American Enterprise Institute

April 13, 2006

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

3:45 p.m.	Registration
4:00	Presenter:	Michael J. Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
	Discussants:	Kati Haycock, The Education Trust
		Eugene Hickok, former deputy secretary of education
		Alice Johnson Cain, House Committee on Education and the Workforce
		Joel Packer, National Education Association
	Moderator:	Frederick M. Hess, AEI
5:30	Wine and Cheese Reception
6:30	Adjournment

Proceedings:

Frederick Hess:  Hi, I am Rick Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.  I am delighted to welcome all of you here today to join us for discussion on the “No Child Left Behind Consensus: Lasting Force or Passing Fancy.“

It has been about four and a-half years since No Child Left Behind was enacted into law.  In late 2001, Congress adopted the law on the basis of overwhelming bipartisan support.  The votes were 87 to 10 in the US Senate, and 381 to 41 in the House of Representatives.  Passed just a few months after the events of 9/11, the bill enjoyed massive support among Democrats and Republicans alike.  Liberal alliance - Congressman George Miller of California and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts had worked with President Bush, Representative John Boehner and Senator Judd Gregg to craft the measure.  Their collective barnstorming tour to celebrate the bill's passage in early 2002 was a love fest. 

Today, the once tranquil consensus over the law has given way to bickering and fierce debate.  With reauthorization scheduled for 2007 and the law's provisions being implemented across the land, the politics are much more pointed and much more heated.  The US Department of Education recently reported that in 2004-2005, 24,000 schools, more than a quarter of the nations schools failed to make adequate yearly progress under the law's accountability framework.  The reports sparked divergent concerns with some worrying publicly that the law is an excuse to wreak havoc on the nation's schools while others fretted that even the 24,000 figure was far too low and the thousands of low performing schools are not being identified as such. 

Meanwhile, more than 30 states have sought to modify the law in some fashion.  Lawsuits have been filed, including by the state of Connecticut and by the National Education Association and public opinion remains very much mixed.  Democrats have suggested that necessary promised spending has not materialized.  Conservatives have worried about federal overreach.  Critics, right and left, have deemed various elements of the law to be unworkable. 

What are we to make of such complaints?  Are they minor?  Do they reflect minor irritations, or do they constitute more serious challenges to the law?  Will the law's allies and supporters be able to rally a coalition committed to maintaining and re-authorizing NCLB or will it prove impossible to reassemble the 2001 coalition? 

Seeking to shed some light on the subject, Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Foundation and I have just published a short citizen's guide to No Child Left Behind, No Child Left Behind: A Primer, a dazzling good read if do say so.  We believe that the first step in tackling the debates and the concerns that I have just alluded to is to increase understanding of the law among parents, educators and policy makers.  Simply put, the law is widely misunderstood.  I have consistently been surprised by educational leaders who were confused about just what the law requires, or how it is supposed to operate. 

Now, once we clear away misunderstanding, we still have a lot of debates to have but the fact is until we understand it, we are going to have serious difficulties.  Well, Mike and I are rarely known for our reticence.  In this volume, we try to put on our teaching hat.  We focused on explaining the law, explaining why it enjoyed such broad support initially, discussing how it is being implemented and what are the key points of contention. 

Today, this conversation is hosted in that spirit.  The idea is to step back for a moment from the debates over the machinery of NCLB and revisit the looming unanswered question:  Will the coalition that enacted this law hold?   What does the future hold for the alliance that enacted and supported No Child Left Behind, unarguably the most significant piece of federal legislation on education of our time?  How are we going to proceed is first Mike is going to say a few words about the coalition and the consensus that initially shaped the law.  At that point, we are going to turn the conversation over to our distinguished panel. 

Frankly, it is harder to think of four individuals who are better equipped in terms of experience, position and insight to help us sort out the political realities and what the future holds for NCLB.  Now then, our four speakers are going to speak in the order you see them seated in front of you.  First will be Gene Hickok, Senior Policy Director at Dutko Worldwide, formerly Deputy Secretary and Undersecretary of the US Department of Education.  Alice Johnson Cain, Senior Education Aide to Congressman George Miller on the House Education and the Workforce Committee; Joel Packer, manager of Elementary and Secondary Education Act Policy for the National Education Association; and finally, Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust and formerly Executive Vice-President of the Children's Defense Fund. 

The way this is going to work is that Mike is going to speak for about four or five minutes just to hit a couple of keynotes.  Each of our panelists is then going to speak for about 10 to 12 minutes sharing their initial thoughts.  We will then open it up first for the panelists to address any points that have been put on the table before opening it up to Q&A.  During Q&A, I will ask that audience members to please actually ask a question rather than indulging in that favorite D.C. hobby of offering an oration with an exclamation or a question mark at the end.  I find if we do that it actually makes it more interesting back and forth. 

So with that, why do I not turn it over to Mike Petrilli.  Mike is the Vice-President of the Fordham Foundation here in D.C.  He is also host of the Gadfly Show, a podcast that is available at their website, www.edexcellence.net.  Mike?

Michael Petrilli:  Thank you, Rick, and thanks everybody for being here and for our panel joining us.  And for those of you watching at home, thanks for being with us.  Like Rick said, this book really is not a polemic.  We are not making an argument for the law or against the law.   We are really trying to explain the law especially to people outside the beltway who may be wondering where did this law come from?  So for parents, for teachers, for school board members who work everyday in implementing the law but may not understand some of the conversations that happened here in Washington when the law was being put together, why decisions are being made as they are.  We try to set that context. 

One of the insights that we provide in the law is we talk about what we call the “Washington Consensus” in education.  Now many of us have heard that term in foreign policy circles that there is a Washington consensus, and what this means is that key elite policy makers from both parties share some common principles and convictions.  And so, whichever party comes into power, Democrats or Republicans on the Hill or in the White House, policy does not change dramatically because of these commonly held principles, in that case about foreign policy. 

We believe that in education there, too, is a Washington consensus.   We believe that it has been in place at least since the middle of the first Clinton administration, and that it will remain in place probably well into the second Clinton administration.  Just kidding, I wanted to see if you were paying attention.  But seriously, no matter what happens in 2006 or 2008, it is our contention that if there is this consensus, it is widely-held principles and convictions from the elite policy makers in D.C. that no matter what happens politically, policy will not shift in dramatic ways as long as that consensus holds, as long as the coalition holds. 

Now, what is this coalition or consensus all about?  We see basically three big ideas that, again, key elite policy makers on Capitol Hill and the Department of Education buy into. 

The first one is that the achievement gap should be our primary object, closing the achievement gap.  Now we are so used to hearing that these days that we do not even think about it but that is a big deal.  It is also especially a big deal for Republicans to sign on to closing the achievement gap between racial groups, income groups as the number one goal.  I mean after all, this is a reform that is really about race and class.  It is a reform that in many ways is not going to impact many Republicans' constituents out there in the leafy suburbs whose kids are by some accounts doing fairly well or at least better than poor kids, minority kids are doing.  And yet, we have a very conservative Republican president who has signed on to this goal of closing the achievement gap as his top domestic priority.  So that is one big idea that the consensus is about. 

The second big idea is that effective schools can overcome the challenges of poverty.   Now again, that is a huge idea and by the way, one that I find that many educators resist because what it feels like is, what we are saying is that all of the society's problems, crime, dysfunctional families, challenges in the home, all the things that happen to kids before they enter school, that we drop that on the school house door, and we expect schools to be able to pick that up and still get results in terms of teaching kids how to read and do math.  The Washington Consensus says, look, we do believe that is fair to hold schools accountable for getting every kid to reading and math, and again I think that is interesting especially on the left, on the democratic side and we look into that.

 It has been interesting to see the role that Congressman George Miller from California has played, very strongly saying that to expect anything else from our schools than getting every child proficient in reading and math is a form of bigotry - again, language that we hear from Republicans and Democrats now and then - the very big idea.  So again, we have got the first one being that the achievement gap is the major goal that we are going to address and that effective schools can overcome the challenges of poverty and finally.  That only through external pressure on school systems, by holding school systems accountable, are we going to get the kind of changes that we want to see; that left to their own devices, most school systems just simply do not have the political capability to make the changes we need. 

So for example, we all know in every community in this country that has any kind of economic or racial diversity, if you walk into the school that is on the poor side of town or the minority side of town, you are much more likely to find teachers who are not every well prepared however you measure that.  We see that in every community.  Now, it is not that school boards around the country are passing resolutions that say let us take our least qualified teachers and send them to our neediest kids. 

But we do have policies in place that have that effect, and what we see and what the Washington Consensus is arguing here is that unless you have shown pressure on the system, showing accountability that changes the incentives, that changes the rules of the game, you are not going to change the political dynamics to change those kinds of situations.  Because if a superintendent or school board member today stands up and says, let us talk about getting our best teachers and sending them into the poor schools, they are going to face a real political backlash on the ground from affluent parents, maybe from some of the teachers associations.  So the Washington Consensus says we need this accountability so you put this together and, obviously, the Washington Consensus then gave birth to No Child Left Behind. 

This law says that we are going to hold schools accountable for results.  We are going to put external pressure on the system or to in fact make sure that they are not only held accountable for average student achievement or for closing the achievement gap, for raising the achievement of all of their subgroups, right?  We no longer are going to believe in, say, local control and letting school systems do their own thing but we are really going to put the strong external pressure on the schools. 

And again, this consensus was in place during the Clinton administration.  If you look at the proposals made in the late 1990s to re-authorize the elementary and secondary education act, you see this already.  We think that this consensus is still in place today, and that if it stays in place that we are going to see only minor changes to No Child Left Behind going forward.  But, I am curious to know from our panel now if they think that assessment is right.  Or maybe instead that No Child Left Behind was just a fluke, that something strange happened after 9/11 in the President's first year in office that allowed this law to be created and, therefore, if it is a fluke that maybe it is in a lot more danger than we think it might be.  Thank you.

Frederick Hess:  Thank you, Mike.  Gene?

Eugene Hickok:  Thank you, Rick.  And first of all, I thank AEI and both of you for the invitation to be a part of this.  I have read the book.  I think it is a very solid description of the law.  It is balanced; it is straightforward.  It is very helpful, not too much jargon which in itself is a miracle given the topic.  I am eager to see the movie and the music video - not really. 

I think the book does a good job of getting at this whole idea of a Washington consensus, and it is really a consensus, as I look at it, that has grown out of some contradictions if you think about it, interesting series of contradictions that created No Child Left Behind, both at the beginning and its final product.  The first thing is national policy, far- reaching more than ever before, national policy.  But if you look at the law as the book makes it very clear, and as those of us who struggle with implementation try to make clear, it is defined at the state and local level. 

One of the interesting contradictions is we talk about the need for proficiency and accountability systems and academic standards and assessments but all of those major decisions are left to the states.  That is important.  That is going to lead to some interesting challenges down the road when this thing fully matures, if it is given a chance to fully mature. 

The contradiction about lots of money coming from the President and the first administration of George W. Bush, huge increases entitled of education and yet, more recently, the call from his opponents in Congress that there is not enough money.  We need more money.  It is not fully funded.  Of course, I have never met any state chief or a school superintendent who has ever found it to be enough money and when we give them full funding, I am sure they will wake up the next day and say we still need more money.  But the fact is, money drove a lot of the politics the first four years and then when money gets tight, the partisanship becomes more obvious. 

A Republican administration embracing the need to attack the achievement gap and, as Mike points out, I do not think the President gets enough credit for this.  The achievement gap now is part of the lexicon of American education.  Everyone talks about it, everyone knows about it.  I think that is primarily because of No Child Left Behind.  It has always been there.  It has been there since Brown vs. Board of Education.  It is a national disgrace and tragedy.  And the fact is that if this law accomplishes nothing more than calling attention to it and focusing our energies on the need to eradicate it, we have accomplished a great deal. 

And Mike is right; this is not a constituency that typically pulls the GOP levers on Election Day.  I think I would point out, and I think the President deserves some credit on this is, this is a long-term law.  It is a 10- to 14-year timeline.  In politics, it is unusual that an elected official will put his money on a policy that he will not be in office to see finally successful.  Politics is a pretty short-term horizon for most people, the next election.  And I think this administration deserves some credit for putting it out there in a way that I think most elected officials typically would not do because it is not in their best interest.

 As far as the Washington Consensus, I think it was driven by the policy concerns.  I think you are right about that.  But I think behind the policy concerns is good old-fashioned political concerns.  If you look back on the election of 2000 in the campaign, very close, obviously education was a big issue which in and of itself in a presidential campaign is unique, I think.  And as George Bush the governor campaigned, Republicans started to get ownership of education for the first time ever in the polls. 

And that drove, I think, on the Democratic side of the aisle a need to strike back, to get back to education.  So behind the policy consensus which is there, roughly speaking of accountability, schools can do the work.  Achievement gap is the sense of we need to try to find a way to get back ownership of education, and that kind of leads to the bipartisanship.  I do not think the bipartisanship was borne out of statesmanship and brotherly love.  I think it was borne out of a combination of policy and politics, a strange combination. 

And I would also point out that it was driven in no small part by 9/11.  The fact is that right before 9/11, the President, his advisers were talking about the fact that Congress seemed to be kind of slow, backing off the commitment.  This is the President's highest priority.  It looked like it might not get done.  That is a very bad thing, and there was an internal commitment made when back to school started to really push Congress to get this job done.  Nine-Eleven happens and not long after the event itself, the leadership of the House and the Senate, the education committee leadership got together and made a commitment to get it done to demonstrate Congress is working in spite of the attacks.  So in an interesting twist of irony, 9/11 really did play a major role in getting this bill passed. 

In terms of policy, I know coming out of the White House that the President and his domestic policy adviser at that time, Margaret Spellings, this was their first love, policy-wise.  In and out, know all about it. 

I think on the Hill, that is a combination of factors.  I give George Miller tremendous credit not just because he has a staff member here today, but because he is concerned about quality teaching.  He is concerned about accountability.  I had conversations with him many times, and his attitude about holding the line here was not just politics.  This is a man who, in my opinion anyway, really believes that.  I would say the same thing about John Boehner.  Others I think really did not quite know what they were voting for until they went home after it became law and realized what a mistake they had made because they wanted to go back to their schools and school districts and celebrate No Child Left Behind, and their schools and school districts wanted to hang them in effigy. 

And that I think is one of the politics and the policy disconnected.  This is not a popular law with those who are most responsible for making this law work, and that is the greatest contradiction, and it is the inevitable contradiction and it is the contradiction we cannot avoid.  This is a law that tries to force a system to do what a system like this does not want to do.  It is a very understandable emotion.  And so I think the hope of No Child Left Behind is that external pressure - the transparency to make it impossible to ignore the problem and make it impossible for local districts and state leadership to allow the status quo to continue. 

In terms of the future, I watch it with interest like everybody else does.  I do not think the standard is going to go away.  It was born of the states long before No Child Left Behind.  No Child Left Behind is sort of the national flower of the standards movement.  I think testing is not going to go away, although I think there will be some changes to it.  In the end, my concern is that we back away from this commitment and really do not address what I consider to be the essence of the American dream, and that is eradicating the achievement gap.  If members of the House and the Senate, the leadership that made this happen can keep this Washington Consensus in place, I am optimistic. 

But it has been out there now for a number of years, and the reaction among many people is very negative and partly is because they do not understand it, and partly because they do understand it, but it is necessary.  I think it is very necessary and my hope is that members of Congress working with the administration or the next administration can maintain it.  Thank You.

Frederick Hess:  Thank you, Gene.  Alice?

Alice Johnson Cain:  Thank you.  As Rick said, I work for Congressman George Miller from California who is the Senior Democrat on the Education Workforce Committee and has been spending over 30 years in Congress trying to improve education for all kids.  That has been his focus and will continue to be his focus. 

In terms of the book, I thought it was great.  My biggest complaint is, why did you not publish it two years ago when I started my job and really needed it?  So really, my only complaint I would say is the chapter on funding, and let me just explain what my beef there was.  It talks about the whole authorization versus appropriation and that it is not unusual for there to be a difference. 

Well, that is absolutely true but as the rest of the book notes, No Child Left Behind is not a usual law.  It is monumental, sweeping, far-reaching as mentioned in all the other chapters, and that is why, and my boss talks about this regularly, why he and Senator Kennedy asked the President "Okay, we think we can get you this reform on a bipartisan basis.  If we do that, will you get the resources?"  And they said the President looked them in the eye and said, “Yes, I will,” and he signed the law on January 8.  On February 4, he submitted a budget that did not provide the full level of funding, and they still remember that. 

So, I feel like that chapter needed to give a little more justice to the full funding argument.  Funding did go up from 2001 to 2004 very significantly, but the overall shortfall is now 55 billion, and that is a lot of money that could do a lot for a lot of schools.  In California, it is a difference of about $5 billion, and I think that a lot of the flak that we get, and that Gene mentioned about problems with the law if it had been fully funded, I think a fair amount of that will go away.  And I think one of the challenges we face in re-authorization which starts up next year, nobody knows when it will end, but it starts next year, is to tease out what are the issues and problems that are really with the statute itself. 

What are the issues that are really more directly related to the under-funding, and that could be solved by adequate funding?  And then third, what are the issues that really can be traced back to implementation?  Two different secretaries of education have implemented the law in some very different ways and there are some issues there as well.  So, getting back to the funding; next year, 58 percent of local LEAs will lose Title I funding at the same time that NCLB ratchets itself that much more.  And again with full funding, we would not be facing that problem. 

Other than that chapter, I really, really enjoyed it and thought that it captured clearly and concisely, really hit the main points about what is in the law, gave the right context of who was pushing for what and laid it out very well.  In terms of 9/11, I was not on staff when NCLB passed, so I actually went back and talked to folks, and what I heard there is really that it would have happened with or without 9/11.  Maybe the margins would not have been as big, maybe they would have been.  But on 9/11, there was a conference meeting scheduled but this process had actually started in January of that year.  This was nine months in and they were pretty far along.  So that is our take on that particular piece of it. 

In terms of other comments on the book, I thought another thing that it did very well was summarizing the viewpoints of the criticisms and the three criticisms that we hear most frequently about NCLB.  So I wanted to talk about each of them briefly, sort of in the context of the Washington Consensus. 

The first is the problem that we hear about the 100 percent proficiency goal.  It is impossible.  Why set ourselves up for failure?  It was sort of that argument in a nutshell.  And I think that gets to the consensus around closing the achievement gap.  My caveat on that piece of the consensus is it is not just about closing the gap.  You could close the gap because scores go down for the kids who are doing well, and that really has to be about proficiency for all children but by raising achievement of all kids. 

My question whenever this comes up to us is, so where do we set the law for a state, for example, that only wants 75 percent proficiency?  Which 25 percent of the kids is it okay to leave behind?  So I think it is the right goal, and I think that that has to be the goal.  And I think the status quo cannot be the goal, and I think that one of things that NCLB has done that is not easy to do but looking at achievement of poor and minority kids.  I was astounded when I saw that that fewer than half of African-American and Latino and Native American fourth graders were reading well on the NAEP numbers when I first saw that, and that is something that we need to face and we need to make our priority. 

I think it is also traceable to our teacher issues.  My boss has a bill called the Teacher Excellence — the Teach Act, the Teacher Excellence for All Children Act, and that bill is designed sort of to be the next step to put some supports into place for teachers around beating the high quality teacher components of the bill.  But right now, 70 percent of students in high schools are taught Math by a teacher without a major or a minor in Math.  So when they do not test as well, why are we surprised when they do not have teachers who necessarily know the subject matter that they teaching?  So teacher quality, I can safely say no matter what happens in any election in terms of NCLB re-authorization will continue to be front and center in George Miller's mind as part of the solution. 

The second frequent criticism of NCLB that we hear a lot and that I thought the book captured well is the whole issue around testing and sometimes narrowing of curriculum, and I think that is related to the whole argument or discussion around whether or not effective schools can overcome the challenges of poverty.  And from what I have seen, and I have visited some schools recently that have been really, really exciting in this regard is yes, that is the answer.  Absolutely. 

We have visited schools across the country.  My boss and I visited some schools in Chicago last year in some really rough neighborhoods that had just done an outstanding job really turning the schools around.  And it was interesting.  They did not really trace it back in NCLB but there were things going on at the local level, and they used NCLB to continue moving forward. 

I will not forget the principal of one these schools called the Arusco Academy, and we met with a group of teachers and parents and principals and concerned community members and students and school board, everybody was there.  And it was clear they were all working together for student achievement, and it was going up dramatically in the school and she said somebody asked about the test.  She said "Oh, the test.  We teach the kids, the tests take care of themselves."  And I thought that was a really great attitude that she had. 

We also visited in Norfolk, some public schools there that was the winner of the Broad Foundation Award in Urban Education last year.  We visited a fantastic elementary school where student proficiency has gone from about 15 percent to 85 percent over I think it was three or four years, but they had kids that model the UN in terms of race and ethnicity.  They had hurricane Katrina victims. They were in the neighborhood with the local homeless shelter.  They had every challenge imaginable and they were really turning things around.  They had incredibly dedicated teachers, a phenomenal principal. 

One of the things that they had embraced was testing.  There were testing more than a NCLB requires and they were using it for diagnostic purposes, and we sat it on a meeting with third grade teachers who are all talking about how the students had done on the test that week, who had missed what, and then strategies for helping that particular child get that particular thing that they were missing.  It was really, it was fascinating to be a fly on the wall.  But I walked out and was talking to a colleague who was there with me, and he said, "Wow, this school is really not going to leave any child behind."  And the moto in the school was “All Means All,” and that you could see it in action. 

And again, it was not NCLB that was driving it, and some things have been happening at the local level for a long time like unaccountability, and they talked about that but they had sort of reluctantly embraced NCLB.  They were very candid about the culture change in the school when some of the changes were put into place.  They had a rough couple of years but they were seeing some fantastic results and people were on board and they certainly had let NCLB, they had come to embrace it and see its value and that it was helping. 

In terms of the sort of related concern about narrowing of curriculum, I did really want to comment on that but my time is starting to run out, but I spent many years working in adult literacy and working with adults who were learning to read and teaching adults to read who were 30, 40, and 50.  My first student was actually 63 years old when I taught her to read and these kids had been left behind.  They had been left behind, then they grew up, and they had to live their adult lives usually without knowing how to read.  And if you ask any of them what is the most important thing they could have learned in school, it was learning to read.  And I think you can read about history, you can read about art, you can read about music and there are ways to think creatively.  But if my child, my children do not learn to read on schedule in school, I hope the schools will focus in on that, and I think that that is really important because if you do not get reading you are not going to get the rest of it either. 

Last but not least, the book talks about the third criticism around AYP and the sort of single shot in time versus a growth model.  I think there is some legitimate concern there.  I think that is something we are going to look at very, very carefully in the re-authorization.  We have been really heartened by Secretary Spelling's work on the growth model pilot project.  She reached out and really included, I think the bipartisan coalition in the process of developing that.  She has got a great team of peer viewers we may hear more about, and I think that that holds a lot of promise for getting some information back by the reauthorization that can really help us make hopefully really good decisions about what to do in that regard. 

We also have a GAO report that my boss and Congressman Boehner and others recommended about a year ago on growth models that we are very eager to see what they find, but I think that we have some information coming in that can help us move forward there but I think my time is up.  Thank you.

Frederick Hess:  Thank you Alice, Joel?

Joel Packer:  Thanks for the opportunity to be here.  I always appreciate the opportunity to come to AEI.  Some of my colleagues always say, “Oh, they are going to ambush you over there.”  The last time I was here actually, I was defending I think the Fordham Foundation against the Department of Education.  So, No Child Left Behind makes for some strange bedfellows.  I will definitely be the one here most critical of No Child Left Behind. 

My organization, the National Education Association, which represents teachers and other educators throughout the country, has some very significant concerns about the law.  We fully agree with the goals and I do not think anybody disagrees with the goals.  It is when you move from the goals to 1,100 pages of Federal legislation and thousands of pages of regulations that you start getting into problems. 

I would argue that No Child Left Behind is at least a partially failed experiment that has some fundamental flaws and let me just briefly run through those.  Some Alice talked about, and I will explain why I think they are flaws.  It does base everything just on two test scores: the state-wide reading test and the state-wide math test.  We think that is an overly narrow, inappropriate way to measure overall school performance and student performance. 

Second as Alice mentioned, it limits severely even how the test scores are used, so that it is looking right now at least at what percentages of kids scored a certain point proficient on the achievement scale on the day of the reading test, and comparing this year's third grader essentially with next year's third grader, and I think there is a lot of consensus including that from Secretary Spellings that that may not be the best way even in using test scores to measure schools.  It is absolutely resulting in narrowing of the curriculum, and while I fully agree that reading is critical as is math, educators believe, and I think most parents believe, they want their child to have a comprehensive and complete education in history, civics and other subjects. 

And whether it was the intent or not, I do not think it was, it is because of the next part, because it results in a lot of labeling and punishing schools and in a lot of cases has diverted attention from really improving learning to simply getting enough kids in each box over the proficiency level of that year, based on the tests so that it has really resulted in overly punitive measures.  I think most of the specific, federally-mandated interventions, ranging from school choice to supplemental services, have little basis for demonstration.  They have improved student achievement.  I do not think they are particularly working well logistically, and I think there are a lot of problems with those. 

The other flaw is it is an all or nothing measurement.  So for a typical school, there are 37 criteria it has to meet to make adequate yearly progress by each of the various subgroups of students, by race, poverty et cetera.  A school that falls short on one of 37 criteria is essentially treated the same as the school that falls short on all 37, and that is we think, again, has some significant problems as an accurate measurement. 

The projections have been made now in a lot of states, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, many others, that without any significant change in the law, 75 percent to 99 percent of all schools will eventually fail to make adequate yearly progress.  To us, that demonstrates that it is not a rational system.  I do not think anybody, even the most severe critics of public schools, would argue that 99 percent of all schools in California are low performing schools.  Yet, that could be the result, that 99 percent of schools in California fail to meet these federal standards. 

One thing I totally agree with Alice about is funding.  No Child Left Behind is largely a measurement system.  One could argue whether it is the right or wrong system.  We think there are flaws in the system.  But even if it is the right system, it is a measurement system.  So, a school does not measure up, what is it supposed to do?  Part of the deal was it was supposed to get resources to help put in place improvement plans and improvement programs. 

No Child Left Behind authorized a separate program for school improvement, it has never been funded.  As Alice said, in this current school year, two-thirds of all school districts are getting less money in Title I than they got last year.  Next year, another 62 percent, many the same, will get less money next year than they got this year.  So it is very difficult for a school to put in place improvements, whether it is smaller classes, expand the professional development for teachers, after-schools programs.  Without resources, we think that is a big problem. 

Another flaw that the book actually does not talk about is that currently, every state has had its accountability plan approved by the US Department of Education.  How does it measure adequate yearly progress to ensure all schools are covered and all subgroups of students are covered?  However, AYP is based on the standards and assessments the state has in place.  But as of at least last week, only two states, Delaware and South Carolina, had their standard and assessment system approved by the US Department of Education.  So, we have been measuring schools and labeling schools and holding schools accountable based on a system that the foundation of which has not approved in 48 states, which is the ultimate cart before the horse. 

Let me mention couple of other issues that I have not talked about much so far.  Teacher quality, we fully agree every child should have a highly qualified teacher.  We would argue though that the highly-qualified teacher rules or requirements of No Child Left Behind have really largely failed to produce any real impact on teacher quality.  They have induced a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy, forced a lot of current teachers to have to dig up their test scores on a test they took 20 years ago, and I brought a little visual with me to just demonstrate the complexity of the federal requirement. 

This is a chart that NEA did that shows all the rules just at the federal level for teacher quality.  And I think without having to read a word of it though, it has been very useful to our members to just show what the rules are.  It shows the incredible level of prescriptiveness and direction from the federal government that a teacher has to meet.  And this has created huge amounts of problems because this is so complicated.  There were still disputes four years after the law was enacted between states and the US Department of Education over what the definitions mean. 

So, Gene Hickok’s former state where he was Secretary at Pennsylvania is in a dispute right now with the US Department of Education over their definition.  So, if the state Department of Education and US Department of Education cannot figure it out, how is an individual classroom teacher supposed to know what he or she is supposed to do to meet this federal requirement?  Same fight is going on now in Connecticut and Minnesota, the clock is rapidly running out for teachers to meet these requirements, and we are very concerned they will be penalized through no fault of there own because the requirements have not been clear.

 Another point I want to make on the federal prescriptiveness is the US Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General just did a little report on enforcement and monitoring of the law, and they have found that just in Title I alone, there are 588 federal mandates, federal requirements in the law - again, a good example of just the incredible level of detailed prescriptiveness from the federal government. 

What any would argue is that we need to keep the goals, we need to keep the disaggregation of data by different subgroups so we really can see where there are problems, but we need to put in place some fixes to the measurement system so that it is not based just on a few test scores that we look at growth models, that we look at multiple measures of student achievement.  That we also put in place additional policies to really improve teacher quality, things like some of the things included in the bill that Congressman Miller has put in support for induction and mentoring programs for new teachers so they are not just given a classroom and told good luck.  That we need to put in place much more expanded professional development for all teachers, financial incentives to attract teachers to hard-to-staff schools.  And we need to improve the working conditions of hard-to-staff schools through things like smaller classes, school modernization, making sure schools have adequate and up-to-date textbooks and technology so that they are not hard-to-staff schools at the end of the day. 

I think there is a growing chorus of voices from state legislators, from organizations across the political spectrum, from members of Congress that recognize these flaws and they are calling for changes in the law.  There are 30 bills in Congress right now, some from the Democrats, and some from Republicans calling for changes.  Two dozen or more state legislatures have passed resolutions calling for changes, and there is coalition that NEA is part of that is called the Forum for Educational Accountability that now has 71 organizations including the NAACP, the Children's Defense Fund, several religious organizations, the school board associations, school administrators and others calling for some significant changes to No Child Left Behind so that it can actually fulfill its promise. 

Let me just wrap up in terms of my views of the outlook.  I think that Congress tends to, in general, revert to inertia and not do anything absent strong, striving force, forcing it to do something.  I would agree in 2001 that was President Bush and partly I think at the end 9/11.  I think right now there is a lack of consensus within the Democratic side of Congress.  I think there is a lack of consensus within the Republican side.  I think there is a lack of consensus between the Democrats and Republicans so I think it is unclear what will happen. 

I think there is a high probability that in the next Congress in 2007 to 2008, it does not get finished.  Congress is not itself making adequate yearly progress because it has failed to act in a timely basis on reauthorizing the higher Ed Act, Head Start and the Vocational Education Act all of which were due in 2003.  So Congress has failed to do those in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and now is struggling to get them done in 2006.  So, it remains to be seen how timely we will be on No Child Left Behind. 

I do think testing will continue to be part of the process.  Accountability will be part of the process.  I think as laid out, it is how do you measure accountability?  How do you use tests?  Is it more punitive?  Is it more supportive?  Is there sense with some common sense flexibility?  So, I think it is a little murky but I do think there is likely to be some changes, and I think particularly if it carries over past the next presidential election there will probably be some fairly significant changes because candidates actually on both sides, probably even more so now on the Republican side are very critical of No Child Left Behind. 

I will stop there and turn it back.

Frederick Hess:  Thank you Joel, Kati?

Kati Haycock:  I am never quite sure where to start after I follow Joel.  It is a remarkably distorted picture, at least a different one than the one I see.  While I live Washington, I actually do not spend most of my time here.  I spend most of my time in schools and school districts and communities all around the country.  Big city, little cities, suburbs, small towns and I wanted to sort of talk to the law not in political terms for the moment but in human terms. 

NCLB is fundamentally about the hidden kids: often poor, members of minority groups, English language learners, students with disabilities.  Their under-performance has for years been swept under an average and hidden from public view.  What this law says very simply is that that has to stop.  Schools fundamentally have to take responsibility for equipping all of their kids, not just some, with the knowledge and skills that they need to participate in our democracy and to live productively in this economy. 

What is has done essentially is change the rules.  No longer is it good enough to send some of your kids off to fancy colleges.  No longer is it good enough to have a high overall average underneath that very ugly gap between groups.  Now, in order to be a good school you basically have to be good for every group of kids that you serve, and there are a whole lot of people who really question whether we can actually do that, whether that is a fair thing to ask of our public schools.  They point to the fact that we have large and ugly gaps between groups and those gaps actually widened over the 1990s. 

But the truth is that they narrowed a lot during the 1970s and 1980s when we were really focused on improving achievement among low-income kids and kids of color as a country and what this law is about is trying to get that focus back. 

But I was talking the other day to Jason Kamras who is the current National Teacher of the Year, and like me spends a lot of time out there in schools, and he said, “I know that teachers do not feel, they are not very happy with me when I say this but I cannot believe the positive changes that I see.  Just last week, I talked to the principal who said, ‘you know, I used to not care who taught those disabled kids in that classroom over there but now I have to.  I am responsible for them.’”  And he said, “I talked to teachers who say, ‘I did not use to worry if those kids over there did not learn but now I have to because I am responsible for them.’” 

So yes, it is imperfect, flawed, and Jason would say that as much as I would, but it is capturing attention in ways that we have not since back in the 1970s and 1980s.  And I hear the same thing from parents, parents of that disabled child who said, “They talked to me before about my child’s IEP plan, they talked to me about services but they never before talked to me about my child’s learning.” 

That is a huge, huge thing.  Yes, there is a lot of push back about that but at least in my judgment there is good news about push back.  People do not push back unless you have gotten their attention and we clearly have gotten their attention.  We are asking people fundamentally to change how they think about their work and how they do that work.  Now, does focus alone help people to do the right things?  No, sometimes when you focus, you do dumb things and our capacity, our supports are not just under-funded but they are not good enough anymore, and we need certainly to be providing much better advice and assistance to the teachers and principals and superintendents around the country who are struggling to leap up to this challenge. 

But to say that because they are sometimes doing dumb things we should stop the focus, or we should say “Well, maybe not all 39 of those groups but maybe 37.”  That is just wrong.  The truth of the matter is that these kids can, and so the real issue here is are we going to keep going?  I mean, there are a heck of a lot of people around the country, leaders who are trying to bring about change and, yes, they do not like all the features of the law, but the law is putting wind behind the sails of the people who are trying to bring about change for all kids and surely, we do not want to take that wind away.  They have been teaching against wind blowing in their faces for a very long time.  This is hard work but we do not want to take that wind away.  Thank you.

Frederick Hess:  Okay.  Well, I think what we have done is paint it pretty nicely, the picture of initial support for the law.  I think Alice flagged a couple of the most widely voiced criticisms, and I think Joel fleshed them out.  And I think Kati, you have really helped us understand kind of the rationale and the defensible. 

What I would like to see us move the conversation to the present day and as folks are talking about the possible revisions of the law, as we are discussing re-authorization, what are we to make of this?  How does all this translate into what is going to happen in No Child Left Behind in 2007, 2008 and beyond?  Well, why don’t I just throw that as a starting question and then we can open it up to the audience?  Mike.

Michael Petrilli:  Sure, I will get started.  First, I do want to take the chance since Joel gave it to me to plug the book once again, “No Child Left Behind: A Primer,” available on amazon.com.  Okay, shameless, yes. 

But speaking of shameless, Joel, shameless, one story that you will find in here is the story about how the highly qualified teacher provisions came to be.  It is pretty interesting, and I will tell you about it shortly.  It is basically that the Republican chairman in the House side, John Boehner, wanted bipartisan support for the law.  He knew that his colleague, George Miller, the ranking Democrat cared a lot about teacher quality. 

So he said, “You know, Congressman Miller, you take charge of this part of the Law.”  Because frankly, Republicans are really not quite so sure what they would think about some of these teacher qualifications as a certification, and there is kind of a libertarian streak that says, we don’t care about all those qualifications.  As long as the school is doing good, we are not going to worry about the paper credentials.  So, George Miller took the lead and his original proposal was that all teachers, new and veteran, had to meet some very simple clear rules that would not look like that chart, right? 

Rule number one, you have to have a bachelor’s degree, right?  Rule number two, you have to be fully certified, okay.  And rule number three, you have to demonstrate that you know your subject either by having majored in that subject or by passing a test in that subject.  And if you are an elementary school teacher since you teach a lot of subjects, you would have to pass the test, very simple.  And that it was actually a compromise pushed by the NEA, Joel’s group that led to this complexity that we have today.  So I just want to put that on the table. 

In terms of looking forward, I do wonder if people are starting to hear a change in tone in Washington.  We hear a lot more lately about competitiveness - the President talks about that.  Some people on Capitol Hill have concerns about losing jobs to India and China, and the world is flat, and they increasingly talk about and are worried about our best and brightest and whether they are getting the support.  And I do wonder whether or not that means that the achievement gap concerned about equity is going to be eclipsed by this concern about competitiveness and excellence as you might call it at the top end of the spectrum.

Alice Johnson Cain:  On that real quick.  I think it is pointing out that there are really two achievement gaps.  There is the internal achievement gap, and then there is the achievement gap between the United States, and some of our competitors which we are hearing more and more about in Math and Science and other subjects where we are not keeping up.

Frederick Hess:  So Alice, as you have the conversation, think about how that plays in a No Child Left Behind on Capitol Hill.  How have folks started to think about whether and how that second achievement gap might be addressed within the No Child Left Behind framework?

Alice Johnson Cain:  Well, I think if we take the wind out of the sails of NCLB, we are doing a huge disservice to maintaining our competitiveness and increasing our competitiveness, and I think that there is some recognition of that by some key people involved in the debate.

Frederick Hess:  I think Joel wanted to get in.

Joel Packer:  Just want to respond to my shameless accusation in terms of the highly qualified teachers.  Again, first of all we were the ones who fought to say that there should not be any loopholes to the issue of certification.  So since the law has been put in place, there are several loopholes, which we have opposed.  For instance, the Department of Education had said that teachers and supplemental service providers, these after-school tutors do not have to meet the highly qualified rules.  We do not think that is fair.  Teachers, some teachers in charter schools do not have to be fully certified, we do not agree with that exemption.  Teachers going through alternate route programs can be teaching for three years before they even complete their program, we do not agree with that exemption. 

So, we think all teachers should be fully certified and in fact, we are going to be proposing for the next re-authorization that Congress had actually put in place on standards or guidelines or assistance to states to help strengthen their certification processes because we think that there should be tough standards to get into the teaching profession.  It really has resulted in just a lot of paperwork, and it is not as simple because of the diversity when you look at the small middle school that does not have enough kids to have a separate Math teacher and a separate Science teacher or separate Civics teacher, Government teacher, History teacher, Geography teacher.  It becomes very challenging to say well, just have to go major.  Should that person have four majors, five majors or go back now and take five or six or seven tests?  So, there are a lot of complexities in this that it needs some, just as we have called, for common sense, flexibility. 

Frederick Hess:  Kati.

Kati Haycock:  Yes, sort of two points here.  Number one, one of the problems with what we did though about the teacher’s stuff is, we said, "Oh well, geez, it is harder in rural areas."  And so, now we will just sort of exempt them, pretending that somehow those kids do not need to be taught Math by people who actually know Math or Science.  It is somehow less important for rural kids and, frankly, anybody who has looked at farming today notice, you darn well need to know Math and Science. 

So, this kind of notion that is somehow okay, when in fact, the law has three billion dollars in it, whose top priority is supposed to go not to punishing those teachers but actually when you acknowledge that they might need a little more education in those to provide that training and help.  So, I mean I think it is a little nuts to suggest that somehow we can just pretend we do not have these problems, sweep it under the rug instead of actually naming it and acting on it. 

But I want to get back actually to the competitiveness issues because as I watch things play out, I worry that we are going to make the same mistake that we have made in the early 1980s.  During the 70s, we really focused a lot on sort of equity.  And then along came the excellence movement and the leaders of that essentially said, “Do not act equity, now let us do excellence” as though the two were somehow incompatible.  If we have learned anything in this country, it is simply that equity and excellence are inextricably linked here, and that in order to make schools good and to achieve our promise as a country, we have actually got to make them good for all kids. 

And I think the important thing that we really need to say as clearly as we can that any suggestion that NCLB or this focus on low income kids and kids of color is somehow bringing down our white kids or our Asian kids or our high-end kids is dead wrong.  You look at the latest state of the National Assessment of Education Progress, performance is up for all groups of kids - for poor, for non-poor, for minorities, for whites and there is record performance, in fact, for all groups in the narrowest gaps we have ever had in this nation’s history. 

We are on the way with elementary, we are making some progress at middle, now we are going to bring in home at high school, but the notion that these are somehow incompatible is just nonsense. 

Frederick Hess:  Gene.

Eugene Hickok:  Just to hop on two things on the teacher quality issue.  I mean, to me that is a great illustration with the challenge you confront with re-authorization and that is you allow the conversation, which is very basic common sense.  You cannot teach what you do not know.  You’ve got to make sure the teachers have content knowledge and it becomes more of a bureaucratic debate about how every state does this and does not do this, and the rules and the regulations and you have charts like that. 

My point is, re-authorization’s future will be contingent upon making sure that the conversation is beyond the education community.  When parents and taxpayers and employers get a sense of whether or not teachers know what they teach, and we talk to them about the issue, and not just the teachers and the bureaucrats and the state capitals, when they get a sense of whether or not the schools are working when they get a sense that there is free tutoring available for the first time for their child, and it is not just defined by the system.  In other words, the only way it is going to happen, I think, is to go beyond the conversation with the education community. 

That is a part of the conversation obviously, but talk to their clients, talk to the great taxpayers who are footing the bill on this.  They want better schools, they want what is best for their kids, and they want qualified teachers.  And they do not want bureaucratic messes like that either.  They just want to make sure that their child’s teacher can teach.  That is the idea behind the law.  It is the first time that federal policy speaks directly to families and not just to schools because guess what, those schools belong to those families and those services are supposed to be given to the families. 

And so I think the future, in terms of re-authorization, it really needs to be driven by that kind of conversation because if it is not, if it is just either Washington conversation or an industry-interested conversation, my sense is you are going to lose a golden opportunity.

Frederick Hess:  Well, Eugene, I guess one of the things your point raises is, has the base of support for No Child Left Behind shifted then in the past five or six years?  It sounds like you are suggesting that constituencies or families that might not have been aware or supportive of the law are today, and conversely, I wonder if maybe some folks who were on board in the beginning have cooled on it, for reasons you have alluded to.

Eugene Hickok:  Well, I think you are right on both counts.  I mean this is tough work.  Very tough work and it does take place in the schools and a lot of folks who do this every day do feel like they are being put upon because their schools are being labeled, and they seem to be doing pretty well and it is tough stuff.  So, I think in the trenches a lot of folks who might support the concept are having a tough time working on the system.  On the other hand, I think as the conversation broadens, a lot of support for basic common sense results. 

I mean think about it.  We are talking about results in education.  That is supposed to be common sense.  It is revolutionary.  That is driving much more interest on the part of parents.  I can tell you at the local level and that is where I am now, parents know more about federal education law than they ever thought they would, not because they want to but because they are learning about their schools.  That is a huge shift, a huge shift.  They are not just relying upon the education establishment to tell them what is going on, and that is going to continue.

Frederick Hess:  Okay, Joel.

Joel Packer:  Two quick points about that one.  If you look at the polling, and your book did a good job summarizing the polling, plug the book again.  A lot of the polling shows similar to what I have mentioned.  Some of the public supports the goals but the public does not support measuring schools just based on one or two tests.  They do not support punishments to schools, and the polling we have done and we have looked at shows the more the public and parents know about the law, the less they like it.  So, the more they understand it, the less they like it. 

The other point I would make is also when you look at groups that represent parents in the Public Education Network, PEN, which have had extensive series of hearings and input around the country, heard a lot of very critical comments from parents and families from communities of color and low-income folks and others with a lot of the concerns about how this is impacting their child’s schools.  So, I think again the issue is that I do not think anyone disagrees with the goals. 

I do not think anyone disagrees with every child should have a great public school.  The question is again, how do you measure that and then if does not measure up what do you do to help it improve?

Frederick Hess:  Okay, with that, let us open it up for Q and A.  Please catch either Rosemary or Morgan. Please do us all a favor of identifying yourself by name and affiliation and again, please actually ask the question and please try to keep it brief.  Yes, ma’am. 

Bethany Little:  Hi, I am Bethany Little with the Alliance for Excellent Education.  Our organization is focused on improving America’s high schools and so it is in that vein that I ask my question.  Whatever the strengths and weaknesses NCLB may have for public schools writ large, it is certainly deeply flawed as a tool to improve America’s high schools ranging from the fact that only five percent of the implementation funding of Title I goes to Title I students in high schools to the fact that the graduation rate provisions are weak in the law and implemented incredibly poorly by the Department of Education causing enormous problems around the country with that.  So in thinking about that, what do you think we can do this time around in No Child Left Behind to make sure that the law does better by America’s high schools?

Frederick Hess:  Eugene.

Eugene Hickok:  Well, I kind of agree with you that the first origin of No Child Left Behind is really grades three through eight. Primarily, no two ways about it, and I think there is a reason for that and the President talked about it quite a bit early on and that is you’ve got to catch these problems before they get to high school because by then it is too late. 

There is a lot of interest in high school reform.  I am not one who is on the bandwagon to merely extend NCLB and accountability provisions in the high school.  I think the high school problem is much deeper than that.  I think it is an anachronism the way it is done in many places.  I think we need to rethink what high school is all about, the whole concept.  Indeed, I would argue that we need to rethink what K12 is all about, to be honest with you.  I mean that is not the answer, but I would say that there is a lot more interest among the governors, a lot more interest among those who really deal daily with high schools, that there is a fundamental need for change but not simplistic change that merely would say let us test some more high school kids and see what happens.  I think that testing really is important in three through eight.

Frederick Hess:  Yes sir.

Reggie Felton:  Hi, Reggie Felton of National School Boards Association.  Kati, we appreciate your efforts to clarify many of the issues.  Well, you did mention that we do not want a perfect law and certainly with the first go-round, there were many problems that were identified.  So it is not an issue here, but some new things that we were not aware of.  We were aware of them.  Certainly, organizations like NSBA and others identify those issues at that time. 

Our question is what can you share that you will believe make this a different process in re-authorization so that those issues and problems that are well-recognized and well-identified and well-documented are addressed in the law and so we would not have the politicizing of another education law itself?  And by the way, NSBA recognizes both equity and excellence in education.

Kati Haycock:  I am not sure whether that question was directed to me.  But I think everybody in this room knows that federal law is rarely perfect and education law is no exception to that.  I mean if you look, folks pretend as though NCLB came out of nowhere.  NCLB was simply the next set of steps for a set of progressively, more aggressive if you will, Federal Education Laws and built very much on that ’94 Act as you know. 

My suspicion is in the next go-round, we will do an even better job at making sure we have got a law that really works.  But by that, I mean really works for kids, kids of all sorts and not necessarily that that means it is always perfectly palatable to adults.  We have got to get to the point in this country where we make decisions based on what is right for kids and we are willing to stand firm even when we get push back from adults.  Yes, we can provide more support and we should.  Yes, we can provide better supports and we should, but we ought not to pull back from this goal because our future as our country really depends on it.

Frederick Hess:  Kati, just to push on that a bit.  One concern, certainly that arose, for instance, when the Bush administration talked about extending the NCLB framework to high school last year.  It was a concern among conservatives on Capitol Hill about federal leverage, a little bit of buyer’s remorse on the part of some about what they had signed off on in 2001.  And certainly, Alice has raised the issue that some progressives, some liberals are concerned that the last time they signed off on No Child Left Behind, they did not get all the funding that they felt they were promised as part of the compromise.  So, in terms of holding firm, in your response to Reggie here, in terms of holding firm on the principles of the law and not backing away from it, what does it look like in term of accumulating the votes and getting the legislative will power to stand firm on these provisions which have come under some fire, in some cases from both the left and the right?

Kati Haycock:  I mean Alice is probably better positioned than I am to comment on that but I can tell you that obviously, folks on the Hill are hearing from some of their constituents that this has been less than all rosy.  They are also hearing from many of their constituents that this is important, from the parents in particular who were saying, they were asking about my kid’s learning and these matters to me. 

The last hearing on the House side, I was surprised frankly at the breadth of support with a whole lot of members saying, “I have been wondering in the last couple of months but as I am out there, I am feeling like things are actually going better,” and I believe that that is generally the case.  Does that mean that we got a 100 percent sign-on across the country?  No, not a chance.  But I at least think that there is general commitment to staying the course but also to making it a lot better.  All of us want to make improvements in the law in the next go-around and I think we all work together and get that done Alice, right?

Alice Johnson Cain:  Yes.  Let me extend on that a bit.  I have to just respond to what Joel said about some polling because you could find a poll to say whatever you want it to say. And you can ask a question, depending how you ask it, you can get whatever answer you want and there are a lot of polls out there that show a lot of different things, and I think what Kati is talking about when you go out in the schools and hear what people on the ground are saying and talk to the parents.  Sometimes it is a little bit different than what some inflammatory questions and inflammatory polls are finding. 

Getting back to sort of credible research, I think a lot of what the task before us is to look as closely and carefully with as open of a mind as we can at the credible information that is out there.  One thing that George Miller says frequently when he talks about No Child Left Behind is that he has pride of authorship but not arrogance of authorship.  And he is proud of the core values about what this law is trying to do, and he is going to do everything he can to stick with them and to keep his caucus sticking with them as much as possible. 

But of course, where things are not working well, we need to address that, and we have got a number of reports, actually I did a list last week just of the upcoming reports due between now and the end of the year, from GAO looking not just with the growth model but implementation of the LEP provisions of supplemental service provisions.  We have got a number of commissions from the Aspen Institute to the Chief State School Officers.  Everyday, I am hearing about a new commission that is looking at No Child Left Behind and holding hearings around the country.  The Public Education Network that Joel mentioned, there are a lot of groups looking at this and getting us information, and we do have to look at it and find where the ways are to improve it, and I think that that is what everyone wants to do. 

So I think that we have some good information coming in and we need to get that before we start rewriting it, and the good news is I think we do have some time.  A process starts next year, I think there is very little chance of it finishing next year.

Joel Packer:  I just would hope that Congress really has an open process in which they really hear from educators and parents and the public and if there is time to look at and review various drafts of the bill before they are voted on.  What happened last time is the final bill, after it came out of conference, 1,100 pages.  I believe there were maybe 24 hours from when the text was released and when it was voted on.  And the devil really is in the details, and people need time to look at this and analyze and see what the impact is going to be.

Eugene Hickok:  Just really briefly, you had plenty of time, believe me.  My point would be, if you look at the essence of a law, carve away a lot of the barnacles that become part of any major piece of legislation, it really is going to be a bipartisan law still.  I mean who can take issue with the idea of making opportunities available for kids in schools that are not working?  Who can take issue with making sure you have highly qualified teachers?  It is only when we allow these basic conversations to become bogged down in what this report says, what these interest groups says, what this organization says that we lose touch with them.  And so the more we can focus on - what I consider to be the very human elements - I think you can keep a bipartisan support. 

The debate will always be over money, and I think that is a fair debate but putting that aspect aside, I think the concept remains is the President used to say, "Neither Republican nor Democrat, that is just very basic and very American."

Frederick Hess:  Yes, ma'am.

Linda Edwards:  I am Linda Edwards.  I work at the Department of Education in Washington and I track legislation related to No Child Left Behind at the state level.  Mike, it is good to see you.  I am curious about what is happening in education graduate school departments.  Have you heard anything, Rick, about whether or not some universities are allowing teachers to get certified across fields of knowledge?  I taught university before I went to the department and one of the things that I was struck by was that my graduate students were not well versed in English writing skills, so I was teaching English as well as whatever the field of knowledge was that I was focusing on for the graduate level courses.  And I would think that this problems starts in K through 12 educations.  Obviously, that is why we have this act.  So I am just curious, are we talking about interdisciplinary certification approaches?  Is anybody talking about that in the policy community?

Frederick Hess:  Kati?

Kati Haycock:  Many states especially at the middle school level are acknowledging that, especially in rural areas and small middle schools.  It is often necessary for teachers to teach at least two subjects, so there is a fair amount of momentum in states like Georgia, for example, to provide essentially two concentrations for teachers who will be teaching in middle schools, little less moving on that at the high school level in part because there is a bit less need for it. 

But one thing that may be implicit, although I am not sure on what you asked about, there definitely is a need to make sure that all teachers, regardless of the subject that they are certified to teach, know how to teach reading in that subject area and they are definitely impressed now from the K12 folks, especially at the middle and high school level to make sure that teachers who are trained to teach science also know how to teach as they do in Europe - reading in the content areas, right?  How fast higher eds move in to respond is a little less than clear. 

Rick, you have more experience with that world.

Frederick Hess:  The trick there, of course, is that we have about 1,300 teacher prep program in the country, each of them in their own interesting relationship with the state certification authority and the State’s Bureaucracy and Board of Education, so changing any of these programs as folks in the schools of education know is a five and 10 year process.  And there is the question of whether or not these programs are really focused on addressing the specific problems that are posed, say, by the highly qualified teacher provision.  My sense is that very few of the programs out there tend to think of their work in this way. 

So I do not think there has been much movement on that.  I think this is the kind of thing that if… and I think a lot of this is folks waiting to see what the re-authorization looks like.  The last thing you want to do is spend three or four years working your way through a strict bureaucracy for something which becomes unnecessary 18 months after you get it launched.  So I think one of the things folks out there are waiting on is seeing which components stick in the NCLB re-authorization and which components wind up going away.

Eugene Hickok:  Yes, because you mentioned higher education, there is a proposal on the table right now which deals directly with highly qualified teachers and has I think great promise of an adjunct teacher corps.  You borrow the model from higher education where an adjunct professor comes in and teaches a course.  Well, right now that is virtually impossible in public schools because you have to be a member of the bargaining unit, you have to be a full time employee or et cetera. 

Well, I can think lots of people, especially in math and science, in which we have a huge need, who might be willing and quite able and quite qualified to come in and teach a course and be hired as an adjunct to teacher.  That is a model that is in all of higher education that I think the basic and secondary education may want to take a look at.

Frederick Hess:  Yes ma'am.

Female Voice:  Hi, [indiscernible] an undergrad at Stanford University, and I have a question about the Americans competitiveness initiative of NCLB.  If you look at how we achieve in international tests, places like Finland and South Korea are beating us substantially, and the types of test that they use in their school systems are completely different than the types of test that we see in the states and NCLB.  Do we need to reform our test to match places like Finland and South Korea that are outperforming us in the world?

Alice Johnson Cain:  That issue actually goes back to the whole under-funding issue because there is money in NCLB for funding development of new tests quickly.  In some cases, need of language test when they are needed.  It just is not happening because of the law’s under-funding.  So I think that is a piece of it.  In terms of the competitiveness, I should have mentioned that my boss last fall, along with Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, introduced a sort of comprehensive competitiveness package for the country.  They will be pushing hard on including energy independence, making broadband access accessible for everyone, getting more engineers.  But a fundamental piece of this was improving teacher quality across all schools including high schools which to answer the question on that, get back to that a little bit because it has got to be a part of that equation. 

Also thinking about competitiveness and the achievement numbers, one thing that I think is really important that you cannot talk about this without mentioning is the high school graduation rate, which right now are 68 out of 100 students actually graduating high school on time if at all.  So, these numbers we are talking about are the kids who are actually still there, not the 32 who have dropped out and I think until we get serious about that and about addressing the dropout problem and about getting those kids back and about making sure we have incentives to keep them there and get them the extra help we needed.  Forget about the competitiveness if we are willing to write off nearly a quarter of our kids.  So I just hope that we can keep that in mind as a part of the discussion.

Frederick Hess:  Mike.

Michael Petrilli:  One other great way to improve our tests and again your c-span viewers are going to start to writing angry letters but let us get rid of this patchwork system of 50 state tests, and let us move to one national test and we could certainly...

Joel Packer:  [Indiscernible]

Michael Petrilli:  I know that.  We might agree on something, Joel. 

Joel Packer:  The TVs are turning off.

Michael Petrilli:  Yes, I know.  Do not push that button.  But seriously, I should point out that this is certainly not part of the Washington Consensus.  But I do believe sometime in the next 25 years, we are going to move to a national test and this is what other countries have done, South Korea and Scandinavian countries.  I mean, most developed countries have one national test, one national standard and I do worry when you see what is happening with No Child Left Behind with a lot of states playing a lot of games, findings various ways to make their tests easier or going to make that accountability systems look like Swiss cheese, it is too important for the standards and accountability movement to stay strong, and that maybe that we will get to the point that the only way to keep it strong is to go to one very strong national standard and national test.

Frederick Hess:  Yes, sir.

Kirk Johnson:  Kirk Johnson with the Heritage Foundation.  On the subject of testing, do the panelists think that growth models are going to become part of the re-authorization, and is there a sufficient political will and interest to put that into the next version of the law?

Joel Packer:  Yes, I think there is lot of consensus about including some now from the Secretary of Education, to allow states to utilize some type of growth model.  Growth model can mean lots of different things, from measuring individual student achievement to changes in groups of students over time.  There are lots of different ways of measuring growth, but most state accountability systems before No Child Left Behind used some kind of growth model, and I think there is a lot of interest in doing that.  So I would say yes, there will be some growth models in the re-authorization.

Kati Haycock:  Let me, if I could add a thought or two to that.  We have to be a little careful here as Joel said we had versions of growth models before, and I think George Miller's comment on that was about as accurate as I get.  It is like being out on Southeast and calling a cab and they are coming, they are coming, they are coming but they never quite get there and it is really quite possible to do a growth system where you never actually get the kids there. 

Second, there has been some really careful research in states who are looking at what will be the implications of adding a growth component to the system.  And what is so interesting is, despite all the outcry about how unfair our current AYP measure is in virtually every state that has done that, the numbers of schools that would be let off the hook, if you will, because they are growing enough is tiny.  So this very crude measure it turns out gets it right most of the time.

Frederick Hess:  Yes sir, in the back there.

Adam Kuhn:  Adam Kuhn.  I am from the AFL-CIO but I am not representing them here today.  Quick question on what impact, any credible research on what impact illegal immigration and non-English speaking communities have had on NCLB and education achievement in general and legal immigration, that is, import of technical and skilled workers from China and India and of course, also the off-sourcing of jobs, how has that all impacted the education policy?  Did the members of Congress feel that this is sort of a situation that has been working for so long, why fix it?

Joel Packer:  I mean one of the sub-groups that have to be measured is limited English-proficient children or sometimes called the English language learners.  And whether it is a legal immigration or illegal immigration, I mean that is a growing group of children, and part of the problem is that No Child Left Behind requires all those children to be given tests that say to the extent practicable, all the states are supposed to test them in their native language but that, for various reasons, unfortunately does not happen in most cases. 

So you have children who, after one year in the United States, have to take a test in English before the proficient English which means they are not going to be very likely to score proficient on the reading test, and that sub-group I think is one of the sub-groups that a lot of people agree there is problem with how the measurement system works.  The Department is tinkering with it a little.  There may be some more changes.  But again, we need better tests for those students, more money to develop better tests for those students. 

Also, it is a diverse group of students.  You have some students who come here, they may not be proficient in their own language and the subject because they may have come from a school system or they may be refugees where they are just not the same level of education.  You have late entrance students who arrive when they are in their high school years and it would be very difficult to get them to be proficient in the two or three years left for them to be here.  So it is a good example of the group that is diverse, complex, complicated, and I do not think the law on the regulations exactly gets it right on how to accurately measure that group.

Alice Johnson Cain:  Clearly about something we looked at carefully how we are assessing these children in the re-authorization.  One thing that NCLB has done that Congressman Miller brings up frequently that he is really happy about is the fact that it has focused more attention on them and that it has also provided their parents with information that they did not have before about how their kids where doing. 

He was recently summoned by 300 Hispanic parents in his district and told we want to meet with you and bring the superintendent.  They had the AYP scores and said, “Our kids clearly are not getting what they need.  What are you going to do about it?”  And he was thrilled as it was the first time in over 30 years in Congress that they have come to him, and because of the information they had found NCLB disaggregated data.  They were empowered to do that, and I am very comfortable saying that disaggregated data is not going to go away.  That is proven too useful to too many people, too many places.  And Congressman Miller also talks about, he has members of Congress coming up to him now talking about bilingual education who a few years ago did not even know they have bilingual kids in their district. 

Maybe a few years they did in some cases with immigration.  It has really raised awareness and Secretary Spellings talks about shining the bright light.  I would argue that it has done more to help than hinder.  We will work on this with re-authorization but there have been some really exciting things because of that.

Frederick Hess:  Okay, we are going to take two quick questions.  I am going to let somebody take a quick shot at them and then we will be about out of time.  Yes sir.

Ray McGhee:  Yes, Ray McGhee from SRI International.  I would like the panel to address the issue of the school choice provisions and No Child Left Behind, as well as supplemental education services.  Mr. Packer hinted at them earlier about their relative effectiveness and I would like to...

Frederick Hess:  Sure.  Okay, and the other question.

Dianne Piche:  Dianne Piche from the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights.  Hello everybody, I would just like the panelist to address the back end of NCLB, the front end being the standard, the assessment, the identification of schools.  What is happening to schools and districts identified for improvement?  Does the Emperor have no clothes?  Should there be more consequences than there are?  Think Baltimore, people could comment.

Frederick Hess:  All right, you have about 15 seconds to take a shot at this.  Who's up?

Alice Johnson Cain:  Okay, actually it is great that Dianne just stood up because when you talk about choices and supplemental service organizations, the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights did a great report about a year ago on the choice provisions.  I understand they have a new one coming out on supp services that we cannot wait to read.  So, that was good timing. 

But in terms of your question itself, first of all, thank you for not calling them sanctions because I just, as a parent, do not see how allowing your child to get after-school tutoring or allowing your child to transfer to another public school that has a better track record, I do not see that as a sanction for the child involved.  I see that as a step that hopefully will help them improve their achievement.  Since I have 15 seconds, I will leave it at that.

Frederick Hess:  Okay, Eugene.

Eugene Hickok:  I think the choice provisions really have been a disappointment primarily because most school districts do not want to open up for supplemental education services.  There is roadblock after roadblock after roadblock on limiting free tutoring to parents.  You should just stop calling them supplemental educations services, call it free tutoring, talk to parents and they will show up.  The numbers will increase, the kids will do better and we can all go home smiling. 

Frederick Hess:  Joel.

Joe Packer:  We would say for both choices, supplemental services as opposed to taking 20 percent out of school district’s Title I money, taking money out of the classroom, there should be a separate federal stream of money to pay for those, so we are not diluting services to kids who need them to provide services in a different places. 

The other question, I think there is a huge research need on what is actually happening to schools designated as in need of improvement or subject to corrective action.  There are now over 11,000 school improvement plans that supposedly have been written.  I have never seen any research on what did they say, what did they do, do they need money, are they effective, are people implementing them.  So I think personally some of their consequences, I will use that word, in No Child Behind are not research based.  I do not think there is any evidence supplemental services is improving student achievement and I think we need a lot more research about what works, what are schools doing, and what does a school that does not measure up need to put in place to close the achievement gap.

Frederick Hess:  Kati.

Kati Haycock:  Rick and I interestingly we were at a meeting this morning with state and national people and local people who were really trying to figure this issue out.  There is no question that we are not very good yet in most states at helping low-performing schools to get better.  The answer, however, is not just to pretend we do not have low-performing schools.  The answer is to get better at that.  And the good news here is that work really is getting underway, not fast enough yet, it is not good enough yet.  But I think there is reason to be hopeful about the quality improving.

Frederick Hess:  Thank you.  Mike Petrilli.

Michael Petrilli:  Great.  These issues work well together.  What we see in Baltimore is that unfortunately, politics is still getting in the way of strong action where we have got schools that are failing for years and years.  So if that is the case, the least we can do is to get those children in those schools an option like free tutoring to help them while we adults are trying to work out these problems.  One last shameless plug, we talked a whole lot about both of these at today's education Gadfly show at www.edexcellence.net.

Frederick Hess:  Okay, with that, we need you to say first off for those of you who are interested in taking a book, those of you here, you will find copies of order forms for the primer in your packets.  For those of you at home who are desperate for a good read, No Child Left Behind: The Primer, available from Peter Lang, you can find it on Amazon.com. 

For those of you, this is primarily if you are in the DC area, we will be gathering next Tuesday, April 18 at 9:30 for a conversation, “Paying for Change, Best Practices for Philanthropy and Urban School Reform” with Executive Director of the Dell Foundation, the heads of the Local Education Funds for Chicago and New York City and Libby Gil, former superintendent of Chula Vista.  We would like to invite all of you to join us for that conversation. 

And finally, for those of you who are here with us you will find wine and cheese in the foyer.  Please help yourself.  With that, I would like to thank the panelists for joining us today.  I appreciate the conversation.

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