are given public dollars and flexibility in exchange
for the promise to educate the students and, in many cases,
turn around low-performing schools. However, when a charter
school falls short of that promise, we owe it to the students,
the families, and the teachers to hold the school responsible
for improvement and close that school, if necessary, if they
can't meet those goals.
Like other public schools, it is vital that charter schools
are held to a high standard of accountability. Every school in
every neighborhood needs to be serving students and parents,
delivering on the promise of quality education, and all schools
need to equitably serve all students.
As I have said before, and I will say it again, no kid
should be trapped in a failing school, charter or non-charter.
We must treat all public schools as part of the solution. And
yet all too often, we refer to charter schools as ``those other
schools'' and treat these innovations in public education as if
they were on a separate parallel track to school districts and
non-charter public schools. Instead, we must embrace charter
schools as part of our current education system and work to
ensure that the autonomy and flexibility that charter schools
receive is used to the benefit of all students.
We have seen success borne out of meaningful collaboration
with districts and communities in places like Denver, where
charter schools aren't often the side, but embraced as a driver
of the whole district improvement. This kind of collaboration
has fostered the transfer of best practices, many of which
started as charter school innovations, but are now being
applied in the public schools more broadly to enhance the
services for underserved students, including students with
disabilities.
The district work in Denver is precisely what should be
happening to benefit all kids, and we need to see more of this
across the country. I look forward to hearing about Denver's
successes from another one of the witnesses today, and I
believe that it is a moral imperative to do better by our
students and families. Higher standards and better assessments
will help, but we must look at the innovative reforms, like
charter schools, to push the envelope and spur the system to
change when they seem to be stuck.
And I want to thank the chairman again for calling this
hearing and, again, thank you to the witnesses, and we look
forward to your testimony.
[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Senior Democratic Member,
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I also want to thank our distinguished witness panel for their
participation in today's hearing.
I am always eager to hear about the great work being done to
improve our nation's education system, and I am looking forward to
today's discussion about how charter schools are benefiting students,
parents, and communities.
I especially want to thank Mr. David Linzey, the executive director
of Clayton Valley High School in Concord, California, who is with us
today.
The story of Clayton Valley's transformation--in just one year--is
a truly inspirational testament to the role charter schools can play
within our K-12 system.
I have seen this transformation first hand, and let me tell you
that Clayton Valley is a bright light in the 11th district. Students
and parents are engaged, teachers are supported, student achievement is
up, and the community is reaping the benefits.
Mr. Linzey, thank you for traveling here today to tell this story.
This school year, more than 2.5 million of our nation's students
are attending nearly 6,400 public charter schools.
In many ways, charter schools have been teaching us what IS
possible when it comes to educating kids--and their work helps break
down many of the stereotypes that all too often plague kids who happen
to be from the wrong zip code.
What started as a small movement just over 20 years ago has grown
at break-neck speed. Now, some school districts are enrolling
significant percentages of their overall student population at public
charter schools.
But I worry that rapid growth has come at the cost of quality and
accountability.
Charters are given public dollars and flexibility in exchange for a
promise to educate students and, in many cases, turn around low-
performing schools.
However, when a charter school falls short of that promise, we owe
it to the students, families, and teachers to hold the school
responsible for improvement--and close it if necessary.
Like other public schools, it's vital that charter schools are held
to a high standard of
accountability. Every school in every neighborhood needs to be
serving students and parents and delivering on the promise of quality
education. And all schools need to equitably serve all students.
I've said it before, and I will say it again: no kid should be
trapped in a failing school--charter or noncharter. We must treat all
public schools as part of the solution.
Yet all too often we refer to charter schools as ``those other
schools'' and treat this innovation in public education as if it were
on a separate, parallel track to school districts and non-charter
public schools.
Instead, we must embrace charter schools as part of our current
education system and work to ensure that the autonomy and flexibility
that charter schools receive is used to benefit all students.
We've seen success born out of meaningful collaboration with
districts and communities in places like Denver, where charter schools
aren't off to the side, but embraced as a driver of whole-district
improvement.
This kind of collaboration has fostered the transfer of best
practices, many of which started as charter school innovations, but are
now being applied to public schools more broadly to enhance services
for underserved students, including students with disabilities.
The district work in Denver is precisely what should be happening
to benefit all kids, and we need to see more of this across the
country. I look forward to hearing about Denver's successes from
another one of the witnesses here today.
I believe there is a moral imperative to do better by our students
and families. Higher standards and better assessments will help, but we
must look to innovative reforms, like charter schools, to push the
envelope and spur systems to change when they seem to be stuck.
I want to thank the chairman for calling today's hearing, and I
look forward to the discussion.
______
Chairman Kline. Thank you.
Pursuant to Committee Rule 7(c), all committee members will
be permitted to submit written statements to be included in the
permanent hearing record. And without objection, the hearing
record will remain open for 14 days to allow statements,
questions for the record, and other extraneous material
referenced during the hearing to be submitted in the official
hearing record.
It is now my pleasure to introduce our very distinguished
panel of witnesses. Dr. Deborah McGriff is the chair of the
board for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. She
also serves as a partner with New Schools Venture Fund.
Previously, she has served as the first female superintendent
of Detroit Public Schools.
Mrs. Lisa Graham Keegan is the chair of the board for the
National Association of Charter School Authorizers. She also
serves as the founder and president of the Education and
Breakthrough Network. Previously, she has served as Arizona's
superintendent of public instruction.
And I think, Mr. Miller, did you want to introduce our--
Mr. Miller. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am honored
to introduce Mr. David Linzey, the executive director of the
Clayton Valley Charter High School in Concord, California. Mr.
Linzey was unanimously appointed to serve as executive director
of the charter high school's governing board following the
school's 2012 conversion to a public charter school. Prior to
leading Clayton Valley, he spent time as a teacher, principal,
and a district superintendent, as well as chief academic
officer for the Alliance of College-Ready Public Schools, a
high-performing charter school network in Los Angeles. While
with the alliance, he led the urban charter schools to achieve
record-breaking college acceptance rates of more than 90
percent.
His track record of student-centered and result-driven
instruction has followed him to Clayton Valley, where just in 1
year since the charter conversion, the school has achieved the
largest increase in student academic growth of any high school
in the state. I want to personally thank Mr. Linzey for his
leadership to Clayton Valley. Your vision, your hard work, your
dedication, and your dedicated faculty have truly ushered in a
new era for this high school and for its community of students,
families and faculty. And I know the process of conversion was
arduous at some point there, a little combative, but the
results are indisputable. And I am pleased that you will be
able to be with us today, David. Thank you so much for making
the trip.
Chairman Kline. The pressure is on. You got that. Okay.
[Laughter.]
We also have Ms. Alyssa Whitehead-Bust. She serves as the
chief of innovation and reform at Denver Public Schools. She is
also an instructor in the University of Denver's Education
Leadership for Successful Schools Principal Preparation
Program. That is more alliteration than I can handle there.
Mr. Alan Rosskamm is the chief executive officer of
Breakthrough Schools in Cleveland, Ohio. He also serves at the
chair of the Parent Engagement Committee on the City of
Cleveland's Transformation Alliance.
So, welcome to you all. Before I recognize each of you to
provide your testimony, let me briefly explain, again--I know
it has been pointed out--our lighting system. When you start
your testimony, 5 minutes will be allotted. You will have a
green light in front of you. When there is a minute left, the
yellow light will come on. And when you have reached the end of
your 5 minutes, the red light will come on, and I would ask you
to try to wrap up as expeditiously then as you can.
After all of you have finished your testimony, then we will
be recognized for 5 minutes each to ask questions. While I am
loathe to gavel down the witnesses during their testimony, I am
much less so with my colleagues. So we want to try to keep
moving, give everybody have a chance to be involved in the
discussion.
I now would like to recognize Dr. McGriff for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. DEBORAH MCGRIFF, CHAIR OF THE BOARD, NATIONAL
ALLIANCE FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS, MILWAUKEE, WI
Ms. McGriff. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,
thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on
behalf of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. I
currently serve as the board chair of the National Alliance,
and I am also a managing director at New Schools Venture Fund,
a nonprofit organization that supports entrepreneurs who are
transforming public education.
I came to New Schools after a long career as an urban
school teacher, district administrator, superintendent, and
national charter schools leader. Throughout my career, I have
been committed to choice, excellence and equity. Today I want
to highlight the growth and impact of charter schools and the
importance of the federal charter schools program to the growth
and success of our nation's public charter schools.
Let's start with growth and impact. This school year, there
are more than 6,400 public charter schools enrolling 2.5
million students. This is amazing growth, as the movement
began, as our chairman informed us, in 1991 with the passage of
the first charter legislation in the state of Minnesota and
with the opening of the first charter school the following
year.
Today, 42 states and the District of Columbia have now
passed charter school laws, and in 135 communities, more than
10 percent of the students attend public charter schools. And
in seven school districts, the charter school students exceed
30 percent of the public school population.
As you know, Congress first created the charter schools
program in 1994, and research shows that investment has paid
off. Today, 15 of 16 gold standard research studies conducted
on public charter school student performance since 2010 have
found that public charter schools are exceeding in their
mission.
Most important, charter schools are helping students who
need it most. A 2013 study conducted by Stanford University's
Center for Research on Education Outcomes on public charter
school performance looked at public charter school performance
in 27 states and found that charter school students are
outperforming their peers in reading in traditional public
schools and they are closing the achievement gap among
subgroups.
Charter schools are seeing success in closing the
achievement gap, while at the same time the percentage of
public charter school students of color and from low-income
families is much higher than the percent in traditional public
schools.
While public charter schools have been at the forefront of
serving disadvantaged populations since the movement began, the
National Alliance has worked to continuously improve these
efforts. The National Alliance recently issued guidance to the
charter school community on their legal obligations to serve
English-language learners and provided a toolkit to guide those
efforts.
In addition, we at the alliance partnered with the newly
formed National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools
last October to issue a report on how states can provide
support to charter schools and how charter authorizers in
meeting their legal responsibilities to strengthen the
recruitment and services for children with disabilities.
Now to talk a little about the charter school program. The
charter school program through the State Education Agency
Grants Program provides the start-up capital needed to design a
school, hire a leader, recruit students, staff, and make
initial purchases of materials and equipment until regular
state and local funding becomes available.
Beginning in the fiscal year 2010, Congress continued its
work, seeding quality charter school networks by enabling high-
performing public charter schools to receive funding under the
CSP grants for the replication and expansion of high-quality
schools.
The other major piece of the CSP program is support for
facilities funding. Public charter schools most often devote
scarce resources to securing space for their schools. The
credit enhancement for charter schools program and the state's
facilities incentive grants help redress the fiscal imbalance
and ensure that our public charter schools have the facilities
they need.
As the Congress continues to work on reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the number-one message
that I want to leave with you today is that the CSP program is
working and that both Congress and the administration should
prioritize funding for the program to help us meet the needs
and demands of parents and ensure funding equity for students
who attend public charter schools.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on the
growth and impact of charter schools in American public
education. I am happy to answer any questions that you might
have.
[The statement of Dr. McGriff follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Kline. Thank you.
Mrs. Keegan, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MRS. LISA GRAHAM KEEGAN, CHAIR OF THE BOARD,
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CHARTER SCHOOLS AUTHORIZERS, PEORIA, AZ
Mrs. Keegan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Miller, and committee members. I appreciate being here today,
and specifically to talk about charter school authorizers, the
boards that put charter schools into business, and particularly
those members of NACSA. I serve as the chairwoman of the
National Alliance for Charter School--or the National
Association--sorry, Deborah--for Charter School Authorizers,
NACSA. We represent boards who are overseeing more than half of
the nation's public charter schools.
I had the opportunity in Arizona to help write the charter
school law in 1994, and I followed that as the state school
superintendent into implementation, beginning in 1995. It is
awfully nice to be 20 years down the road and know a lot more
about what the work of authorizing public charter schools is.
And the reason that we know that is because, at the same
time we started public charter schools in this country, we got
a much better look at data. We started to collect student data.
And I have to thank the members of this committee for their
dedication to this data over time.
Twenty years ago, we didn't have this data when we started
public charter schools. Today, we do. We also, though, when we
started public charter schools, we initiated the first public
schools created specifically to advance achievement. That was
the goal.
In charter schools, we see schools that are intentional.
They are designed with a mission that is created by teachers,
educators, who have a vision for a need that is seen and not
met. It is a difference, it is a shift in the way we open a
public school. It is an important shift, and we have seen
thousands of leaders come to the fore to offer their mission.
In addition, we have seen authorizing boards have to learn
how to understand whether the people who sit in front of them
are capable of delivering on that promise that they are so
committed to. That has required a great deal of attention to
the data that we have and the consistency of practice over
time.
At NACSA, I am particularly proud to be part of our effort
called One Million Lives. The One Million Lives effort
encourages charter-authorizing boards around the nation to use
what we know about what excellence looks like and to only
approve those applications, those dreams that have a good
likelihood of resulting in a school that is worthy of the
students in it.
In addition, we ask our charter authorizers to take the
difficult step of closing those schools, as Mr. Miller was
discussing, that have not fulfilled their promise. It is a
difficult task. It is an essential task. Over 5 years, we
believe we will affect at least a million lives in this way for
the better and have students in excellent schools.
After the first year, I can tell you it looks like good
progress. Last year, we saw 450 public charter schools open.
That is not all of the public charter schools that open, but
that is a number that we know were started by charter boards
with the commitment to high-quality standards. At the same
time, 206 public charter schools closed last year.
Now, that opening number is high, seems high, 450. It
actually could be a lot higher. As the chairman has indicated,
we have got close to a million students sitting on wait lists.
The closure number is high. It is going to stay high for a few
years. This country has opened a number of schools because we
didn't know. Those schools will have to close. That number will
stay high for a few years. We suspect it will then come down--
we hope it will--and that we will get in the business of only
starting excellence. But we probably will continue to have some
failure as innovation is essential in this field.
So this is great progress in charter authorizing. It is
also progress just generally in public education. What does a
great school look like at opening? What does a great school
look like in operation? When do you have to intervene as a
board?
Hopefully we are fast approaching the day when any public
charter school will be an intentional school and one that is
only opened because the mission of that school is well
understood and the leadership that is going to be at the helm
has a proven record of success before they even begin this new
school.
So we have learned a lot. We know a lot. But it is not yet
time to codify this moment, because as our friend and mentor
Geoff Canada reminds us, our work is not close to being done,
and we have to push so hard on innovation that there will
continue to be failures, new trials, new attempts. We have to
allow that to happen. And the critical balance for charter
authorizers and for any school board is to use the best of what
we know today and to be open to what is possible tomorrow.
At NACSA, we are very humble to be doing that work with
leaders around the country. And I want to thank you, Mr.
Chairman and Mr. Miller, for your ongoing support for charter
authorizing at quality, and to thank the rest of the members
for your work, and I am happy to answer any questions.
[The statement of Mrs. Keegan follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Kline. Thank you. Mr. Linzey, you are recognized
for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID LINZEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CLAYTON
VALLEY CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL, CONCORD, CA (DEMOCRAT WITNESS)
Mr. Linzey. Chairman Kline, Congressman Miller, and members
of the committee, thank you for inviting me here today to tell
the transformative story of Clayton Valley Charter High School,
a secondary school in Concord, California.
Charter schools allow for the critical autonomy in
decision-making, compared to the bureaucracy and red tape of
the local districts. In traditional schools and districts, it
often takes years to make important changes, with obstacles met
almost at every turn. This is different for charter schools, as
we have the capacity to make school-based decisions regarding
curriculum, supports, interventions, and more, in a timely
manner.
A charter school is a speedboat in contrast to the Titanic
of the district decision-making. Those in the trenches
typically understand what changes need to occur to meet the
needs of students as opposed to those who are farther removed.
Charter schools allow opportunity for improvement, innovation,
and site-based decision-making.
Clayton Valley has undergone a remarkable transformation
since converting to a charter school in July 2012. After years
of frustration and neglect by the local district, the teachers'
turmoil reached a boiling point. This led to a vote by the
teachers to convert the school from traditional to a charter
school, using the state's conversion law.
The mission was clear: The teachers and the extended
community of parents and community leaders banded together in
support of making a better school. They wanted to bring the
school out of its complacency of underachievement, decline in
facilities, low staff morale, and student apathy. Parents had
been disengaged for many years. Professional development was
nearly absent, and the school had reached a low point in
statewide student achievement, earning a ranking of 1 out of 10
on the similar schools scale.
Despite opposition from district leadership, the charter
school had tremendous support from Congressman George Miller
and other key leaders who took a stand in support of our desire
to become a charter school. The Contra Costa County Office of
Education unanimously approved our charter petition. And then
the work really began.
I was appointed to be the executive director with a mission
to galvanize the school into a common vision, leading the
charter school from good to great. Then I hired a quality
administrative team, and in just 6 weeks after I was hired, we
opened the school with 1,900 students, the same students who
attended the prior year.
But the difference was immediate and astonishing. Much to
the amazement of the staff, the parents, the students, the
school was transformed almost overnight with the instructional
framework of rigor, relevance, and relationships, as developed
by Dr. Willard Daggett. I spent nearly a week with the teachers
and administrators discussing what quality instruction looked
like, how application makes learning relevant, and how
nurturing relationships between teachers and students lays a
foundation where students want to learn and they want to
perform academically.
Professional development became the constant theme. And one
of the founding charter teachers, current administrator Neil
McChesney stated, ``I received more professional development in
1 year at the charter school than I had in 10 previous years.''
Innovative intervention programs were implemented to
support struggling students in the summers, after school, and
even on Saturdays. There was an all-out focus on improving
student achievement, and the teachers caught the vision. We
embraced the very same strategies implemented by many other
schools, charter schools alike, and these included powerful
intervention programs to close the achievement gap,
instructional guides, benchmark assessments, a failure-free
zone policy where students had to do their work well or stay
after school and do it over. The kids interpreted that as love.
[Laughter.]
We implemented innovative instructional approaches,
extensive professional development. Parent involvement became a
key theme with over 250 parents actively involved on a regular
basis. Instructional software programs were utilized
significantly. And then we implemented powerful counseling and
guidance programs.
While no single best practice is unique, the buy-in to
these strategies by staff and the blend of all of these
strategies has resulted in a whole new culture and a whole new
campus. The desire by the teachers to do better and do more for
students is remarkable.
The autonomy is paying off quickly. Clayton Valley High
School had the top academic achievement growth in California
last year for large high schools. Their 62-point jump on the
state's API took them from a score of 774 to 836 in a single
year, ranking us at a 9 out of 10 on the statewide scale. The
entire community of Clayton knows the significant
transformation that has occurred. There is great community
pride in our school. And CVCHS now has a waiting list of nearly
400 students for the fall of 2014.
Without becoming a charter school, this transformation
would have never occurred. The success of Clayton Valley and
the tremendous gains has caused the local district and other
schools to pay attention and borrow from our best practices.
And as the executive director, my ultimate desire is to see
academic success for all the students in my community, those at
the charter and those at other schools, and it is our
commitment to share those best practices with everyone who will
listen.
Again, this success would not have occurred without
becoming a charter, and I want to thank you for allowing me to
share that story, and I want to thank Congressman George Miller
for his support.
[The statement of Mr. Linzey follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Kline. Thank you.
Ms. Whitehead-Bust, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MS, ALYSSA WHITEHEAD-BUST, CHIEF OF INNOVATION AND
REFORM, DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, DENVER, CO (DEMOCRAT WITNESS)
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. Thank you, Chairman Kline, Ranking
Member Miller, members of the committee. I am honored to be
here today representing Denver Public Schools and testifying on
behalf of the important role that public charter schools play
in our urban school system, a system which is dedicated to
realize equity and achievement for all students.
My name is Alyssa Whitehead-Bust. I serve as the chief of
innovation and reform. And in that role, I oversee charter
school authorization, quality control, and collaboration.
Previously, for 15 years, I helped launch and lead charter
schools across the country.
I am proud today to be part of a district that I think is
setting the pace nationally, in part because of our intentional
and strategic strategy around equity and collaboration between
all public schools in our system, including our charters.
Denver Public Schools is one of the fastest-growing urban
districts in the nation, serving over 87,000 students from
diverse backgrounds. Of the district's 170 K-12 public schools,
one in four are charter schools. Serving 13,000 students,
Denver charter schools educate an equitable portion of the 72
percent of our students who qualify for the federal free and
reduced lunch program, as well as of the 39 percent of our
students who speak Spanish as their primary language.
In Denver, we see the success of the charter sector as a
necessary, but not sufficient component of a larger strategy
that focuses on ensuring equity of access to high-quality
public schools for all students. We see collaboration and the
transfer of promising practices as an equally, if not more
important component of our strategy.
We know that by collaborating across all school types and
thinking of our charter schools in part as the R&D lab that
their original federal mandate suggests, we can more quickly
fulfill our fundamental promise to graduate 100 percent of our
students ready to persist in college and career.
Our three equities, as we call them in Denver, set a solid
foundation for the collaboration that is propelling our
success. Denver public charter school leaders, as well as our
school board, have mutually adopted a set of commitments to
ensuring equity of accountability, equity of responsibility for
serving all students, and equity of opportunity to access key
resources, including financial resources and facilities.
As an example, all Denver schools are publicly held to the
same accountability framework. In addition, all of our new
school and closure standards are applied to all schools,
regardless of governance type. A full 79 percent of our charter
schools are located in district-owned or operated facilities.
This shared commitment to our three equities has fostered a
fertile ground for the success of our charter schools
themselves, as well as for the collaboration between all
schools in our public system.
In Denver, charters do add quality seats to a system that
needs them, filling both capacity needs and performance gaps
across all areas of the city. While Denver has shown steady
improvement in performance across all measures and all school
types since 2005, charter schools have simultaneously and
consistently outperformed other school models.
Since 2010, our charter school enrollment has grown by 17
percent annually. Charter schools are in high demand in part
because their autonomies give them the opportunity to try
innovative and promising new practices. For example, charters
in Denver have led the way in piloting strategies related to
human capital, school culture, instructional delivery, and use
of time and technology.
Denver charters were amongst the city's first public
schools to expand learning time by extending both the day and
the year. They have led the way in the use of data to drive
instruction, as well as in establishing high-expectation
learning cultures for both students and grownups.
While these innovations are important unto themselves for
the benefit of charter school students, they are particularly
important in the context of collaboration. If isolated to the
province of charter schools alone, such promising practices
would only impact 15 percent of our students in Denver. But
because of Denver's approach to equity and collaboration, these
promising practices are able to spread quickly to schools
across governance type; 5 years ago, expanded learning was
largely a charter school strategy. Today, dozens of non-charter
schools have extended both their days and their years to ensure
that they are offering more and better learning time for kids.
Denver students and families need our charter sector to
continue and to continue to adopt and share promising
practices. Cities across the nation likewise are depending on a
thriving and successful charter sector as part of our shared
and intentional strategy to provoke dramatic gains in student
achievement and dramatic reductions in achievement gaps.
I encourage Congress to align its work to the
reauthorization with important role of charter schools being at
the forefront of your mind. I thank you for your time and look
forward to answering any questions you may have.
[The statement of Ms. Whitehead-Bust follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Kline. Thank you.
Mr. Rosskamm, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF MR. ALAN ROSSKAMM, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS, CLEVELAND, OH
Mr. Rosskamm. Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and
members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to discuss
Breakthrough Schools and the transformative education efforts
happening in Cleveland, Ohio.
Breakthrough is a nonprofit charter management organization
operating nine schools, with over 2,500 students, and growing
to serve almost 7,000 schools by 2020. Our student population
is 96 percent minority, 84 percent low-income. For the second
year in a row, Breakthrough is the highest-rated charter
network in the state of Ohio.
Our network had a unique start, growing out of a
collaborative effort by three existing independent charter
schools, each with a distinctive educational model. In 2009,
they came together to improve their schools' long-term
financial sustainability and to enable growth so that they
could serve more children.
Our partnerships with families is key to our students'
success. Our teachers conduct summer home visits, and parent-
teacher conferences approach 100 percent participation in many
of our schools.
Our Through College Program mentors students and their
parents in the selection of high-quality college preparatory
high schools that best fit their needs. Those efforts culminate
in one of my proudest evenings of the year, where the 24 best
high schools in Cleveland--independent schools, parochial,
charter and district schools--all join us for a high school
fair, with our parents and our children shopping together for
the right school.
At Breakthrough, we particularly value our relationship
with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Breakthrough
Schools is currently the only charter schools in the city
sponsored by the district. Together, we work toward solutions
that benefit children. Breakthrough's principals and a group of
district principals meet regularly for professional development
and to share best practices. I feel I have a true partner in
District CEO, Eric Gordon.
We have also collaborated on facilities since 2011, when we
purchased four closed buildings from the district and co-
located one of our new schools inside an existing district high
school. In both instances, these were firsts in Ohio. The co-
location arose when the church lease we were counting on fell
through just a few weeks before our new west side school was
scheduled to open. Eric and the CMSD Board of Education showed
tremendous courage and vision, allowing our elementary school
to open in the basement of a district high school.
Very quickly, we had CMSD high school students greeting our
kindergartners at the door and walking them upstairs to
breakfast each morning. When we outgrew that space, the
district agreed to a lease of the empty school building next
door for only $1 a year. There is a definite sense on both
sides that we really are in this together. Our joint goal is to
create more high-quality seats for children, regardless of who
owns them.
Our city is best known for our unique collaborative
approach to urban education reform. The greatest example of our
partnership has been the work with Mayor Frank Jackson's
office, the greater Cleveland partnership, our Chamber of
Commerce, the Cleveland Teachers Union, the Cleveland and Gund
Foundations, the school district, and Breakthrough Schools to
create and pass the Cleveland Plan: transformative bipartisan
legislation that has enabled our city to pursue our shared
vision of a portfolio school district, offering high-quality
school options in every neighborhood.
Part of the Cleveland Plan included the creation of the
Transformation Alliance, a nonprofit organization charged with
monitoring the quality of all Cleveland public schools,
district and charter, to enable parents to make informed school
choices for their children. Following the plan's passage, we
worked closely together again to pass a $15 mil operating levy,
the first operating levy to pass in our city in 16 years.
Cleveland is only the second city in the country, behind
Denver, to allow charter schools to receive a small portion of
the local tax levy dollars.
As I think the committee can see, in Cleveland all of us
have put traditional differences aside for the benefit of the
city's children. Breakthrough is an example of how educational
entrepreneurs have created innovative schools that work and
then proceeded to replicate to create quality seats for many
more children.
This phenomenon is taking place across the nation.
Breakthrough is one of 24 high-performing charter management
organizations that collectively operate more than 400 schools
across 53 communities and 23 states, serving 154,000 students.
If we operated as a district, we would be the 15th-largest and
the highest-performing urban district in the country.
With your ongoing support, we plan collectively to open 370
new schools over the next 5 years and to serve an additional
200,000 students. High-quality charters like those in the
Breakthrough network and our peers across the country are
proving every day that historically disadvantaged students can
learn and excel.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this
morning, and I look forward to your questions.
[The statement of Mr. Rosskamm follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6827.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6827.027
Chairman Kline. Thank you very much. I thank all the
witnesses, really, really great testimony. We have been doing
some chattering up here, not out of disrespect for what you are
saying, but out of interest in what you are saying. So really,
really very, very good testimony.
Mrs. Keegan, I think there is a lot of misunderstanding--or
lack of understanding may be another way of putting it--of the
role of authorizers. And we know that authorizers authorize the
school to start, and they play a role in closing, but can you
sort of lay out what the role is from inception to potentially
end, just tell us how that works?
Mrs. Keegan. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman and members, this role
has evolved, as you know, but primarily charter school
authorizers--and Arizona was the first state to have a state
board specifically for charter schools, no appeals process,
that is their job--now there are any number of different kinds
of authorizers.
Certainly, the local school district remains an authorizer
in most of the 42 states. As one option, there are state boards
for charter schools. There are other independent boards, often
out of universities or other community service organizations.
So those boards are charged with basically accepting the
application from a group of teaching professionals that say,
this is the school we would like to run.
There are sometimes transformative moves, as Mr. Linzey was
describing, where there is the opportunity to convert from
traditional practice, traditional district school, to a new
converted public charter school. So many, many different kinds
of governance within even the charter sector itself.
So authorizers take that first look, and they say yes or
no, you can go into business or you may not, and that is not
where it stops. Charter contracts generally now, 5 years at the
start. At NACSA, we recommend that all be no more than 5 years
at the start, and maybe if you have been a great school for
decades, you can have a 15-year contract, but you have got to
prove that you are great over time.
That work of watching a school over time is what I think is
most interesting right now. We have a lot of networks that we
know have replicated themselves, the Breakthrough network
notably among the best in the country. So we know what that
looks like. And more than that, we know what Alan looks like.
This has a lot to do with people. People are policy. People are
practice. And so it is up to a governing board, a charter-
authorizing board to recognize the expertise of the people
behind that application at inception and then ongoing.
And then it is their job when the schools fail to shut that
school down. That is never easy. It is never easy for kids.
Oftentimes, you can shut that public charter school down
knowing that kids will not have better options. Hopefully we
are coming up with better ways to maybe transfer those charter
schools over to networks like Breakthrough that are
exceptional, let a better team come in and take that over so
that students don't lose in that equation. But for sure,
charter authorizing boards that are overseeing schools that
cannot make good on their promise have got to shut those down.
Chairman Kline. And you can do that fairly quickly? How
long does it take you to shut a school down?
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman and members, it has been taking
way too long. I would say part of that was lack of data in the
first place. Now we know pretty quickly. We know within the
first 2 years, quite frankly, the school is going to make it or
it isn't.
I have to say, for the first 10 years, though, as these
schools got up and running, there is a bunch of them I am glad
we didn't shut down, particularly community schools that were
struggling to get it right, and many have now. I am glad we let
them go. But it doesn't take long now.
And the practice--organizations like NACSA that can help
charter authorizers understand the laws and regulations they
need to have in place to be able to quickly close these schools
down or bring in better operators, that knowledge is coming, I
think is here now, and just more boards have to adopt it.
Chairman Kline. What do you have to do legally to shut one
down? I hate to be focusing on the shutting down part here. We
are excited about charter schools and them starting, but
clearly, this is a power, this is a practice, this is a
possibility that really doesn't exist in the traditional public
schools. So how do you do that?
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman and members, the charter school
has a contract that says they will do a certain number of
things, and charter authorizing boards now, fortunately, have
set most of the good ones at an even higher standard than the
state has. Once that is violated, the school is noticed under
whatever legal notice process exists in the state, and so it is
a legal notification process.
It probably takes at least 18 months, and so that is why
you have to get right on it, because this is a right, as you
have indicated. A contract is a right. It is a business right.
But charter authorizers can act very quickly to give that first
notice that the charter has not been met as soon as you see,
you know, reporting, academic reporting or financial reporting.
Often these are financial problems, and they need to act on
that as quickly as possible, probably no shorter timeframe than
18 months, but it shouldn't be much longer than 2 years.
Chairman Kline. Okay. Thank you very much. My time has
expired.
Mr. Miller?
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. McGriff referred
to the National Center on Special Education Charter Schools. I
would like to submit for the record their testimony and ask
unanimous consent to be made part of the record.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Kline. Without objection.
Mr. Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Linzey, given the nature of the attendance area of
Clayton Valley charter high school, I wonder if you might
describe what you saw at Clayton Valley prior to its conversion
to a charter school.
Mr. Linzey. I was able to visit the school in the several
months prior to us becoming a conversion school. And the
school, quite honestly, looked apathetic. The students looked
disinterested. It was obvious there was apathy amongst the
kids.
In speaking with staff members, there was incredibly low
staff morale, frustration, and so the campus wasn't very clean.
The facilities did not look like they were kept up very well.
It is about a 60-year-old facility, and it looked like it. It
had aged every bit of that and then some.
And so there was some hope by the leaders of the
conversion, there was a hope by a lot of staff. The parents
were incredibly excited about the newness, the new opportunity
to be a part of this school again. In talking with many of the
parents, they just weren't a part of the school for the past
number of years.
Mr. Miller. Can you describe the demographics?
Mr. Linzey. The demographics--it is a suburban school. It
is not like the traditional--or what you might see in a normal,
very urban school. It is predominantly Caucasian, and then the
next subgroup would be Hispanic population, with smaller groups
of Asian and African-American students.
There is probably about a 20 percent free and reduced lunch
student body there, and then there is a segment of English
learners. I would like to report that every single subgroup
grew significantly on our state tests, and most successful were
the groups that were the farthest behind. And we took great
pride in that.
Mr. Miller. You have 20 percent free and reduced. You also
have some very high-income.
Mr. Linzey. We do. It is a suburban school, and the city of
Clayton is a more affluent area. So that is kind of rare to see
a conversion charter school in a suburban setting like that,
but just shows you the level of frustration that was in
existence.
Mr. Miller. Thank you.
Ms. Whitehead-Bust, the question of facilities, can you
describe the process by which facilities are able to be made
available for charters in Denver?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. We have an internal policy that allows
us to think about equitable placement of our charter schools,
thinking about our vision of ensuring that all students have
access to a high-quality school. We look first and foremost at
the track record of the school and its ability to serve
students in a particular neighborhood.
We then also look at the ability for a school, if they are
going to be co-located, sharing a campus, to collaborate with
the school that is also on that same campus. So are there
opportunities to share professional learning, programming,
school culture, those kinds of things? So charter schools have
the opportunity to present their case to us, that they would
like to be located in a district-owned or operated facility,
and then there is a placement process that looks at a variety
of transparently publicized criteria, and then we make our
decisions from there.
Mr. Miller. - they are co-located, between the charter and
the traditional school?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. You know, I would follow up on the
statement that we are getting better and better at this work
overall. I think if you looked at our first campus-sharing
campuses, you would see that we have gotten considerably more
intentional about placement decisions today to ensure the kind
of collaboration that we really want.
So I will give you a very specific example. We have a
campus in the middle of urban Denver that co-locates Cole
Elementary School. It is an innovation school and the Denver
School of Science and Technology middle and high school. And
they have adopted a shared mascot, shared language for student
discipline, shared systems and structures to have adult
learning transfer from one side of the campus to the other side
of the campus. That is working incredibly well. It is working
that well in part because we learned from some of our early
experiences.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kline. Thank you. Dr. Roe, you are recognized.
Mr. Roe. I thank the chairman for recognizing. And kudos
for all of you all for what you are doing. I mean, it is just
amazing what I am hearing. And, Mr. Linzey, job well done. I
wanted to start out by saying that.
I have heard a common theme, and I would--I have got a lot
of questions I am going to submit to you all in writing, but
one is, why do we need--why do we need charter schools? I mean,
and I think the reason is, is to narrow the achievement gap, I
believe is the reason that we are having that, and I want to
know how you define a failing school.
I hate to go back to what the chairman was saying, but I
have been a former mayor. Fortunately, I just got to build
schools, but closing one is your worst nightmare. So I know
just from a standpoint of a community and how they are attached
to the school, that is a very difficult thing to do, so I would
like to have you all talk about that.
Do you use a common curriculum? Are you all in the charter
school system--because we know--ought to know now what works.
And if you know in 2 years what failure is, already you have
defined that, then why don't we just--when we start one of
these--do what works?
And what I have heard you all say is, we have to have great
teachers that are constantly motivated, and the question is,
how do you not hire underperforming teachers? That is also very
hard. Great leadership in the principal's office I think is
another thing I have heard, the length of the day. Nobody wants
to go to school longer. Mr. Linzey, I can assure you, if you
had challenged me with studying and getting my work done or
staying after school, I know what I am going to do. It is good
leverage.
[Laughter.]
And then summer programs, no one talked about that, about
how you narrow that. So I will stop. I want to hear what you
have got to say about all of those things. And anybody can
answer that.
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Roe, I am happy to
start this, and there is a great deal of expertise here, so I
will be brief.
But I would simply say, the curriculum that each of these
schools choose is going to be very different. It is mind-
blowing, actually, what is out there, some schools using a
hybrid techniques, part digital learning, part teachers, some
using very traditional methodology that I would recognize as my
grade school eons ago.
And yet it is about a decision to be excellent in excellent
schools. I would even say that at this point what we know is it
is not so much what a charter school does, it is what a school
does, and that looks the same whether it is district, charter,
magnet, all public schools, governance aside, once you get in
there, it is about instruction and the decision to be at, A,
using the time and the intention and the expertise to get
there, and you can do it in a lot of different ways. What you
see as an authorizer, however, is it is either being done
according to the contract with data that shows you it is or it
isn't. So I will let my colleagues speak to that.
Mr. Linzey. Yes, thank you. And thanks again for the
questions, outstanding questions. I would like to just speak to
the issue of curriculum for a second. Most charter schools, all
charter schools that I am aware of teach to the standards of
their state curriculum, so the common curriculum is the same
curriculum as the state you are in. And now we are moving to a
national curriculum, the common core curriculum, and so that is
a big shift for all schools in the nation, really.
But within the curriculum, there is instruction. And so
instructional practices vary greatly from school to school,
from classroom to classroom in a school, and so it is up to the
leadership within the school to ensure there is high standards,
quality instruction, monitoring, professional development, and
with budget cuts in California, I know, and probably every
other state, a lot of the funding for professional development
has been cut and days for professional development in the
summer has been cut.
But as a charter school, you have that autonomy to spend
your dollars where you think it needs to be spent, so we still,
with the same dollars that other schools got, charter or non-
charter, we were able to fund teachers the past 2 summers for
extensive professional development and then to pay teachers to
work on Saturdays to work with intervention programs, using
research-based practices.
I like to tell our teachers, not every strategy is the
same. There are research-based practices. Dr. Robert Marzano
has his nine that are the highly effective strategies. That
became our bible for, let's get these nine done well, and then
we can move on to some others.
Mr. Roe. My time is about expired. Let me get two quick
questions. Where are charters located? Are they urban? I live
in a rural area. Where are they located? And, two, how do you
answer the question about charters taking money away from
underfunded public schools and selecting students? I think that
is an argument you hear all the time, so I don't know whether
you have got time to answer, but in writing I would like to
hear those.
Mr. Rosskamm. I would be happy to comment on the funding.
There is no question that when students leave a school, a
certain number of dollars leave with them. Whether they are
leaving the city altogether because parents feel they can get a
better education in a suburban district, whether they are
moving to a parochial or independent school, or whether they
are moving to a charter school.
On the other side of that equation, at least in our city,
and in our state of Ohio, the charter schools that are
accepting those children are only getting--are getting less
than two-thirds of the funding that the district school is
spending per child, and the district facilities are funded
through bonds and through state facilities, whereas the charter
schools are paying rent on those facilities.
So we start with a substantial disadvantage, and yet we
have to do the same job and hope to do that job better.
Mr. Roe. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Kline. Thank you. Mr. Hinojosa, you are
recognized.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Chairman Kline and Ranking Member
Miller.
I strongly believe that all schools, including charter
schools, should offer a high-quality education and serve all
students equitably. I have experience as the local school board
of trustees member. I have experience as the member of the
Texas State Board of Education for 10 years and a trustee for a
community college before I came to Congress.
So much of what we are discussing today is of great
interest to me, because I believe that charter schools,
especially those that are high-quality charter schools, are
definitely contributing to our education progress in schools
throughout the United States.
But I have a problem with seeing that in my state of Texas,
where we have over 6 million students in our K-12 programs,
that the legislature cut $6 billion about 3 or 4 years ago, and
we had to raise the average of students in each classroom from
what was average to have 22 up to 25, 28.
I looked at the statistics that several of you have given,
like the state of Ohio, with a number of students and campuses,
and it equals 280 students per campus. I looked at the state of
Texas on our public charter schools, the number of campuses we
have, and it averages 323 per campus.
So wanting to make all of our schools operate as well as
the exemplary and high-quality charter schools, tell me how
that can be done. All the public schools my children have gone
to have had close to 1,000 students in that campus, high
schools. My last, fifth child is in high school with 2,000
students.
So it just seems like we are comparing two different types
of programs for so many students in the average public school
in the country versus our best charter schools. So let me ask
Ms. Whitehead-Bust, what is your answer to changing things in
our public schools?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. One of the things that we are finding
in Denver is incredibly helpful is pairing teachers and school
leaders between different school types to share their promising
practices. You are referencing perhaps small schools as being
one strategy. We see many strategies that are really important
for student success, data-driven instruction, high-quality
student culture, high-quality adult learning. We heard from our
colleagues that operate schools some of the strategies that
they have put in place.
And so in Denver what we have tried to do is pair our
leaders and educators from across different schools to share
some of those promising practices. So as an example, STRIVE is
one of our highest performing charter networks in Denver. They
operate largely a series of middle schools. They host, as an
example, extraordinarily high-quality data analysis sessions
with their teachers that allow their teachers to turn on a dime
and shift their instruction the very next morning to make sure
that they are accelerating and recuperating learning for all
students. They open those sessions to all teachers in the
district so that they can come and observe and use those very
same practices when they go back to their own campuses the next
day.
And so we see slowly, step by step, these practices sharing
across campuses. The charters are also learning from direct-
managed schools. It is not a one-way sharing, but we very
intentionally pair educators together.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.
I have time for one more question, this one to Dr. McGriff. Can
you share your views on the proliferation of virtual charter
schools and, in particular, how these schools equitably
serving--how are these schools equitably serving and meeting
the needs of students with disabilities and English-language
learners?
Ms. McGriff. At the National Alliance, we are supportive of
all models of charter schools, because we know that kids learn
in lots of different ways and parents have different
expectations for students. I cannot speak very specifically
about the stats on special education or language learners in
virtual schools, but in charters overall, there is not a
disadvantage for special education students or English-language
learners. And the research is pointing out that the students
are equally represented when compared to traditional schools.
I do also want to go back and say, we can't judge any
school on a single factor. And what we tried to talk about
today are the constellation of factors that make for a great
school.
Mr. Hinojosa. My time has run out. I yield back.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Walberg?
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the panel
for being here. It is really invigoration to hear students,
parents, and teachers talked about more than just simply past
history of educational status quo. Students needs primarily are
what we ought to be concerned with.
And, Dr. McGriff, it is good to see you. I remember as a
member of the Michigan House Education Committee watching your
all-too-short tenure in Detroit Public Schools.
Ms. McGriff. Nice to see you.
Mr. Walberg. As you were given all sorts of accolades from
people who really cared about the product of the Detroit Public
School system being given a chance to ultimately be educated to
meet the needs in the real world and have the same opportunity
that other school students had in other districts. I just
wonder, had some of your innovative new course charting
proposals in that great school system and a great city, that
hopefully will return to its greatness, if that had been
allowed to bring about its full results, what difference there
might be in Detroit this very day.
Ms. McGriff. Thank you.
Mr. Walberg. We hope that as a result of the work that you
and other panel members are doing that we see that change.
Let me ask you, Dr. McGriff, you discussed in your
testimony the efforts and the intentions of charter schools to
create a collaboration between public charter schools and
traditional public schools in order to share best practices to
educate students, again, the needs of students versus the
status quo desires of the educational establishment. What role
do charter schools play in that collaboration? And more
specifically, if you could expand on how they benefit
traditional public schools?
Ms. McGriff. I think the panelists have addressed that. I
happen to be on the board of the Denver School of Science and
Technology, and the example that was given for Cole Middle
School as a way of sharing, but generally, when there are
district charter collaborations, we have pointed out
achievement first, for example, provides principal training for
all the principals in the city, because their principal
training program is considered to be that thoughtful.
I know that DSST has put into place a really strong human
capital initiative. They are also engaged in 100Kin10, which is
an effort to raise 100,000 STEM teachers in urban areas, and
those ideas through PD are shared.
We also--for here in D.C., for example, there are a number
of initiatives that are implemented in the charter school
network that the district public schools will also implement.
And I will give you an example. We talked about benchmarking
today, and there is a benchmarking system that lots of charters
use called achievement network, is used in the charter schools
in D.C., but it is also used in the public schools.
So there isn't this division. And sometimes schools have
the same theme. People ask, why charter schools? Because
parents want different kinds of schools. They want performing
arts schools. They want science schools. They want Montessori
schools. And often you may have a charter school with that
theme and a public school with that--a traditional public
school with the same theme, so they collaborate across
instructional strategies and building programs.
I can't think of a single idea where a charter--an
innovative charter school and an innovative traditional public
school could not collaborate if they chose to.
Mr. Walberg. And that is the key, isn't it? The--
Ms. McGriff. It is. And another--I will give you another
example. I happen to live in Milwaukee, and we have an
initiative called Schools That Can Milwaukee. It is a
collaborative of the highest-performing traditional public
schools, highest-performing charter schools, and highest-
performing publicly funded private schools. All you have to be
to be a part of this network is to be high-performing. And the
goal of the network is to bring 20,000 additional high-
performing seats to the city by 2010.
Mr. Walberg. What a great concept. What a great concept. In
my remaining moments, Mr. Rosskamm, when looking at reform, are
there any federal obstacles that we here can assist you in, in
helping removing to make your success even better?
Mr. Rosskamm. In Ohio, many of our obstacles are state
obstacles. What we do desperately need--and I guess the
legislation is before you--is funding to replicate what works.
Innovation is an important part of the charter movement, and we
need to continue to fund innovation, but once we have proven
something, there is no greater return on investment than
providing funds to replicate what is working. And we
absolutely, desperately need your help to be able to continue
to do that.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kline. Thank you. Mr. Bishop?
Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you very
much to the panel for your testimony and also for your work on
behalf of our nation's students.
I feel sort of like a voice in the wilderness here, but I
just need to put this out there. The Elementary and Secondary
Ed Act reauthorization that this committee passed freezes
funding for Title I and IDEA for the next 5 fiscal years at the
fiscal 2013 post-sequester levels. It also--that same bill--
suggests that the federal government should be providing
financial support for the planning, program, design, and
initial implementation of charter schools, and to expand the
number of high-quality charter schools available to students
across the nation. I am quoting from the bill.
So my question is, we are going to freeze--if this
committee's bill were to ever take on the force of law, we
would freeze funding at admittedly inadequate levels, post-
sequester levels, for fiscal year 2013, so we would carry
forward a level of funding that is inadequate, and yet we would
be funding at an increased level charter schools.
And so my question to you is--and I will ask each of you to
respond briefly--is that a good public policy choice? Should we
really be reducing our support for the traditional programs of
Title I and IDEA, and doing so, so as to increase--or as a
potential consequence, increase the support for charter
schools? Is that the right public policy choice for the federal
government to make?
And so I just put that out there as a question.
Mr. Linzey. My reaction to that is, nobody that I know of
in education wants to cut funding for Title I and IDEA. So I
don't think that is a good policy to cut funding for special ed
students and for Title I students, but my question to you back
would be, where do you get your biggest bang for your buck, if
you have limited dollars?
Mr. Bishop. And that--see, that is where I am heading,
also.
Mr. Linzey. Right.
Mr. Bishop. And we may be coming to a different conclusion,
but 95 percent of our students are educated in public schools.
And so I guess I would argue that is where you get the biggest
bang for the buck. But you may have a dissenting opinion.
Mr. Linzey. Yes. I think the data that I have seen, which
is national data, CREDO Institute, is showing that charter
schools are making significantly more gain than their
traditional public schools.
Mr. Bishop. I am going to push back on that a little bit.
That data, that CREDO data, if you really look at it, what it
really shows is that there are either no differences or
infinitesimally small differences in performance of public
school students versus charter school students. And so I
guess--again, and this is not to knock charter schools. This is
to question why it is we seem to be moving headlong in a
support of charter schools at the expense of traditional public
schools.
Mr. Rosskamm. If I could, I would like to respectfully
suggest that maybe that is the wrong question. In Cleveland--
Mr. Bishop. I am a member of Congress. Of course I have got
to ask the wrong question--
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rosskamm. But your privilege, of course. In Cleveland,
our mayor has said that--to use his words, he is over that
question. What he is interested in is supporting high-quality
schools, both district and charter, and seeing a reduction in
poor schools--and either turning around or doing something
about the underperforming schools.
And I want you to know, from a charter perspective, we
need, desperately need those dollars for special-needs
children. We take that obligation and that responsibility
equally seriously and need those funds.
Mr. Bishop. I guess where my concern is--and maybe--and I
am maybe doing too much talking and not letting you answer, but
I think you can probably make an argument that more money
doesn't necessarily equate with quality. But I am not sure you
can make an argument that if you continuously drain resources
out of the public school system that is not going to result in
diminished quality.
And that is my concern. In New York, the way charter
schools are funded is by basically taxing the sending district
the tuition that they would normally receive from the student
going to that school to the charter school, so they are getting
hit both ways. And so my challenge is or my question is, is
this really where we should be going? Or shouldn't we be
increasing the size of the pie? If we are that committed to
charter schools, shouldn't we be increasing the size of the
pie, instead of slicing it differently?
Mr. Rosskamm. Mr. Chairman, could I respond to that, as
well?
Mr. Bishop. Have I taken too long?
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Bishop. It is a great question, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kline. A fine question. We will probably have a
chance to pick that up later.
And just for the record, in the Student Success Act,
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which not only passed
the committee, but passed the floor, we did not cut a dime from
IDEA. We didn't address special education. And I think I would
agree with the gentleman that we as an institution, we as a
country are not doing our job in increasing that money for
special ed, but we did not cut it, just for the record.
Dr. Bucshon, you are recognized.
Mr. Bucshon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I would
like to say, you know, we could use your help in getting the
United States Senate to bring their version of the bill to the
U.S. Senate floor, maybe pass that, and then we can get to
conference and work out our differences.
With that said, Dr. McGriff, my question surrounds the
number of hours kids spend in school and what charter schools
across the country are doing with that. I mean, I think many of
us know--and I have four kids, and I am not an educator, but I
study the subject a lot, that other countries around the world,
their children spend more time in the classroom than ours do,
dramatically more time in the classroom.
And I think we also know that lower socioeconomic class
students, when they have long summer breaks, regress at a
faster rate than students from higher socioeconomic
populations, primarily, I think, probably from because of the
lack of parental engagement and other factors. They are just
trying to get by day-to-day. They don't have time to worry
about these issues.
So can you comment on maybe what charter schools--the trend
in charter schools is across the country and hours in the
classroom and maybe length of breaks that charter schools are
doing? There are some schools that are going to year-round and
how that might--if there is data out there that shows that
that--in America, that works, and how that could spill over
into--or the rest of our educational system, which admittedly,
I think, in my view, is stuck in the past.
Ms. McGriff. I think when we think about more time, we have
to look at, more time doing what? And we also have to look at,
what is the current developmental stage of the school? So if
you look at charter schools that are launching and they are
getting a new set of kids, they are going to have a very
different approach to how to use time, where the extra time
should be, than if you are looking at a CMO that has been in
operation for 15 years and they have now developed a culture.
So let's talk first about the really early-stage school.
Generally, they will not open without having the kids who are
coming to them the first year come to some type of summer
school. They think that culture-building before they get in the
room in September is an important thing to do.
When you diagnose kids, and they are three and four grades
behind, and they are in ninth grade, you are not going to catch
them up unless you are doing after-school programs that you
have to come if you don't do your homework. They are building
in these kids the resiliency and the sense of responsibility
and good use of time.
And you are absolutely right. Low-income children regress
every summer. So if you don't have--the programs are
innovative. They are not just the traditional summer school
programs. They have these kids going to college campuses,
spending experiences on college to get them to know, college is
for you, and you can be successful. Or they are sending them to
STEM camp.
So I think when people say more time and an extended day,
they don't really look deeply into the innovations that--and it
is not just charter schools. The great quality traditional
public schools do exactly the same thing with time.
I think what we are learning from the CMOs in our
portfolio, that over time, as the--especially if the CMO has a
feeder pattern K-12, they are now getting kids that are not so
far behind, they are beginning to cut back the number of hours
to be more consistent with what kids need. But that takes years
of having kids that you have had since kindergarten now coming
into your middle schools and your high schools.
Mr. Bucshon. Yes. Ms. Whitehead-Bust, do you have any
comments on that, about what you are doing in Denver as it
relates to hours in the classroom and innovation as far as--as
was pointed out by Dr. McGriff, effectively using the extra
hours, if you are going to have the students there, how you can
most effectively use that time?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. I would reiterate that it is not just
more time, but more and better time. And so we are using the
opportunity for expanded time to think about acceleration and
recuperation of students simultaneously so that you are
ensuring that your students who are struggling to meet your
grade level proficiency standards have the opportunity to catch
up, but simultaneously making sure we are not thinking about
our standards as a ceiling. They are intended to be a floor.
And so we have some students who need acceleration so that
they can exceed those minimum standards, in addition to really
focusing on the non-cognitive success factors that we know are
essential for students to persist through college and careers,
so working on opportunities to set goals to build a sense of
values within a student culture that we know transcends
critical thinking, collaboration skills, et cetera. We ask that
our schools come forward with plans. In most cases, they are
adding about 100 hours to their school year through a
combination of extended day and extended year. They work in
small cohorts, again, so they are sharing best ideas and best
promising practices across schools.
Mr. Bucshon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Kline. Thank you.
Mr. Polis?
Mr. Polis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank
the chair and the ranking member for bringing before us such
excellent witnesses on an important topic. This hearing is
really helping to showcase the impact of public charter schools
as a tool within public education.
I think there has been a great discussion of charter
schools as a strategy to boost academic achievement for all
students. And we are particularly thrilled that the committee
has called this hearing. As the founder of two innovative
public charter schools myself, one currently chartered through
Denver Public Schools, the Academy of Urban Learning, the
other, the New America School in New Mexico and Colorado, with
five campuses, I have really been in the practice of founding
and, in the case of New America School, running a
superintendent, a charter school, I really got to see firsthand
how we were able to use the flexibility afforded to us by our
authorizer to meet the learning needs of the kids that came in
our door.
Public charter schools across the country are demonstrating
time and time again that where a child lives, their ZIP Code,
their economic background, their ethnicity need not determine
his or her educational outcomes. In my home state of Colorado,
public charter schools are developing innovative strategies,
attracting great talent to the room, districts like DPS, who we
heard from Ms. Whitehead-Bust, charter schools are serving as
laboratories of innovation and are very much part of the
district, in terms of sharing best practices.
One of the frustrations that I have sometimes is when
people at the district level or elsewhere say, oh, it is us
versus them. Well, Denver Public Schools is an excellent
example of a district that very much views charters as part of
us, as it should be. It is part of the public education system.
And I am not for traditional schools, charter schools,
neighborhood schools, magnet schools, per se, but I am for
great schools. And no matter what the governance model, we want
to make sure that there is a great public school for kids to go
to. And sometimes we get caught up in these arguments of, oh,
it should be--they should run it or this adult should run it or
it should be part of this or part of that.
That is not what makes an impact for the kids. What makes
an impact for the kids are great teachers in the classroom,
with great school leadership, enough learning time, and we have
proven time and time again that works, and that is good news
for public education in our country. And we have had many great
schools testifying, including some who testified here today,
like Breakthrough Schools and Clayton Valley, truly great
schools.
Now, the charter school program is a critical way that the
federal government partners with state and public charter
schools. Many, if not most charter schools might not exist
today if it were not for this charter school program. Before
any of the state or local funding even kicks in, charter
schools have expenses. And it is absolutely critical that the
charter school program allow charter schools and innovative
schools to get off the ground.
In addition, charter school program rewards states with
strong authorizing practices, provides incentives to ensure
that laws allow public charter schools to thrive, seed the
growth and expansion of excellent charter schools that defy
expectations for kids every year.
My All-STAR Act, which I introduced with Representative
Petri and many other members of this committee, would improve
this program by investing in high-quality charter schools,
reward states with laws that afford additional freedoms for
charter schools, ensure that authorizers don't hand out
charters like candy, but have a thoughtful process around
making sure that the applicants can deliver on the model.
I want to get to my questions. My first is for Ms.
Whitehead-Bust. Of course, thrilled to highlight the
outstanding work that Denver Public Schools near my district
has done to improve outcomes for our most at-risk kids. I want
to talk about how being a portfolio district that values
different governance models--she mentioned innovation schools.
That is a concept in Colorado. It is kind of like a charter
school-lite concept, where it is part of the district, it is
kind of a hybrid between the two. Some states have those, as
well.
How has being a portfolio district given you additional
tools as a district to expand and replicate high-quality
schools to ensure that more kids have access to high-quality
schools?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. I appreciate the question and the focus
on equity and access for all kids across our system. I think as
a portfolio district, we have had the opportunity to define
publicly and transparently the criteria that we use both to
open new schools, to support all schools within our portfolio,
regardless of governance type, and to have an assertive stance
on closing schools who aren't getting it done for kids, in
particular our kids who most need high-quality options.
Mr. Polis. And let me feed you one more question with the
limited time. Talk a little bit about what Denver has done to
ensure that all schools are serving with special needs, and
especially severe special-needs students.
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. In Denver, our charters have signed up
to help serve a proportional percentage both of our English-
language learners and of our special education students. We
have led the nation recently in opening center-based programs
within our charter schools--we have about 10 today--to serve
our most severe needs, special ed students, and in addition to
stepping up to provide equity of access for those students,
they are helping us innovate. How do we discover more inclusive
models as an example? How do we ensure that expectations and
culture are appropriate for all students? So we are learning
together in that endeavor.
Mr. Polis. So many more questions, Mr. Chair, but I will
yield back.
Chairman Kline. Thank you. The gentleman's time has
expired.
Mr. Rokita?
Mr. Rokita. I thank the chairman. I thank the witnesses. It
has been great testimony.
I want to start off by associating with Congressman Polis'
remarks. I think he is exactly correct. I mean, who here
shouldn't be for great schools, no matter what the governance
structure? And this idea that money is being siphoned off or
compartmentalized or whatever I think goes to--I think it was
the mayor of Cleveland's point. I am over that question. I am
over it.
I mean, if the product of competition is the movement of
some funds, you know, I think that, in fact, can be a very
healthy thing, ultimately. Competition is a good thing. It is
good in every other part of our lives. And to the extent there
is competition for the effective and efficient teaching of our
greatest asset, which is our children, so be it.
In that vein, I would simply, again, state for the record
it is kind of been an ongoing debate around here, but the fact
is that, since 1970, at the federal level, we have increased
spending on education 300 percent. And my data shows that there
has been little or no commensurate improvement, however you
want to measure improvement. It certainly doesn't match the
kind of money we are spending, so I don't think we have a money
problem.
And if any of you differ with that, I have heard some
comments about, oh, we definitely need the money. And I
understand that. But if any of you believe--and I would like
this for the record that pushing more money at this without
change in governance structure, without doing something
differently, like you all are doing, you know, I would like to
know that opinion. Anybody? Let the record reflect, no one is
taking that bait.
Mr. Linzey. Well, no--
Mr. Rokita. Except for Mr. Linzey.
Mr. Linzey. Does there need to be more funding? My answer
is, for innovative schools, yes, there needs to be more
funding, because we are limited by the amount of dollars given
to charter schools--
Mr. Rokita. But from a macro standpoint.
Mr. Linzey. From a macro standpoint--
Mr. Rokita. Should we increase another 50 percent? We have
already increased funding 300 percent since 1970.
Mr. Linzey. Right. And I would say, for those good
organizations, those innovative and effective organizations, if
we can get whatever monies there are to them so they can do the
work that is proving to be successful, we need to do that.
Whether you want to say more dollars or--I don't know how to
take dollars away from current groups.
Mr. Rokita. Thank you, Mr. Linzey. How do you measure
success?
Mr. Linzey. How do I measure success?
Mr. Rokita. Yes, in your last statement.
Mr. Linzey. Ultimately, it is going to be jobs. And then
what is your key to getting kids to jobs? It is going to be
literacy skills, college readiness, and what we are moving
towards in the common core standards. That is--but the ultimate
proof of success is, are they employable?
Mr. Rokita. Has the charter school concept been around long
enough to prove success under how you define it, Mrs. Keegan?
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, absolutely, it has
been around long enough to prove success. And I think there has
never been a more exciting time to go into public education
because of this, because educators are at the helm of this,
because they are bringing their own answers. You have got two
great examples here of the school leadership that is out there
now, and it is providing a different path.
So I think in the future, funding ought to be about
individual students and follow them to schools that work in the
public sector. We ought to be very concerned that there is
enough money that is equitably accessed by students, regardless
of which school they choose, if it is an exceptional school,
which is what I think Mr. Linzey has been saying, that we
should be about the businesses of accelerating what is
demonstrably excellent out there, because we got a lot of
demand sitting in the country for it.
Mr. Rokita. Thank you. Anyone else want to add to that?
Ms. McGriff. Yes, I just wanted--may I jump in, just
quickly?
Mr. Rokita. Dr. McGriff, yep.
Ms. McGriff. One, the pot of money is what exists, but
there needs to be equitable funding for charter schools.
Charter schools currently operate on about 80 percent of what
traditional public schools get. It is very seldom that we get
equal funding, so that is an issue.
The second issue for me, I need to have young people who
are not going to live in poverty. So it is not to me just a
job. I know if I--and the CMOs that I work with in charter
schools are wanting kids to graduate, go to college, because
they reduce by 50 percent the likelihood that their own
families will live in poverty. So we have a very high success
bar for the schools that we work with.
Mr. Rokita. Excellent. I don't think you are saying
anything different than Mr. Linzey, in my--from what I heard.
Mr. Rosskamm. Could I also comment--
Mr. Rokita. Mr. Rosskamm, for the record.
Mr. Rosskamm.--and try and make this real in some sense in
my limited experience? The wonderful teachers and educators
that I have the privilege of working with are getting
spectacular results, the best results in our state. We have not
just closed the achievement gap; we have reversed the
achievement gap. And yet our teachers are receiving less than--
are working at a 20 percent discount from teachers in the
district.
We have things, needs for our children, extracurriculars,
co-curriculars, programming we would love to do that we just
cannot afford the additional staff because of inequitable
funding that it would take to do those things. So the dollars
are very real.
Mr. Rokita. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, my time is expired,
and I didn't even get to ask the questions that I intended to
ask. Thank you.
Chairman Kline. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva?
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me just follow up, Mr. Rosskamm, on the point that you
just made, the 80/20 and the 20 percent disparity that occurs
in public charter schools relative to public. With equitable
funding, as you mentioned, would come--do you see with that
equitable funding also coming the idea of public charter
schools providing transportation, extracurricular, and you
mentioned pay, salary issues? Is that what you mean by that?
Mr. Rosskamm. Among the many things we would like to do for
our children, yes.
Mr. Grijalva. Well, my example in Arizona, which
progressive as it is, does have some issues, the extra money
being asked by the public charter schools for enhancement of
the 80/20 split comes out of the budget of the is currently the
regular public school system. Do you see that as an equitable
way to do that?
Mr. Rosskamm. Forgive me, but I actually see that as a
false issue, at least in Ohio.
Mr. Grijalva. Well, it is for--
Mr. Rosskamm. Let me try and explain my--
Mr. Grijalva. Okay, I have got another question.
Mr. Rosskamm.--explain my response. The state--
Mr. Grijalva. I have only got 5 minutes, so make it quick.
Mr. Rosskamm. Yes, the accounting--and the money comes
directly to us. But the way it is accounted for in our state,
the district feels like they are losing money because on paper
it is transferred through the district. It never goes there.
Mr. Grijalva. Okay. For public charters, the financial
situation for that public charter, is that proprietary
information to the charter or to Breakthrough? Or is that
public information that schools are required to provide?
Mr. Rosskamm. We are public schools, and we are transparent
and share that information.
Mr. Grijalva. Mrs. Keegan, it is good to see you again.
Mrs. Keegan. Good to see you, Congressman.
Mr. Grijalva. Let me ask about authorizing, because our
state has, what, about 605 charters, seven authorizers.
California has 1,067, maybe more, 314 authorizers. And the
question of closure came up and failing public charter schools,
how you deal with that very tough situation. Based on that, do
you think there has to be a cap on charter schools, number one?
And number two, authorizers having this other governance, are
they also--they have responsibility for evaluation, oversight?
And shouldn't there be an enhanced requirement for that
authorizing process? Because it is kind of subjective between
states right now, as I see it.
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman--
Mr. Grijalva. And seven having that full responsibility for
605 charters begs the question.
Mrs. Keegan. Yes, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Grijalva, I
appreciate the question. I think there does need to be a higher
standard. And the state board for charter schools, which is the
primary authorizer, as you know, in Arizona, does have a much
higher standard and is a star member of NACSA, thank God, or I
wouldn't be able to talk about them.
So we are looking--as you know, Congressman, we are looking
at about 40 schools in Arizona that probably will be closed
because of those high standards, that is right.
Mr. Grijalva. Quick follow up. Do you think, as we go
through this--you know, the public charters and charters in
general are founded on the premise of public--traditional
public schools are failing. I mean, that is the genesis of the
movement. Having said that, so that you believe there is a
federal role in ensuring that states employ quality standards
for charter schools or not?
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Grijalva, just for
the record, that was never my intention, and I helped write the
law in 1994, not the premise that traditional public schools
were failing, but the premise that all public schools were not
good enough and that we needed more educators to be able to
come directly into our education market and provide what they
knew.
So to that extent, I think we have done a great job in
Arizona and nationwide, so I don't think we are at a point
where we know exactly what needs to happen in terms of
governance for all public schools, and I certainly think public
charter schools are helping us learn.
Mr. Grijalva. Okay, thank you. Ms. McGriff, my question is,
who is accountable for at-risk students that you mentioned in
your statement, kids with disabilities, English learners, in a
charter school? Is it that individual school? Is it the
authorizing body? Is it both? Who has the ultimate
accountability if there is going to be--or is there a federal
oversight role in terms of what the benchmarks for that
accountability should be?
Ms. McGriff. The first--the contract is with the
authorizer, so the authorizer does establish the expectations
for serving all kids and will terminate the contract if that is
not done. There are requirements that you must meet from the
federal government, and there are also requirements from the
state. And so the oversight is--
Mr. Grijalva. It doesn't contradict the notion of
flexibility?
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Thompson?
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to all the
witnesses here on this panel.
I want to start with Mr. Rosskamm. In your testimony, you
mentioned that a Web site for families is being unveiled today.
Family engagement and education I think is incredibly
important. Last July, I introduced the Family Engagement
Education Act, and I wanted to just check and see, can you tell
us a little more about that and how it is going to help or
propose that it will help improve parent engagement in all
schools?
Mr. Rosskamm. Thank you, Congressman, for that question. We
are kind of excited in Cleveland that just 2 weeks ago, we
launched a new Web site as part of our Transformation Alliance,
which is a public-private nonprofit body appointed by the mayor
that includes district leaders, charter leaders, teachers,
parents, nonprofits, and corporate representatives.
And collectively, we are developing a process in Cleveland
to evaluate the performance of all public schools in Cleveland,
district and charter, and we are also receiving input from
parents and families, and then we have put all that
information, including state ratings, statements from the
schools themselves, on a Web site that is available to parents
so that parents can make better choices for their kids.
Mr. Thompson. Very good. Dr. McGriff, I mean, I happen to
believe that one of the most important aspects of charter
schools are that they are laboratories of innovation within
education. But I am not real sure how well we are doing of
closing that loop of--because I hear all kinds of great things
that occur in charter schools, but I think there are some
bureaucracies at times, some lack of flexibility, of really
fulfilling what a charter school should be for, of determining
these innovations and rolling it out so that every child
benefits from it.
So in your testimony, though, you stated that one of the
original tenets of the charter school movement was to ensure
the transfer of knowledge and best practices between
traditional public schools and the public charter schools. Can
you tell us, how is the National Alliance assisting those
efforts?
Ms. McGriff. Well, the National--thank you--the National
Alliance has been involved in a number of issues. One, first of
all, is collecting best practices and the research and sharing
it. We also sponsor the National Charter School Conference that
has over 4,000 people who attend. You can get information on
best practices from our Web site. There is a daily e-mail that
goes out about charter innovation that--if you don't like
daily, you can get weekly updates. There are toolkits. We are
partnering with other organizations.
We work very closely with each of the state associations to
make sure that the work that our individual state associations
are doing, we know about that nationally and we spread that. We
work with states to write strong charter legislation or to
improve weak charter legislation, because without good
legislation, you are not going to be able to share and
innovate.
The work that you have done with the federal law also
allows the most innovative of our CMOs to replicate. And there
are a number of cities that are just begging these CMOs to come
and to start their work.
But I want to just say quickly that in replicating, each of
those CMOs are innovating. Replication to them does not mean
that I am going to take the first school that I opened and open
it 20 times exactly the same way. I am constantly improving the
model so that I can accelerate performance for students.
Mr. Thompson. Very good. In the time I have left, I was
just curious, for each of the panelists, or as far as we go
until the light changes, anyways, we have that red light, you
know, in your experiences, you know, what is the one innovation
you have seen that has worked remarkably in a charter school,
because you have had the flexibility to do that with, that you
think if--that we should provide the flexibility to push it out
into traditional public schools?
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, I would say,
teachers in charge. I think the best schools we see, it is
teachers hiring teachers. The English Department is hiring the
English Department. The profession owns that school, and I
think it is a fabulous reminder that schooling is always about
teaching.
Mr. Linzey. I would like to just say more time, more
quality time on task in the school day itself, in addition,
outside the traditional school day. The charter schools I have
worked with really make an emphasis on not wasting time,
engaging kids in high-quality instruction, and then for the
kids that are most needy, extending that instruction oftentimes
to as many as 240 days a year to close that achievement gap,
using Saturdays, summers, and things like that. Those are key
processes. And a third thing I would say is using research-
based technology programs for intervention so kids can access
24/7 to learn.
Mr. Thompson. Okay. Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman Kline. Mr. Scott?
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I tend to agree with my colleague from New York about
charter schools. If you are having more money going into
education, to siphon it off to charter schools and not to try
to beef up the public schools, where 95 percent of the students
are going to be going, I think diminishes the opportunities for
those virtually all who are in public schools.
I also agree with the--my understanding of the research is
that there is essentially no difference between what happens in
charter schools and public schools.
You hear all the successes in charter schools. You don't
hear the failures, where you tried. So I guess my question is,
when you have eliminated all the regulations and give all the
flexibility, what happens to the students that get relegated to
a charter school that didn't work?
Ms. McGriff. I can answer. I can give you an example here
in Washington, D.C. A few months ago, the chartering authority
identified a school to--we call it re-chartering. And instead
of--because the school had over almost 700 kids in the
building, there wasn't a notion of just close the school and
put the kids on the street or, you know, fine the school, if
you can. They contacted a high-performing CMO in the city, KIPP
DC, and the board of that school engaged KIPP DC in the
management of the school.
Mr. Scott. If you don't have the performance standards and
the other regulations, how do you determine that it is not
performing?
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, public charter
schools have performance standards. They are bound to the same
state academic program and assessment programs that every
public school is, and--
Mr. Scott. Well, what regulations do--are there not--if
there is flexibility, what regulations do they not have to
comply with?
Mrs. Keegan. Well, they don't have to comply with the
traditional hiring and firing practices. They don't comply
with--that is probably the biggest one, that they are outside
of those contracts.
I would say, in the analysis of what money goes to public
schools, public charter schools are public schools. When Title
I is cut, it is cut for public charter schools, so all kids in
public schools share that money.
Mr. Scott. If you give the flexibility in hiring, you will
have some much better decisions at some schools and some much
worse decisions at others. People hire fraternity brothers and
neighbors and relatives and all that. If you don't have the
standards, what happens when you end up--what happens when you
don't have the good performance?
Mrs. Keegan. Go ahead.
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. You are highlighting the importance of
quality authorizing. So in Denver, as an example, we have
closed 20 schools across governance types in the past 5 years.
Ten of those 20 were charter schools, because they were not
meeting our accountability expectations. While we are able to
grant flexibilities on the inputs, hiring practices,
curriculum, we grant no flexibility on the outcomes. We believe
that all students deserve access to the highest-quality
outcomes and hold all schools, regardless of governance types,
to that same accountability metrics.
Mr. Scott. Now you are talking about public charter
schools, where the governance is public governing boards. Is
that right?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. All of our Colorado charter schools are
public charter schools.
Mr. Scott. And how do you get on the governing board of the
governing body of the charter schools?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. So the boards are self-created.
Although they are reviewed for quality, it is one of the most
important components of our quality framework, because we grant
contracts to boards, not to school leaders. And so part of our
robust rubric and metrics that we look at to grant charter
schools looks deeply at the composition of that charter school,
their policies, their practices, and their expertise.
Mr. Scott. Are they subject to the same regulations as a
traditional public school?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. They are an independent not-for-profit
governing board, quite different than the publicly elected
governing board that oversees Denver public school writ large.
Mr. Scott. Do they get to impact the composition of the
student body directly or indirectly? Do they have the
opportunity to expel, for example?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. I am proud that in Denver we have led
the nation having a unified school choice system that is
actually managed by the same central team for 100 percent of
our schools, charter or otherwise. So all entry and exit
decisions related to students are made using the same criteria
by a department that operates under the Denver public school
system.
Mr. Scott. Well, yes, but does the school decide who is
expelled and who isn't expelled?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. They do not.
Mr. Scott. Do they have any direct or indirect impact on
admissions by location or transportation?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. They do not, because that system is
managed as a unified school choice system. So I as a mom of
three daughters get to fill out a lottery form. I happen to
have one daughter in a charter school, one in an innovation
school, and one in a direct-managed school.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Messer?
Mr. Messer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the
panelists for being here on this very important issue.
Mr. Chairman, I have a letter that I would like to submit
for the record. It is from the Center for Education Reform
dealing on this topic.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Kline. Without objection.
Mr. Messer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just couldn't be more excited about the topic that we are
here to discuss today in charter schools. It gets at the
fundamental promise of America that every kid in America should
have a chance to go to a great school.
And the truth is, in America, we fall woefully short of
that standard. Lots of kids go to great public schools, but no
kid in America ought to have to go to a school where they won't
have a chance to succeed. And we need to work in public policy
at finding the right school for every child.
I am a former president and CEO of an organization called
School Choice Indiana. I believe strongly in charter schools. I
believe in traditional public school choice. I believe in
private school choice. I believe in home-schooling options for
some kids, as well.
You know, we have--the second paragraph of the Declaration
of Independence promises all of us a God-given right to pursue
happiness. And in modern America, that means we are all
promised by God an opportunity to succeed. And that promise
isn't real in today's America unless you have a quality
education.
And that is the stakes of what we are here to talk about
today. It is interesting to hear on the other side of the aisle
a sort of litany of the myths of these--of public schools and--
I mean, of charter schools, and so I would like to go through a
few of them with you. In the interest of time, I am just going
to answer the first one, but I hope you can all nod in
agreement.
I noticed that Dr. McGriff's organization is called the
Public Charter School Organizations, and all charter schools in
America are public schools, so many of the false choices that
are presented here are a question between, what are we going to
do with public schools and charter schools? Well, the reality
is, they are all public schools, and they are schools that are
serving kids.
Secondly, there is a lot of conversations about, well,
charter schools aren't accountable, the question of, you know,
well, what happens when they don't work? In my experience--and
I would ask anyone on the panel to comment on this--charter
schools are far more accountable than public schools. I mean,
there are far more incidences of charter schools that--some
work incredibly, others have had less success. When they don't
work, they close.
There are school after school after school across the
country in public schools, when if they are not meeting the
standards for a child, frankly, the answer is to throw more
money there and keep sending kids. Could anybody comment on the
difference in accountability between charter schools and
traditional public schools?
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, thank you for the
question. There is a direct accountability, in that if parents
and students don't want to go to that school, they don't exist.
So we haven't even spoken about that accountability. Of course
they have the same requirements to meet standards, and they
usually set them higher, and the governing boards or the
authorizing boards that put them in business are setting those
standards higher. But those schools have to convince families
that they are worthy of their kids.
So nobody is assigned to a public charter school. Somebody
has to make a choice. That is direct accountability.
Mr. Messer. And virtually every state I am aware of that
has a robust charter school program, far more charter schools
are closed than any public schools. Fair? Is that right?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. In Denver, we negotiate performance-
based contracts with all of our charter schools, and we have
found in the past 2 years, when four charter schools have been
closed, three of those four have surrendered their charter
because they understand that they are not meeting the quality
bar that we have mutually negotiated.
Mr. Messer. Yes. In line with that, I mean, another topic
you hear is, well, you know, the charter schools are performing
well, but they are creaming the best kids out of the system. In
my experience, in talking to education reformers who are
inspired to be educators that change lives, frankly, they seek
the toughest kids in the toughest populations. And my
understanding is that the statistics are that charter schools,
by and large, are serving a much more disadvantaged population
than the public schools generally.
Could a couple of you comment on that?
Ms. McGriff. I would agree. And I tried to point out the
demographics and the diversity of the student population in my
opening remarks, so I won't repeat them, but the research
clearly shows that the demographics in charter schools are much
more diverse and poorer than traditional schools.
Mrs. Keegan. Mr. Chairman, I would just add to that, that I
would invite people who say that to walk the hot streets of
Phoenix in the summer when the schools in the urban core who
are going in to try to rescue these kids are trying to convince
families that they will be worthy of their kids, day after day
after day, trying to make that argument, because this is
something families haven't seen before, and they have to
convince families.
There is nothing akin to creaming kids that goes on in
these quality schools that are going into the urban core where
the kids are least served.
Mr. Messer. Oh, I went from yellow to red.
Chairman Kline. You did, sir. The gentleman's time has
expired.
Mrs. Davis?
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all
of for being here. And I am from San Diego. I have seen some
extraordinary examples of charter schools, but I also question
the extent to which they really influence other schools in the
area. We know that, as you have said, I mean, a lot of charter
schools close, so, you know, if you start saying, well, how
many--you know, what is the percentage of ones that continue to
go on and be exceptional and what are the percentage that
actually, you know, don't do so well or are just not able to
make the grade?
The good thing is that perhaps they are no longer there,
but the reality is that they leave a lot of students who might
need a whole lot of remedial help during that period as they
make a transition into what is often another public school in
their community.
So what are we doing to address those issues? Have we found
a good way--do you think that actually there is any
responsibility on the charter school or those who put it
together or the school district to do the kind of intense
remediation that is required to help those students who
actually weren't getting what they should have during that
period of time?
Mr. Rosskamm. So, you know, we are extraordinarily proud,
particularly some of our middle schools that take kids in the
fifth or sixth grade that are far behind. We sweat blood, sweat
and tears to get those kids caught up through incredibly
dedicated teachers and getting the kids to buy into their own
futures and their own learning.
But I will admit that in Ohio, notwithstanding the
influence of the national authorizers and the progress we are
making, we don't have the authorizing standards we should have.
That is changing, and that is a good thing, and it needs to
continue to change.
Mrs. Davis. Is there a federal role in that? Should there
be?
Mr. Rosskamm. That, as I understand it, is more of a state
role and a role in terms of the responsibility and the
oversight of the authorizers themselves. Our good authorizers
maintain very high standards, and there is new legislation,
state legislation, that will prevent authorizers with a bad
track record from opening more schools.
Mrs. Davis. And in many cases, those are local school
boards, correct, in a number of cases who make some of the
final decisions about the charter schools?
Mr. Rosskamm. In Ohio, typically, they are not.
Mrs. Davis. They are not. Oh, okay.
Mr. Rosskamm. Typically not.
Mrs. Davis. Okay. Yes, all right. Thank you. Mr. Rosskamm,
I know in your testimony earlier you talked about the fact that
your schools were able to get federal funding to replicate and
to be a design, really, for the community, and that took some
federal funding. Could you have moved with that replication
without that federal funding? How critical was that?
Mr. Rosskamm. It was absolutely critical and continues to
be critical. There is a tremendous amount--you know, I already
explained that our initial per student funding is less, and in
the planning year and in the first couple years of a new
school, we lose serious dollars. And if we did not have that
support, we just simply could not move forward.
And we lose those dollars in part because we are so
concerned about getting the culture right that we start small,
and then when we get it right, we continue to build. But as
basic economics says, if you have fewer children in the seats,
you are generating less revenue. Until we fill the building, we
are not covering our overhead.
Mrs. Davis. So would you suggest that there is some federal
role there in terms of looking to those programs that
actually--like Breakthrough, that actually have a really strong
track record, but couldn't on their own replicate their
programs?
Mr. Rosskamm. I think the best return on investment that we
can have is to take something that is working. After all the
innovation, we have some winners, we have some losers, but once
we have identified things that are working, it is a fabulous
return on investment to replicate what is working.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Ms. McGriff, could you just speak to
the idea of the Department of Education is updating guidance to
allow charter schools to use weighted lotteries? And is that
something that you think is a good idea? How would you see that
play out? Because we do know that certainly charters go out and
do a lot of recruiting, but on the other hand, there are some
particular needs that charters have to develop a diverse body
of students, and that is important.
Ms. McGriff. This is one of my favorite questions and
favorite things, and I am so happy that the federal government
has decided that schools like Denver School of Science and
Technology, that was designed to have a student body that is
socially and racially integrated and a focus on STEM and
college can now get funds from the federal government to
support their work.
Mrs. Davis. Would you all agree with that?
Ms. Whitehead-Bust. We second that appreciation.
[Laughter.]
Mrs. Davis. The rest of you, as well? Do you use that? And,
I mean, is it an issue for you?
Mr. Rosskamm. Absolutely.
Mrs. Davis. Okay. Thank you.
Chairman Kline. The gentlelady's time has expired. All time
has expired.
I want to thank the witnesses and yield some time to Mr.
Scott for any closing remarks that he may have.
Mr. Scott. Well, only to say that a lot of this can be done
on the traditional setting. When you have a lottery and decide
who can get a good education and who can't, that raises
additional questions. Of course, if you get in one of these
good schools, you are a lot better off. But overall, what we
have found is that charter schools have not done better. A lot
of them fail. And students are stuck in those, as well as some
of the good schools.
So we need to improve all the schools, and I think that
sentiment has been made. I think we need to do everything we
can to get there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kline. As is so often the case, the gentleman who
is sitting here and I disagree on some things, but on one thing
I think we all agree, that we need to do better for our kids on
the whole. And I happen to think that the advances made in
charter schools, going way back to my home state, and now have
been really, really significant and have helped lift all those
boats.
So, again, I want to thank all the witnesses. Excellent
testimony. Thanks for engaging with us. There being no further
business, we are adjourned.
[Questions submitted or the record and their responses
follow:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[all]