[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING LOCAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT
=======================================================================
FIELD HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD,
ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION AND LABOR
U.S. House of Representatives
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN KING OF PRUSSIA, PA, MAY 14, 2007
__________
Serial No. 110-35
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor
Available on the Internet:
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR
GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon,
Chairman California,
Donald M. Payne, New Jersey Ranking Minority Member
Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin
Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, Virginia Peter Hoekstra, Michigan
Lynn C. Woolsey, California Michael N. Castle, Delaware
Ruben Hinojosa, Texas Mark E. Souder, Indiana
Carolyn McCarthy, New York Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan
John F. Tierney, Massachusetts Judy Biggert, Illinois
Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania
David Wu, Oregon Ric Keller, Florida
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Joe Wilson, South Carolina
Susan A. Davis, California John Kline, Minnesota
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Kenny Marchant, Texas
Timothy H. Bishop, New York Tom Price, Georgia
Linda T. Sanchez, California Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Charles W. Boustany, Jr.,
Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania Louisiana
David Loebsack, Iowa Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Mazie Hirono, Hawaii John R. ``Randy'' Kuhl, Jr., New
Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania York
John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky Rob Bishop, Utah
Phil Hare, Illinois David Davis, Tennessee
Yvette D. Clarke, New York Timothy Walberg, Michigan
Joe Courtney, Connecticut Dean Heller, Nevada
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director
Vic Klatt, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD,
ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan, Chairman
Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, Virginia Michael N. Castle, Delaware,
Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
Susan A. Davis, California Peter Hoekstra, Michigan
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Mark E. Souder, Indiana
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan
Donald M. Payne, New Jersey Judy Biggert, Illinois
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico
Linda T. Sanchez, California Rob Bishop, Utah
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania
Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania Ric Keller, Florida
David Loebsack, Iowa Joe Wilson, South Carolina
Mazie Hirono, Hawaii Charles W. Boustany, Jr.,
Phil Hare, Illinois Louisiana
Lynn C. Woolsey, California John R. ``Randy'' Kuhl, Jr., New
Ruben Hinojosa, Texas York
Dean Heller, Nevada
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on May 14, 2007..................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Kildee, Hon. Dale E., Chairman, Subcommittee on Early
Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education.............. 1
Sestak, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Pennsylvania............................................ 3
Statement of Witnesses:
Abrutyn, Leslye S., Ed.D., superintendent, Penn Delco School
District................................................... 9
Prepared statement of.................................... 11
Hershberg, Theodore, professor, public policy and history
director, Center for Greater Philadelphia, and Operation
Public Education, University of Pennsylvania............... 12
Prepared statement of.................................... 14
Howell, Joe, principal, Norristown Area High School.......... 16
Prepared statement of.................................... 18
Kozol, Stephen, social studies teacher and department
chairman, Upper Merion Area High School.................... 20
Prepared statement of.................................... 22
Stevenson, Anthony C., incoming principal of Radnor Middle
School, Radnor Township School District.................... 6
Prepared statement of.................................... 8
EXAMINING LOCAL PERSPECTIVES ON
THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT
----------
Monday, May 14, 2007
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Early Childhood,
Elementary and Secondary Education
Committee on Education and Labor
Washington, DC
----------
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., at
Radnor High School, Radnor, Pennsylvania, Hon. Dale Kildee
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives Kildee and Sestak.
Staff present: Julius Lloyd Horwich, Policy Advisor for the
Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary
Education.
Chairman Kildee. A quorum being present, the hearing of the
Subcommittee with come to order. Pursuant to Committee Rule
12A, any member may submit an opening statement in writing
which will be made part of the permanent record. For those of
you who are not on today's panel but would like to submit
written testimony for the printed record of this hearing, you
may do so by e-mailing it to Lloyd Horwich by the close of
business Monday, May 21, to our Subcommittee Counsel. He will
provide you with his e-mail address upon request. So we welcome
any input that will be made part of the official Congressional
record which becomes part of the documents we study and part of
the archives of the United States.
I am pleased to welcome the public and our witnesses here
today for this hearing of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood,
Elementary and Secondary Education, examining local
perspectives on the No Child Left Behind Act.
First of all, I would like to thank Superintendent Cooper
and Principal Cannella for the use of this fine facility. I am
Congressman Dale Kildee from Flint, Michigan, and I am Chairman
of this Subcommittee. I have been in Congress now, this is my
31st year. I am thinking of making a career out of it, though
not sure, when I grow up.
I am especially pleased to be joined by my friend and
colleague, Congressman Joe Sestak. In a very short time,
Congressman Sestak has become a strong voice in Congress on
issues affecting our national security, small business and, of
course, education. He sits right in front of me at the hearings
there in Washington and he is there regularly. His attendance
is--I think you've got perfect attendance so far, Admiral.
Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a Head
Start Bill that I authored to provide comprehensive early
childhood education and developmental services for millions of
low income children and their families. Because quality
teachers are critical to a good Head Start program, Congressman
Sestak introduced an amendment on the floor. He had amendments
also adopted in committee. But an amendment on the floor to
provide for loan forgiveness to Head Start teachers. His
amendment passed with bipartisan support by a vote of 212 to
107 and, hopefully, will become law soon. I also value
Congressman Sestak's input as a member of this subcommittee on
the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. As Chairman, one
of my priorities is to work with my colleagues, Democrats and
Republicans, and educators in Washington and around the country
to improve and reauthorize No Child Left Behind this year. That
is the intention of George Miller, the Chairman of the Full
Committee, and the intention of Edward Kennedy, the Chairman of
the Senate counterpart Committee, so that probably will be
done. Our country's success in the 21st century economy will be
directly tied to our ability to continue to produce a high-
quality and educated people and work force. Inevitably that is,
of course, directly tied to our ability to provide every child
with a world class education. Since 2002, Congress and the
President have underfunded No Child Left Behind by $56 billion.
And the President's proposed budget for 2008 would underfund it
by another $15 billion for a total of $71 billion. I have been
in Congress a long time and that is one of the largest unfunded
mandates that Congress has enacted.
However, I am hopeful that with this year's new Congress
and the budget resolution which we passed, that we will start
to do better. The budget resolution calls for increased funding
in education and in health. But funding is only part of
improving No Child Left Behind. I expect that the law's basic
structures, standards and testing, the disaggregation of data,
adequate yearly progress or some form of that, which I am sure
we will have great comments on that today, and the effects of
not reaching AYP, I suspect that structure, talking to both Mr.
Miller and Mr. Kennedy, will remain in place. But I am also, as
are they, very open to suggestions of how we can improve the
law. Some flexibility on the state and local level. And we are
here in Pennsylvania to find out how you feel that law should
be changed and please don't hold back. I am sure you will not.
I have been talking to some of you out in the lobby. You have a
great deal of knowledge and some very strong feelings on this.
That is why I have held hearings in Washington on how No Child
Left Behind has worked for English language learners, students
with disabilities and in the area of supplemental educational
services. And this is our fourth hearing outside of Washington.
We have been to Michigan, California, Arizona and now
Pennsylvania. And Field Hearings are important, not only for
Congress to hear from those who work to implement the law day
in and day out, but also because they remind us that this law
was written on Capitol Hill and not Mount Sinai. And even on
Mount Sinai, Moses did go up a second time. Sometimes that is
called a motion to recommit but we recognize that all wisdom is
not in Washington. The wisdom is out here in Pennsylvania,
California, Michigan and Arizona.
In Michigan and California we heard from superintendents,
principals, teachers, parents and other experts. In Arizona we
heard from Indian educators. Today's panels include an expert
in school reform, a superintendent, two principals and a
teacher. I look forward to hearing their perspectives on how No
Child Left Behind has worked or has not worked and what we can
do to make it work better. I am confident that their testimony
will play an important role in the Committee's understanding of
how the law has impacted not only Delaware, Montgomery and
Chester Counties and other parts of Pennsylvania, but also
places like them all around the country. And I look forward to
working together with Congressman Sestak, along with my Senior
Republican Member Mr. Castle, Full Committee Chairman Mr.
Miller, and Senior Republican Mr. McKeon and all the members of
the committee on a bipartisan reauthorization of this bill.
I thank you very much for your presence here and I now
yield to Representative Sestak for his opening remarks.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kildee. Admiral, you are on.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you. Is this on? I very much appreciate
you, Mr. Chairman, being here today. I say that because I
consider Mr. Kildee a mentor. As he says, he sits right behind
me. I sometimes think about Sister Urbannet saying Heaven's
down the road here, sitting right behind me, you know, to make
sure I do things right. But I asked him early on if he would
come up here to the district and a short time later he handed
me a piece of paper and said would this date work out and here
we are.
Thank you so very much for that. Because I have learned in
Congress that the most valuable thing I have is time and so,
therefore, I know the most valuable thing the Chairman has is
time. I thought commanding a carrier battle group with 15,000
sailors in a war with 30 ships was demanding on time. It is
nothing like this. You have so many things to do and for him to
take the time out to come here, I am very touched. Thank you,
sir.
I want to thank, again, Dr. Cooper and Principal Cannella.
This has been a great place to hold--this is a great place to
hold it. Some of the students who are here came down and
visited me in Washington and now they are sitting here in the
audience. I think if there is anything that should be taken out
of today is democracy works. It really does. This is the third
education event that we have had. I am particularly taken with
this one because it is formal. It will be in the record. It
must be considered. The first two were education summits we had
where George Miller had come up, Chairman of the Committee, Mr.
Hinojosa had come up for Advanced and Higher Education. And as
Mr. Kildee mentioned, out of that summit, three amendments were
considered. They actually got to be part of the Head Start
reauthorization and that is why I emphasize, this is not just a
walk through. We listen. Clarence Tong and others are taking
notes down here and we very much appreciate your input.
I ran back then, as many people here know, on the themes
that national security begins at home in the health, the
education and the economic promise of our people. I saw that
every day in the military. We were good because teachers,
administrators, doctors, physicians took care of the youth to
give us a very healthy educated individual. It is why I asked
to be on the three committees that Chairman Kildee mentioned.
Small Business, Education and Labor, Armed Services, and also
two subcommittees on health. I am particularly taken that so
many have responded and continue, after the summits we have
had, to continue to give me input. They are all looked at and
they are all reviewed.
To the panelists, thank you for coming today. A number of
you I have met for the first time but a number of you I have
worked with before and I am very honored to have you here.
This is another opportunity and a great one on No Child
Left Behind which we will begin reauthorizing. I have always
said over the past year, there is wonderful value in No Child
Left Behind. But now to listen to those who are on the deck
plates and working with it day in and day out, to have your
input make a good idea be a great policy that can help you do
your job better is what this is all about.
So the topics we will go through will be how well is
adequate yearly progress, the main accountability measurement
we use considered by you on the deck plates. I am interested in
hearing, again, the value that some seem to say that we need to
consider what is called the growth or value-added models or
testing, so that we are not just teaching to a test. Second,
the consequences in interventions that are there presently for
those schools that are determined to improve student
performance. Are we doing it right? What should change? And
then finally a topic that I know is dear to everybody's heart,
even here at Radnor where there was an incident recently, is
the feeling of school safety. I know just from my own
background and 31 years in the military, if young men and women
felt comfortable in what they were doing and in the environment
they were in, they were able to be attendant to what we were
talking to them about better than if there is a feeling of
unease.
And so thank you very much, Chairman, for hosting this
today and I am very much looking forward to listening and the
questions that will ensue afterwards.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you for my time.
Chairman Kildee. I generally say this wherever I go, is
that, all of us like to see our published works and this
hearing will be published, will be printed, and it takes a
while to do that. We will get copies right away and the members
will get copies right away but they become part of the national
archives. So in a short time when that is done, have your
Congressman send you a copy of your testimony here.
I would like now to--first of all, all members of the
committee will have seven calendar days to submit additional
materials or questions for the hearing record.
I would like now to introduce the very distinguished panel
of witnesses that are here with us this morning.
Dr. Ted Hershberg is Professor of Public Policy and History
and Director of the Center for Greater Philadelphia at the
University of Pennsylvania. In 1996, Professor Hershberg
organized a consortium of 31 public school districts to work
collaboratively on standards based reform. In 2000, he founded
Operation Public Education to develop a new set of roles and
incentives for K-12 education. OPE is now introducing its model
for comprehensive school reform to education stakeholders
across the nation. I will now yield to Congressman Sestak to
introduce our other witnesses who are from his district.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to first
introduce Principal Stevenson. He will testify on the topic of
school safety without disrupting the educational environment,
which I spoke about as I closed my opening comments. He is the
incoming principal of Radnor Middle School and currently serves
as the assistant principal of Radnor High School. In his
career, Mr. Stevenson has experience both as a teacher and as
an administrator and has served in the Radnor School District
as administrator for the past three years. His undergraduate
degree is from South Carolina State University and Master's is
from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. We are glad to
have you, Principal Stevenson.
Dr. Leslye Abrutyn is the superintendent of the Penn-Delco
School District for the last ten years. And she will testify
and we have spoken about her thoughts and experience with
growth models and differentiated interventions for schools not
meeting the adequate yearly progress, the AYP. We are very
pleased to have her. She holds a Doctor of Education Degree
from Temple and she is a pioneer in recognizing the importance
of the collection and analysis of data. One of the real bright
spots, I think, No Child Left Behind can help us have. If you
read her article, The Most Important Data, which was published
nationally and internationally in educational leadership, you
will see very much about what her ideas hold for us. She has
also co-hosted All About Education, which is a weekly community
radio show discussing various educational topics. Doctor, we
are very pleased to have you here.
The third witness here that I would like to mention would
be Mr. Joseph Howell. He has been serving as the principal of
Norristown Area High School since 2004 and he has served as a
teacher and administrator in the Norristown Area School
District since 1972. From 1979 until 2004, he has served as the
principal of Stewart Middle School in Norristown. He holds a
Bachelor of Science and Education from Pittsburgh and a Masters
of Arts from Villanova University. And I think you are going to
find his testimony quite compelling. I am glad to have you
here, sir.
Mr. Howell. Thank you.
Mr. Sestak. And finally, the last witness I would like to
introduce who will testify on differentiated interventions,
what do you do when a school is not meeting the requirement set
forth, is Mr. Stephen Kozol. And I am very pleased to have him
from Upper Merion High School where he is the Department Chair
of the Social Studies Department and where, obviously, he is
serving as a teacher. But he is also President of the Upper
Merion Area Education Association and brings a diverse
background. Prior to entering the education field, which I
always think is of value, where he served both at
Pricewaterhouse and later as an attorney at Drinker, Biddle and
Reath. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Brandeis
University and a Law Degree from George Washington University
Law Center and a Masters of Arts Degree and Certification in
Secondary Education from West Chester University. We are glad
to have you all here. Thank you.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. We want to welcome
all our witnesses here today. For those who have not testified
before this subcommittee before, I will explain our lighting
system and the five-minute rule we have.
Everyone, including members, is limited to five minutes of
presentation or questioning. The green light will be
illuminated when you begin to speak. When you see the yellow
light, it means you have one minute remaining and when you see
the red light, it means your time has expired, you need to
conclude your testimony. However, there is no ejection seat
there and no trap door, so if you are in the middle of a
brilliant statement, I am not going to bring the gavel down.
You may certainly finish up your statement.
Please be certain as you testify to make sure your mic is
turned on, turn on your mic and speak into the microphone in
front of you and turn it off when you are finished.
We will now hear from our first witness, Principal
Stevenson.
STATEMENT OF ANTHONY STEVENSON, ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL, RADNOR
HIGH SCHOOL
Mr. Stevenson. Good morning. Chairman Kildee, Congressman
Sestak and other distinguished members of the Subcommittee on
Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. I am
pleased to appear before you today to testify on The Impact of
Student Safety and No Child Left Behind. I would be remiss,
however, if I did not also on behalf of the 1269 students at
Radnor High School welcome you as well.
Ever since the tragedy of Columbine High School, school
districts have been working to address the question of how to
keep our students safe at schools. The recent shootings of the
Amish students in Lancaster and even the recent incident in our
school here, in which a student brought a gun to school, have
impressed upon us that school safety is a constant priority.
Schools have a difficult task of ensuring that the school
setting is safe on a daily basis. However, we also have to
ensure that the school environment is not so overwhelming that
true education cannot take place.
The physical plant of a school building is the first area
of defense for school safety. Most schools that were built
before Columbine were not designed with adequate safety for
doors, cameras, escape routes and other equipment that support
school safety. As a result, schools were forced to redesign
their buildings in a way that would improve the security of
their buildings.
However, the physical plant of a school is only one
component of creating a safe school. The true way to create a
safe school is through the school climate. School climate can
be understood as the frequency and quality of interactions
among and between staff, students, parents and the community
throughout the school area. Research shows that schools with a
positive and welcoming school climate increase the likelihood
that students succeed academically and socially and help them
disengage and avoid high-risk behaviors like substance abuse
and violence. This type of climate can only be enhanced by
having educators spend time designing prevention and
intervention plans, well-organized crisis teams and maintaining
clear lines of communication related to school safety among all
appropriate stakeholders in the school community.
According to the National School Safety Center, from a
student's perspective, school climate depends upon and is
affected by the following. Number one, school involvement. To
the degree in which students are involved in and enjoy classes
and extra curricular activities in school. Student
relationships. The level of comfort students feel in relating
to another and the ease in which to make new friends. Teacher
support. The amount of help and care that teachers direct
toward students. The physical environment. The extent to which
the school buildings reflect the caring attitude of the school,
the school buildings are clean, well-cared for, supervised and
safe. Conflict resolution. Whether students are clear about the
rules and feel that conflicts are resolved fairly and rules are
consistently enforced. Participation in decision-making. The
extent to which students, administrators and teachers share in
making decisions about school improvement. Curriculum. The
extent to which students feel that what is taught in classes
meets their needs. Counseling services. Whether students feel
counselors are accessible and able to help with personal
problems, jobs and career information and concerns about drugs,
alcohol and sex. Recreation alternatives. Whether students are
satisfied with existing recreational activities and teachers
support all of these activities. Personal stress. The amount of
pressure students feel they are under and the resources they
have to cope with.
Here in the Radnor Township School District, we make all
attempts to create a school climate that creates a balance of
creating a safe setting while maintaining a strong academic and
social atmosphere for our students. In Radnor, we have several
programs that are included, but not limited to, a crisis
management team that coordinates the plans for responding to
violent and traumatic incidents on school grounds and various
emergency drills. The district also works in conjunction with
the Radnor Education Foundation in establishing a drug and
alcohol task force that meets monthly to discuss drug and
alcohol issues that impact our school community. They also
provide various programs that address issues related to
substance abuse. The Radnor Township School District also
collaborates with local law enforcement officials to create an
environment that welcomes officials into schools and allows
them to be a part of our school culture. Each school also has a
Student Assistance Program that identifies students at risk.
Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, any school,
whether suburban or urban, small or large, racially segregated
or diverse, wealthy or poor, would benefit from an increase in
additional appropriation funds to assist their schools in
safety efforts. Additional funding would give schools an
opportunity to provide an expanded version of intervention
activities that I outlined. This support will also provide
schools with the opportunity to create a culture that can
provide a feeling of safety while providing an endless
possibility of academic success for the students they serve.
I thank you for your time.
[Statement of Mr. Stevenson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Anthony C. Stevenson, Incoming Principal of
Radnor Middle School, Radnor Township School District
Chairman Kildee, Ranking Member Castle, Congressman Sestak and
other distinguished members of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood,
Elementary and Secondary Education, I am pleased to appear before you
today to testify on ``The Impact of School Safety and NCLB.''
Every since the tragedy at Columbine High School, school districts
have been working to address the question of how to keep our children
safe at schools. The recent shootings of Amish students thirty miles
from here in Lancaster and even a recent incident in our school where a
student brought a gun to school have impressed upon us that school
safety is a constant priority.
Schools have the difficult task of ensuring that the school setting
is safe on a daily basis. However, we also have to ensure that the
school environment is not so overwhelming that true education cannot
take place.
The physical plant of a school building is the first area of
defense for school safety. Most schools that were built before
Columbine were not designed with the adequate safety doors; cameras;
escape routes; and other equipment that support school safety. As a
result, schools were forced to redesign their building in a way that
would improve the security of their building.
However, the physical plant of a school is only one component of
creating safe schools. The true way to create a safe school is through
the school climate. School climate can be understood as the frequency
and quality of interactions among and between staff, students, parents,
and the community throughout the entire school community. Research
shows that schools with a positive and welcoming school climate
increases the likelihood that students succeed academically and
socially, and helps them disengage or avoid high risk behaviors like
substance abuse and violence.
This type of climate can only be enhanced by having educators spend
time designing prevention and intervention plans, well-organized crisis
teams and maintaining clear lines of communication related to school
safety among all appropriate stakeholders in the school community.
According to the National School Safety Center (1990), from a
student's perspective, school climate depends upon and is affected by
the following:
Student involvement: The degree to which students are
involved in and enjoy classes and extracurricular activities at school.
Student relationships: The level of comfort students feel
in relating to one another and the ease with which they make new
friends.
Teacher support: The amount of help and care that teachers
direct toward students.
Physical environment: The extent to which the school
building reflects the caring attitude of the school, the school
buildings are clean, well cared for, supervised, and safe.
Conflict resolution: Whether students are clear about the
rules and feel that conflicts are resolved fairly and rules are
consistently enforced.
Participation in decision-making: The extent to which
students, administrators, and teachers share in making decisions about
school improvement.
Curriculum: The extent to which students feel that what is
taught in classes meets their needs.
Counseling services: Whether students feel counselors are
accessible and able to help with personal problems, job, and career
information, and concerns about drugs, alcohol, and sex.
Recreation alternatives: Whether students are satisfied
with existing recreational activities and teachers' support of these
activities.
Personal stress: The amount of pressure students feel they
are under and the resources they have to cope with it.
Here in the Radnor Township School District, we made all attempts
to create a school climate that creates a balance of creating a safe
setting while maintaining a strong academic and social atmosphere for
our students. In Radnor, we have several programs that include but are
not limited to:
Each school has a Crisis Management Team that coordinates
the plans for responding to violent or traumatic incidents on school
grounds and various emergency drills.
The District works in conjunction with the Radnor
Education Foundation in the establishment of a Drug and Alcohol Task
Force that meets monthly to discuss drug and alcohol issues that impact
our school community. They provide various programs that address issues
related to substance abuse.
Radnor Township School District collaborates with the
local law enforcement officials to create an environment that welcomes
our local officials into schools and allows them to become part of our
school culture.
Each school has a Student Assistance Program (SAP) which
identifies those students who are at risk and implement programs that
can help meet their needs.
Various sports and extra curricular opportunities for
students to participate in.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, any school, whether
suburban or urban, small or large, racially segregated or diverse,
wealthy or poor, would benefit from an increase in additional
appropriation funds to assist their schools with safety efforts.
Additional funding would give schools the opportunity to provide an
expanded version of intervention activities that can prevent and reduce
violence in our schools. By supporting the current and proposed safe
school programs, schools will have the opportunity to maintain a safe
school setting without disrupting the educational environment that is
imperative to meet the requirements of NCLB. This support will also
provide schools with the opportunity to create a school culture that
can provide a feeling of safety while providing the endless possibility
of academic success for the students they serve.
______
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. Right in time. Good.
Ms. Abrutyn, up here.
STATEMENT OF DR. LESLYE ABRUTYN, SUPERINTENDENT, PENN-DELCO
SCHOOL DISTRICT
Dr. Abrutyn. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman
Kildee. It is an honor to be here with you, as well as with
Congressman Sestak who represents our area so effectively in
Washington.
I am Leslye Abrutyn, Superintendent of the Penn-Delco
School District. I am honored to testify today about the
current AYP accountability measures and to offer my conclusion
on whether they are too rigid to account for individual student
achievement and improvement.
I am in my 34th year as an educator and have served ten
years as superintendent of the Penn-Delco School District. My
goal as an educational leader is to find out the answer to the
question everyone asks, what really works in education? I have
some answers and the results of my school districts speak for
themselves in answering that question.
Here in Delaware County there are 15 school districts, some
of them among the wealthiest in the Commonwealth. When these
districts are compared by social economic standards, the Penn-
Delco School District ranks in the middle. Yet, our students
far outscore their predicted berth according to social economic
predictors. In some categories, instead of scoring seven out of
15 school districts, we have scored at number two or three.
Also, we are outscoring districts that spend up to twice as
much per pupil as Penn-Delco.
No Child Left Behind calls for 100 percent proficiency in
2014. I am proud to say that this year, the third grade in one
of Penn-Delco schools reached 100 percent proficiency in math.
No other school or district in our entire county had 100
percent proficiency in any other category at all.
How can our success in Penn-Delco help with the
reauthorization of No Child Left Behind? As with any successful
organization, our success starts with a vision. My vision for
Penn-Delco has been, in Penn-Delco we move every child forward
every day. This is a vision I created more than a decade ago
and still promote daily.
How does one put this vision into action? We rely upon
robust, current and accurate data on individual students. Over
the years, as technology has permitted, we have gotten better
and better at creating, compiling, analyzing and utilizing that
data. This data and its successful use have been vital in
allowing us to move every child forward every day.
Contrast my vision with the practicality of what happens at
most schools under the current assessment system. Most states
use either a status model or a criterion-referenced model to
assess students, which is not particularly helpful in
describing the achievement level of individual children or in
prescribing a plan to help improve student achievement.
This is the limitation of the so-called status model under
AYP. I hope my value to this committee today will be to
describe in real terms what actually happens under No Child
Left Behind.
As in most districts, we spend a lot of time preparing
students for and administering the state test. What do we have
when the results come back? Disaggregated data, which in my
opinion, has been very useful in motivating districts to look
much more carefully at low-performing subgroups and has been
the catalyst for much of the improvement we have seen across
the nation. However, the disaggregated data from the current
model alone is not enough to move every child forward every
day. Disaggregated data is just one of the tools we use in
Penn-Delco to assess and then guide instruction.
We add an entire additional layer of assessment over the
state assessment. That layer consists of a technology-based
system that would be correctly defined as a growth model
because it measures students periodically throughout the school
year and provides robust, current and accurate data that
describes needed areas of improvement for each student. Our
practice of using this growth model is what has made us more
successful than many other districts.
Members of the committee, I propose to you that we have
before us a strategic opportunity during this period of
reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. Why strategic? Because
in the truest definition of the term strategic, there are
threats, as well as opportunities, before us. As you know, we
are fast approaching the year 2014, the deadline for 100
percent proficiency.
In the early years of No Child Left Behind, there were
significant and incremental gains in proficiency across the
country. But the concept of a point of diminishing returns is
becoming a reality. It is becoming increasingly more
challenging to reach the lofty goal of 100 percent proficiency.
This, I propose to you, is the threat. We are set up for
failure.
What is the opportunity before us? We can change from a
status model of measuring achievement to a growth model and
thus accomplish three significant things. One, provide robust
data on individual students throughout the school year thus
allowing all children to continually improve. Two, allow for a
more realistic way to describe how districts are leaving no
child behind. And three, provide more efficiency and
effectiveness in student achievement.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts and
experiences with you this morning. I would be happy to answer
any questions that you might have.
[Statement of Dr. Abrutyn follows:]
Prepared Statement of Leslye S. Abrutyn, Ed.D., Superintendent,
Penn Delco School District
Good morning, Chairman Kildee, Ranking Member Castle, and other
members of the subcommittee. It is an honor to be here with you, as
well as with Representative Sestak, who represents our area so
effectively in Washington, D.C.
I am Leslye Abrutyn, Superintendent of the Penn Delco School
District, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. I am honored to testify
today about the current Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability
measures under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and to offer my conclusion
on whether they are too rigid to account for individual student
achievement and improvement.
I am in my 34th year as an educator, and have served 10 years as
superintendent of the Penn Delco School District. My goal as an
educational leader is, and has always been, to find out the answer to
the question parents, educators, and legislators are asking: ``What
REALLY works in education?'' I have some answers, and the results in my
school district over the past 10 years speak for themselves in
answering that question.
In Delaware County, there are 15 school districts. When these
districts are compared by socioeconomic standards, the Penn-Delco
School District ranks in the middle. Yet, our students far outscore
their predicted berth according to these aforementioned, and usually
accurate, socioeconomic predictors. In some categories instead of
scoring 7th out of 15 school districts, we have scored at number 2 or
3. We are outscoring districts that spend up to twice as much per pupil
as Penn Delco. No Child Left Behind calls for 100% of students scoring
proficient in 2014; I am proud to say that this past year there was
only one grade level, in one subject area, in one school, in one school
district, in all of Delaware County where 100% of the students scored
proficient on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). That
grade was the 3rd grade in Parkside Elementary School, one of Penn
Delco's schools.
How can our success in Penn Delco help you understand the
intricacies and the consequences of the reauthorization of No Child
Left Behind?
First, I along with most educators applaud and support the goals of
the law: to leave no child behind. We hold it as a point of personal
and professional pride to be accountable for the job we do. But, we do
not want to be, nor is it fair to be held accountable when there are
multiple factors beyond our control.
So, allow me to elaborate on how we have been successful and, on
how you can reauthorize the law in a form that could replicate our
successes for the benefit of all students in our nation.
As with any successful organization, our success starts with a
vision. My vision for Penn Delco has been, ``In Penn Delco we move
every child forward every day.'' This is a vision I created many years
ago, and talk about often. How does one put this vision into action?
The successful implementation of my vision relies upon robust, current,
and accurate data on individual students. Over the years, as technology
has permitted, we have gotten better and better at creating, compiling,
analyzing, and utilizing that data. This data and its successful use
have been vital in allowing us to move every child forward every day.
Contrast my vision with the practicality of what happens at most
schools under the current system. Most states use either a status model
or a criterion referenced model to assess students. This means that
data on students is determined once per year. That data is then used to
determine whether a school has met AYP. But, it is not particularly
helpful in describing the achievement level of individual children, or
in prescribing a plan to help improve student achievement. This is the
limitation of the so called status model.
How is this limitation addressed in Penn Delco? I hope my value to
this Committee today will be to describe in real and practical terms
what actually happens under NCLB. As a district, we spend a lot of time
preparing students for, and administering the Pennsylvania System of
School Assessment (PSSA). Contrary to some popular, but uninformed
opinions on this subject, preparing for the test is not a bad thing.
``Preparing'' means teaching students critical thinking skills,
reading, and math. What do we have when the results come back? We have
disaggregated data which in my opinion has been very useful. This
aspect of the law has motivated districts to look much more carefully
at low performing groups and has been the catalyst for much of the
improvement we have seen in our nation.
However, the disaggregated data from the current model alone is not
enough to ``move every child forward every day.'' Disaggregated data is
just one of the tools we use to assess and then guide instruction in
Penn Delco. We add an entire additional layer of assessment over the
state assessment. That layer consists of a technology-based system that
would be correctly defined as a growth model because it measures
students periodically throughout the school year, and provides robust,
current, and accurate data that describes needed areas of improvement
for each student. Our practice of using this growth model is what has
made us more successful than many other districts.
Members of the Committee, I propose to you that we have before us a
strategic opportunity during this period of reauthorization of No Child
Left Behind. Why strategic? Because in the truest definition of the
term ``strategic'' there are threats as well as opportunities before
us. As you know, we are fast approaching the year of 2014; the deadline
for 100% proficiency. In the early years of NCLB there were significant
and incremental gains in proficiency across our country. But, the
concept of a point of diminishing returns is becoming a reality. It is
becoming increasingly more challenging for schools to make those
increases to meet AYP, and to reach the lofty goal of proficiency for
every child in our nation. This, I propose to you is the threat. We are
set up for failure.
What is the opportunity before us? We can change from a status
model of measuring achievement to a growth model. This shift in thought
and assessment will accomplish three significant things:
1. A growth model will provide robust data on individual students
throughout the school year, thus allowing all children to continually
improve.
2. A growth model will allow a more realistic way to describe how
districts are ``leaving no child behind''.
3. A growth model will be more effective and efficient. You will
recall how I described that we are required to participate in the PSSA,
which is a status model assessment system, and how we supplement this
data with our own in-house growth model assessment system in Penn
Delco. If the reauthorization shifts to a growth model assessment
system, the required standardized tests will be a more efficient use of
time and resources. The data collected will be more meaningful and
effective, because it will allow curriculum to be directed by the
individualized needs of students, thereby helping students become more
successful.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts and experiences
with you this morning. I would be happy to answer any questions you may
have.
______
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. And Dr. Hershberg.
STATEMENT OF THEODORE HERSHBERG, PROFESSOR, PUBLIC POLICY AND
HISTORY, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR GREATER PHILADELPHIA AND
OPERATION PUBLIC EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Dr. Hershberg. Congressman Kildee, Congressman Sestak,
thank you for the invitation. I am honored to be able to accept
it.
The best interest of our nation will be served by including
growth models in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.
They provide a much fairer way than the status model used in
current law to measure the performance of schools that differ
greatly across the socio-economic and demographic profiles.
Second, these models produce unprecedentedly valuable
diagnostic data to help teachers improve their instruction and
to help principals deploy teachers more strategically. Third,
they add a fair and accurate empirical component to improve the
evaluation, remediation and compensation of individual
educators, both teachers and administrators. Finally, because
they provide a direct measure of teacher effectiveness, what
students learn rather than an indirect measure, such as whether
a teacher is experienced or certified, that can better identify
highly-qualified teachers. I believe when historians record the
history of school reform efforts at the turn of the 21st
century, they will identify growth models as the most important
analytic breakthrough of the era.
I would like you to go to Figure 1a because the critical
understanding here is to know what is the difference between
achievement and growth. We have all grown up with the notion of
achievement. That is how we expressed the learning results. So
at a single moment in time on a vertical scale, we can show
achievement 90, 70, 50. We could call it status. We can call it
raw score. We can call it proficiency. The point is, where do
our--on that vertical scale at one moment in time, is always
best predicted by family income. Go to Figure 1b. Growth. We
are tracing individual children, no longer cohorts. When you
measure the student's progress from September to June, that
progress is best predicted by the quality of instruction. That
is why--in fact, it is 15 to 20 times more powerful than income
or race or gender in predicting student progress. When Coleman
and Jenks did their important studies that said schools are not
responsible for the performance of kids, they were right
because they were measuring it with achievement. But they
didn't have the data sets and the technology we now have
available that link the scores of kids on every subject and
grade to the teacher or teachers who taught them. With this new
technology in place, a whole new era opens up in American
education.
Now, let me use this distinction between achievement and
growth to explain the shortcomings in AYP. So if you go to
Figure 2, you will see a little matrix with four cells.
Achievement is the vertical axis, growth is the horizontal
axis. The bottom left-hand cell are schools that have both low
achievement and low growth. They are doing a disservice to
their children. They deserve to be sanctioned under No Child
Left Behind. Go to the diagonal cell, the upper right. These
are schools that are giving their children high growth and high
achievement. The law is silent on these schools. To me this is
the Tom Friedman cell. Raising the bar for everybody in the
tense of global economy.
The unfairness of No Child Left Behind is visible in the
remaining two cells. In the upper left, our schools with high
achievement but low growth. These are typically found in
affluent communities. They come from good families, wealthy
families, they have high test scores but they are not getting
the academic progress they are entitled to. We call these
schools slide and glide schools. Many superintendents from the
affluent school communities are opposing growth because they
fear they will be shown to be underperforming. And the second
part of the unfairness of No Child Left Behind are communities
that have children with--the schools give them high growth but
low achievement. They have come to school so far behind, they
do not know their colors, their numbers and their letters. The
schools are growing them but because they are still not to
proficiency, they are sanctioned. That is terribly unfair to
those educators.
The last thing I would like to say is that we put in place
growth models where we trace individual kids and we have data
now that links the scores. We now have, not only an enormously
rich set of diagnostic data to help teachers improve their
instruction, but we have the basis for the first time at the
classroom level of evaluating individual teachers and
administrators.
And this, I submit, is the single most important
breakthrough that we will face. There is much that is
complicated. You got to pick the right growth models. There are
a series of technical issues we don't have time to get into.
But I urge you, you will end up with a vastly more fair system
if we shift to growth models.
[Statement of Dr. Hershberg follows:]
Prepared Statement of Theodore Hershberg, Professor, Public Policy and
History Director, Center for Greater Philadelphia, and Operation Public
Education, University of Pennsylvania
the importance of including growth models in nclb
Introduction
The best interests of the nation will be served by including growth
models in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. They provide a
much fairer way than the status (AYP) model used in NCLB to measure the
performance of schools that differ greatly in their socioeconomic and
demographic profiles. These models produce unprecedentedly valuable
diagnostic data to help teachers improve their instruction and to help
principals deploy teachers more strategically. They add a fair and
accurate empirical component to improve the evaluation, remediation and
compensation of educators, both teachers and administrators. Finally,
because they provide a direct measure of teacher effectiveness--what
students learn rather than an indirect measure such as whether a
teacher is experienced or certified--they can better identify highly
qualified teachers. I believe historians of school reform at the turn
of the 21st century will identify growth models as the most important
analytic breakthrough of the era.
1. The Difference Between Achievement and Growth
Achievement describes the levels attained by students in their end-
of-year tests. Whether referred to as proficiency, status, absolute or
raw scores, these points on a vertical scale at a single point in time
are best predicted by family background (income and values about
education) (see Figure 1a).
Growth, in contrast, describes the progress made by each student
over the course of the school year and is best predicted by the quality
of instruction (see Figure 1b). Good instruction is 15-20 times more
powerful than family background and income, race, gender, and other
explanatory variables in predicting student progress or growth.
When James Coleman (1966) and Christopher Jenks (1972) issued their
famous studies concluding that the level of academic achievement is
determined largely by factors beyond a school's control, they did not
have the computer technology to permit the tracing of individual
students over time nor the data sets to record their test scores in
every subject and link this data to the teacher(s) who taught them
With this new technology and growth models, we now have a fair and
accurate way to include student-learning results in educator
evaluation, remediation and compensation (discussed separately below).
2. Using Achievement and Growth to Understand Shortcomings in No Child
Left Behind
At the heart of this problem is that AYP focuses on achievement to
the exclusion of growth. The four cells in Figure 2 help us identify
and understand AYP's deficiencies. Proficiency (achievement), high and
low, is tracked on the vertical axis, while growth, high and low, is
tracked on the horizontal axis.
In the bottom left cell are schools that are clearly not serving
the needs of their students--providing them with low proficiency and
low growth--and thus deserve to be sanctioned.
Schools in the top right cell are performing wonderfully. They are
doing what we want all schools to do: provide their students with both
high proficiency and high growth. I think of this cell as responding to
the challenges Tom Friedman identified in The World is Flat. Yet NCLB
does nothing to encourage schools to reach these goals other than the
absence of sanctions.
Schools in the top left cell are meeting their AYP goals--that is,
they have high achievement--but low growth. Most often found in
affluent communities where high-test scores go hand-in-hand with family
income, these schools are often called ``slide and glide'' because they
appear to be resting on the laurels of their students. It is important
to understand that NCLB does nothing to hold these schools accountable
for providing their students with the annual growth to which they are
entitled. In a global economy characterized by fierce competition for
demanding jobs that pay high salaries and benefits, this is a highly
significant shortcoming.
Schools in the bottom right cell create high growth, but low
achievement. They have succeeded in academically ``stretching'' or
``growing'' their students, but given how far behind these students
were when they entered school, they have not yet been able to raise
them to proficiency. These schools, while not bringing their students
to AYP-required levels, are clearly helping students improve their
academic performance, yet still face sanctions under current law.
NCLB reauthorization should remedy the shortcomings I have
addressed here by embracing the philosophy of growth: all children,
regardless of whether they are low, average, or high achieving, deserve
a year's worth of growth in a year. Schools should be rewarded or
sanctioned based on this principle.
3. Growth Models Provide Invaluable Diagnostic Information and Enable
New Approaches to Educator Evaluation, Remediation and
Compensation
In order to track student growth, states must have data systems
that include a unique identifier for each student and each teacher and
to record for every student the test scores in each grade and subject
and the teacher(s) who taught them. NCLB reauthorization should mandate
or provide incentives for states to develop such systems.
When collected at the classroom level, the data have uniquely
powerful diagnostic value that reveal the focus of a teacher's
instruction (on previously low-, average-or high-achieving students)
and the impact of their instruction (highly effective, effective or
ineffective). When students have two or three consecutive teachers from
the last of these categories, they never reach the absolute level of
accomplishment they would have achieved had they had teachers from the
top two categories. When principals are provided with these diagnostic
data, they can deploy their teachers so that students are never exposed
sequentially to ineffective teachers.
Growth models can also make an important empirical contribution to
teacher evaluation, remediation and compensation. As recent reports
from RAND, the National Association of State Boards of Education and
the Educational Testing Services (ETS) make clear, growth models can be
used to identify the highest and lowest performers, but should never be
used as the sole or principal criterion of teacher effectiveness. The
data yielded by growth models should be used as part of a balanced
system (inputs, or observation, and outputs, or student learning
results), with multiple measures such as those contained in the
sophisticated teaching frameworks developed by Charlotte Danielson
covering planning and preparation, classroom environment, instruction
and professional responsibilities, as well as appropriate safeguards,
such as review panels composed of teachers and administrators, to
ensure fair treatment for individual educators.
The Congress should also add to the definition of a ``highly
qualified teacher'' those identified as effective by growth models--
that is, the lack of credentials notwithstanding, the fact that the
students in their classrooms are learning at appropriate levels should
be sufficient to earn the ``highly qualified'' designation.
4. Fixing AYP Without Abandoning Proficiency Through ``Growth to
Standards''
The essence of the ``Growth-to-Standards'' approach is to identify
schools that are putting their students on growth trajectories to reach
proficiency in the future and to credit these schools for that
achievement.
Schools could do this by using a growth model that converts the
static achievement scores of their students to dynamic growth scores.
If students currently performing below their AYP targets are on track
to reach proficiency by the time they graduate, they would be counted
among those meeting their AYP target in the current year. If a school
were to place enough of these students on growth-to-standards
trajectories, it could meet its AYP goal for the year. Using a growth-
to-standards approach, in other words, would reduce the proportion of
schools failing AYP, but without abandoning the commitment to
proficiency.
This approach may be criticized for the same reason that the
existing definition of AYP is criticized: it creates what many call a
``perverse incentive'' for educators to focus like a laser beam on one
group of students to the exclusion of all others: those close to but
below proficiency. Schools choose to ignore students far below
proficiency as well as those whose scores already exceed proficiency,
the argument goes, because the prime directive in NCLB is for schools
to hit their annual AYP targets.
While this is clearly the logic of the incentive, we do not yet
know if this is supported in fact. The growth-to-standards approach
described above, like AYP, might simply illuminate the pattern--the
gains made by those who start just below proficiency are coming at the
expense of those who start the year above it--rather than exacerbate
it.
We know this pattern long pre-dates NCLB and has been widespread in
poor communities, whether in inner-cities or Appalachia. It explains,
for example, the observation made by elementary school teachers that
the proportion of precocious students in kindergarten and first grade
is sharply reduced by fifth and sixth grades. Faced with so many low
performing children, the explanation goes, teachers focus on the bottom
of the student distribution so that previous low-achievers get high
growth while previous high-achievers get low growth. Sustaining this
focus in the early years explains why so few high achieving, low-income
children are found in middle school.
When Dr.William Sanders applied his growth-to-standards approach to
all Tennessee schools in the 2002-03 school year, he learned that 13
percent more schools would meet their federal goals if this alternative
means of calculating AYP were accepted by the U.S. Department of
Education. But when Sanders looked more closely at its effects--he
examined nine Memphis schools all of whose students were minority and
low-income (on free and reduced price lunch)--he discovered some
troubling results. While some schools met their AYP through the
growthto-standards alternative without denying any of their students
adequate yearly growth, others did so at the expense of students who
had achieved at higher levels in the past. Seeing no sense in a trade-
off that benefits one group of poor minority kids at the expense of
another, Sanders proposed a ``net'' approach: schools would receive
credit for students placed on a growth-tostandards trajectory and
debits for formerly higher achieving students denied adequate growth in
the process.
The U.S. Department of Education has given approval to Tennessee to
use this approach in determining if schools meet their AYP goals. NCLB
should provide incentives to expand the use of this model in other
states.
6. A Cautionary Note: Not All Growth Models Are Equal
This is not the place to discuss the complex statistical issues
embedded in the use of different kinds of growth models, such as the
``projection'' model used in growth-to-standards or the
``expectations'' model used to evaluate the effectiveness of individual
teachers. Some models that are described as ``simple and transparent''
are actually statistically flawed and will yield specious and erratic
results. Suffice it to say that much attention must be paid to the
details in order for growth models to be used fairly and effectively.
attachments
Figure 1a: Achievement Figure 1b: Growth Figure 2: Identifying
AYP's Shortcomings
Appendix: Theodore Hershberg, ``Value-Added Assessment and Systemic
Reform: A Response to the Challenge of Human Capital Development,'' Phi
Delta Kappan (December, 2005). Paper prepared for the Aspen Institute's
Congressional Institute, The Challenge of Education Reform: Standards,
Accountability, Resources and Policy (Cancun, Mexico: Feb. 22-27,
2005).
______
Chairman Kildee. I think at this point it is time for the
students to change classes, so we will take a two-minute break
while they do that. Thank you, Dr. Hershberg. Thank you very
much. Thank you for the chart, it is very interesting.
Now, I want to thank the students, by the way, for your
presence and for your great attention you have given to the
hearing.
Mr. Howell.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH HOWELL, PRINCIPAL,
NORRISTOWN AREA HIGH SCHOOL
Mr. Howell. Thank you. Good morning.
Norristown Area High School serves approximately 1,800
students who come to us from the borough of Norristown, the
Montgomery County seat, and the townships of East and West
Norriton.
According to a formula developed by the Philadelphia
Inquirer Newspaper for its annual report card on the schools,
Norristown is the most diverse public high school in the
region. Currently we are in Corrective Action I after failing
to meet AYP in one or more of the 12 reporting categories
assigned to us for four years in a row.
We are subject to the same penalties and interventions
assigned to all schools with the same designation. We also
received $9,500 in state and federal funds for the current
school year because we are in Corrective Action.
This morning I respectfully suggest to you that there are
two ways in which the implementation of No Child Left Behind
could be of greater benefit to me and of much greater
consequence to my constituents, students, parents and the
community.
First, include a value-added reporting system. Value-added
analysis is a statistical method used to measure the influence
of a district and school on the academic progress rates of
individual students and groups of students from year-to-year.
PVAAS, Pennsylvania's value-added system, offers an objective
and more precise way to measure student, cohort and subgroup
progress. It also has a predictive component that is useful in
helping to determine efficient employment of support resources.
While I know how my students performed against the
arbitrary 2005 to 2007 No Child Left Behind AYP targets, I do
not know reliably how they should have performed.
For example, I know that 60 percent of my total 11th grade
population was advanced or proficient on the 2006 PSSA in
reading. Is that a remarkable achievement on my part about what
it should have been or did attending Norristown High do some
students harm? Students who would have scored higher had they
gone to school somewhere else. Without this additional data,
the practice of comparing schools under the current system is
invalid in my estimation unless all schools have the exact same
student population. No Child Left Behind contains a school
choice component based on the comparisons of schools created by
the AYP designations. The presumption is that a student who
scores at the basic level in a Corrective Action school would
benefit from transferring to a school that has met AYP because
it is a better school. If all of my students transferred to a
school that has met AYP and all that school's students
transferred to Norristown High, would the outcomes be the same?
Do the schools we are compared to enjoy the diversity that we
do and do their scores include significant subgroups as well?
A value-added system ends that discussion and perhaps
results in a more accurate account of student and school
performance. Second, I encourage the Committee to consider
adding a policy of differentiated reporting, consequences and
interventions, particularly if a value-added system is not
included in the new measure.
In the school year 2005-2006, Norristown High met three of
the four targets, reading, graduation rate and participation
rate. While we met the overall math goal, we did not meet the
math target for our four subgroups. Since 2004-2005, we have
aggressively met the performance gap challenge through a
variety of reform efforts. Through our partnership with the
Panasonic Foundation, we have attained the services of the
Institute for Research and Reform in Education and adopted
their high school reform program, First Things First.
We have received a Pennsylvania Project 720 grant and are
in the second year of implementation. We have doubled the
amount of time for English and math for our freshmen and
sophomores and created our own quarterly testing in those two
subjects. We have dramatically increased student access to
technology-supported instruction through a Pennsylvania
Classrooms for the Future grant and added an instructional
enhancement team, in large part, thanks to our federal Small
Learning Communities grant. We have eliminated tracking and
study halls and created more sheltered learning opportunities
for our ESL population and will be instituting a rigorous
internship program in the fall. We have substantially improved
the quality and quantity of our professional development,
supervision and evaluation.
Unfortunately, our Corrective Act I status overshadows our
efforts. I propose that a school be able to request an amended
No Child Left Behind status based on verifiable efforts to
reform. This would allow for an accurate accounting of student
performance while acknowledging that a school has employed a
set of best practices in order to improve. Even a designation
such Corrective Action I, school is actively engaged in an
approved reform effort, would be a source of encouragement for
students and teachers engaged in such an effort. In addition,
consequences and interventions must be differentiated to
account for the percentage of students tested who fall into one
or more significant subgroups.
I would also suggest that $9,500 is not going to move any
school from Corrective Action to a more positive place.
I would like to thank Congressman Kildee and Congressman
Sestak for the opportunity to appear this morning and for
providing our region with an opportunity to weigh in on these
deliberations. Thank you.
[Statement of Mr. Howell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Joe Howell, Principal,
Norristown Area High School
Mr. Chairman and members of the House Subcommittee on Early
Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education, good morning.
My name is Joe Howell and I am the principal of Norristown Area
High School in nearby Norristown, PA. Our school serves approximately
1800 students who come to us from the borough of Norristown and the
townships of East and West Norriton. According to a formula developed
by the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper for its annual Report Card on
the Schools, Norristown is the most diverse public high school in the
region: 47% African American, 38% white, 12% Hispanic, 62% free and
reduced lunch. I have been a principal in the district since 1978 and
have been at the high school since April, 2004.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this morning.
In its current form of implementation, all 11th grade students at
Norristown High spend three days in March taking the Pennsylvania
System of School Assessment (PSSA) exams. During the summer we receive
individual and school reports that provide us with sufficient data to
identify individual student needs as well as the need for curriculum
and program revisions. This data is also used to assign one of four
categories of performance to our individual students: Below Basic,
Basic, Proficient and Advanced in both reading and math. Student
performance is further disaggregated into our significant sub-groups:
Black, Hispanic, IEP and Economically Disadvantaged.
In that same time frame, the reading and math data are combined
with graduation rate and test participation information and a final
score is determined for our school: we either met AYP in all twelve
categories or we didn't.
In our case, we have not and find ourselves in Corrective Action I
after failing to do so four years in a row and subject to the same
penalties and interventions assigned to all schools with the same
designation. We also received $9,500 in state and federal funds for the
current school year because we are in Corrective Action.
This morning I respectfully suggest to you that there are two ways
in which the implementation of NCLB could be of greater benefit to me,
and of much greater consequence, to my constituents: students, parents
and community.
First, include a value added reporting system. Value-added analysis
is a statistical method used to measure the influence of a district and
school on the academic progress rates of individual students and groups
of students from year-to-year. PVAAS, Pennsylvania's value added
system, is a reliable measure of growth/ progress and is intended to
serve as a complement to existing achievement measures to use for local
decision-making as seen appropriate by the school district. Value-added
analysis offers an objective and more precise way to measure student,
cohort, and subgroup progress as the value schools and districts add to
students' educational experiences. It also has a predictive component
that is useful in helping to determine efficient deployment of support
resources.
While I know how my students and school performed against the
arbitrary 2005-2007 NCLB/AYP targets, I don't know reliably how they
should have performed based on their previous performance. For example,
I know that 60% of my total 11th grade population was advanced or
proficient on the 2006 PSSA in reading. Was that a remarkable
achievement on my part, about what it should have been given the
education the students received for the three years since their last
PSSA, or did attending Norristown High do some students harm, students
who would have scored higher had they gone to school somewhere else?
Without this additional data, the practice of comparing schools under
the current system is invalid in my estimation unless all schools have
the exact same student population. If a school that has met or exceeded
the AYP targets is underachieving and a school in Corrective Action is
shown to have ``added value'', is the reporting system meeting the
goals established by the law?
NCLB contains a school choice component based on the comparisons of
schools created by the AYP designations. The presumption is that a
student who scores at the basic level in a Corrective Action school
would benefit from a transfer to a school that has met AYP, because it
is a better school. If all of my students transferred to a school that
has met AYP and all of the receiving school's students transferred to
Norristown High, would the outcomes be the same? Do the schools we are
compared to enjoy the diversity that we do and do their scores include
significant sub-groups as well? A value added system ends the
discussion and, perhaps, results in a more accurate account of student
and school performance. Including a value added system in the
reauthorization of NCLB may be more acceptable nationally if school
districts had the option of designating in advance whether to be rated
on a value added or traditional system.
Second, I encourage the committee to consider adding a policy of
differentiated reporting, consequences and interventions, particularly
if a value added system is not included in the new measure.
For school year 2005-2006, Norristown High met three of the four
targets: reading, graduation rate and participation rate. While we met
the overall math goal, we did not meet the math target for our four
sub-groups.
Since the 2004-2005 school year we have aggressively met the
performance gap challenge through a variety of reform efforts. Through
our partnership with the Panasonic Foundation we have attained the
services of IRRE (Institute for Research and Reform in Education) and
have adopted their high school reform program, First Things First
(small learning communities, family advocacy, curriculum and
instruction professional development). We have received a Pennsylvania
Project 720 grant and are in our second year of implementation (small
learning communities, family advocacy, curriculum and instruction
revision and dual enrollment). We have doubled the amount of time for
English and math for our freshmen and sophomores and created our own
quarterly testing in those two subjects. We have dramatically increased
student access to technology supported instruction through a
Pennsylvania Classrooms for the Future grant and added an instructional
enhancement team (four instructional coaches) in large part thanks to
our federal Small Learning Communities grant. We have eliminated
tracking and study halls and have created more sheltered learning
opportunities for our ESL population and will be instituting a rigorous
internship program in the fall. We have substantially improved the
quality and quantity of our professional development, supervision and
evaluation.
Unfortunately, our Corrective Action I status overshadows our
efforts. I propose that a school be able to request an amended NCLB
status based on verifiable efforts to reform. This would allow for an
accurate accounting of student performance while acknowledging that a
school has employed a set of best practices in order to improve. Even a
designation such as ``Corrective Action I--school is actively engaged
in an approved reform effort'' would be a source of encouragement for
students and teachers engaged in such an effort. In addition,
consequences and interventions must be differentiated to account for
the percentage of students tested who fall into one or more significant
sub-group.
I would also suggest that $9500 is not going to move any school
from Corrective Action to a more positive place.
Finally, it has been my experience that the provisions of NCLB have
had little or no impact on school safety and discipline in my school.
While providing our diverse population with a safe and encouraging
school climate remains a daily priority, the majority of the NCLB
provisions have already been in place in our district for many years.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before the committee
this morning.
______
Chairman Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Howell. Mr. Kozol.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN KOZOL, CHAIRMAN, SOCIAL STUDIES
DEPARTMENT, UPPER MERION HIGH SCHOOL
Mr. Kozol. Thank you. Good morning.
As Congressman Sestak indicated, I am a social studies
teacher and department chairman at Upper Merion Area High
School, where I, myself, graduated some years ago.
Before I entered teaching, I was a practicing attorney for
some five years. I became a teacher because I wanted to have a
direct impact on tomorrow's youth, helping them to compete in
and even lead the global economy of the future. Besides my
Undergraduate Degree in American Studies, I completed an
Undergraduate major in African American Studies and I care
deeply about children of color who have been all too frequently
left behind. I am also proud to say that I am the father of a
first grader, who attends Upper Merion Schools, that I teach
advance placement courses and that I have instructed a variety
of courses at three universities. Finally, I am, as the
congressman stated, the president of the Upper Merion Area
Education Association and a member of the board of directors
for the Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies. I give you
this background not to glorify myself. I do so to show that I
have been part of what some commentators refer to as the real
world, the world outside of schools.
Let me state at the outset, I believe that NCLB was enacted
with a core of admirable intentions. Like its supporters, I
believe that as a country, we must ensure that all of our
children receive a quality education. My concern is not with
the existence of NCLB but rather with some of its side effects
if you will. Because of these side effects, this well-
intentioned legislation has become what Stanford Education
Professor Linda Darling-Hammond has accurately labeled a law
that wastes scarce resources on a complicated test score game
that appears to be narrowing the curriculum and uprooting
successful programs.
Let me give you some examples of this. I work very closely
with English and math teachers in my building. This year,
approximately one month before the state standardized tests
were to be administered, one of these colleagues informed me
that he would have to deviate from both the district's regular
curriculum, as well as his own instructional methods, in order
to prepare our students for the upcoming tests. In fact,
curriculum is being rewritten all over Pennsylvania to reflect
what is being tested by PSSA and even to coach students on the
prompts they will face. Districts have even lowered themselves
to giving students free breakfast, tee shirts and class trips
in a disturbing effort to bribe them to take the tests
seriously, since the results do not count toward their grades
or graduation.
I have also become aware of a new and troubling attitude
toward social studies, history and any other subject that is
not tested. We have entered a dangerous era of significant de-
emphasis with respect to those subject areas that do not have a
test. While I sincerely believe this was not the original
intent of NCLB, it is, in fact, exactly what is happening all
over Pennsylvania.
NCLB also concerns me greatly as a parent. My first grader
truly enjoys and excels at school but I worry about whether
this can continue with NCLB as it is currently written. Her
classwork and homework are clear indicators that she is already
being prepared to take the PSSA test in third grade, to the
exclusion of numerous topics and skills I believe are critical
to her intellectual and social development. This truly takes
teaching to the test to the extreme but I do not in any way
blame the teachers or administration of her school. Rather, I
recognize that it is the inevitable and sad outcome of high-
stakes and standardized testing.
Let me comment briefly about such testing and the
evaluation of schools and school staff. I am neither a
researcher nor a statistician but PSEA has researched the
subject of growth, value-added models and has reached two
significant conclusions. First, while they can serve as a
better indicator of student academic growth, they cannot
necessarily isolate the impact of teachers on student
performance. Secondly, they can serve as signals but they
cannot substitute for an in-depth, on-site evaluation by
educational experts if the goal really is to meaningfully
evaluate the performance and effectiveness of teachers.
To me the bottom line is this. As an AP teacher, I
acknowledge that standardized tests definitely have their place
in education. But I must request that you revise NCLB before
high-stakes testing takes over our schools. Instead, let us
allow schools to be places where original thought and
creativity flourish. Places that produce enthusiastic children
ready to take on the world.
As a final note, I ask you to consider the effect of high-
stakes testing on student and teacher morale. The current
system makes it virtually certain that all public schools,
including high-quality districts like mine, will inevitably
fail AYP and become failing institutions. The consequences in
the current law are virtually all punitive rather than
supportive. I can tell you from first-hand observation that
this can turn a positive, productive faculty, that is, in fact,
succeeding, into a fearful and hopeless one overnight.
Therefore, as you consider its reauthorization, please
revise NCLB to make it less punitive and more supportive.
Please focus those scarce resources we now have on and dedicate
new resources to the districts that need them most.
And finally, please help me and my colleagues reach our
ultimate professional goal, to teach our children the best way
we know how.
Thank you.
[Statement of Mr. Kozol follows:]
Prepared Statement of Stephen Kozol, Social Studies Teacher and
Department Chairman, Upper Merion Area High School
Good morning. My name is Stephen Kozol, and I'm proud to say I am a
social studies teacher and department chairman at Upper Merion Area
High School. I myself attended Upper Merion from Kindergarten through
12th grade, a school district generally recognized as one of the best
in our region. In fact, many Upper Merion teachers also attended our
schools, and that is a tribute to their effectiveness, as well as to
the loyalty of parents, students, and the surrounding community.
After graduating from Upper Merion Area High School, I majored in
American Studies at Brandeis University and received a law degree from
George Washington University. Before I entered teaching, I worked for
the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse, and for one of Philadelphia's
most prestigious law firms, Drinker, Biddle and Reath.
I decided to become a teacher because I wanted to have a direct
impact on the youth of tomorrow. I wanted to help them compete in the
global economy we know they will lead. Since I also completed an
undergraduate major in African-American Studies, I also care deeply
about children of color, who have been all too frequently left behind.
I am also proud to say that I am the father of a first-grader who
attends Upper Merion's schools, that I teach Advanced Placement courses
at Upper Merion, and that I have instructed a variety of courses as an
adjunct at three universities. Finally I should note that I am the
president of the Upper Merion Area Education Association and a member
of the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Council for the Social
Studies.
I give you this background not to glorify myself; I do so to show
that I have been part of what some commentators refer to as ``the real
world:'' the world outside of schools. I do so also to emphasize that I
take my continuing professional development seriously, and so do my
teaching colleagues, and that, together, we work as hard and do as much
for our country as our counterparts in the private sector. Yet my
colleagues and I are frequently denigrated as wanting to avoid
accountability. That is a complete falsehood. In fact, teachers pride
themselves on their accountability and responsibility every day. The
belief that teachers do not want to be held accountable has been
perpetrated in some sectors of the media as fact, and that
misinformation has unfortunately been intensified by the law labeled No
Child Left Behind.
Let me state at the outset my belief that NCLB was enacted with a
core of admirable intentions. Like its sponsors and supporters, I
believe that, as a country, we must ensure that all of our children
receive a quality education. My concern is not necessarily with the
existence of NCLB, but rather with some of its ``side effects,'' if you
will. Because of these side effects, this well-intentioned legislation
has become what Stanford Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond has
accurately labeled ``a law that wastes scarce resources on a
complicated test score game that appears to be narrowing the curriculum
(and) uprooting successful programs.''
Let me give you some examples of this. I work very closely with the
English and Math teachers in my building. This year approximately one
month before the state standardized tests were to be administered, one
of these colleagues informed me that he would have to deviate from both
our school board-approved curriculum, which is based on the latest
education research, and his customary form of instruction, solely for
the purpose of preparing our students to take the upcoming PSSA tests.
In fact, curriculum is being re-written all over Pennsylvania to
reflect what is being tested by PSSA, and even to coach students on the
prompts that students see on the tests. Districts have even lowered
themselves to giving students free breakfasts, T-shirts, and class
trips, in a disturbing effort to bribe them to take the tests
seriously, since the results do not count toward their course grades or
even graduation.
I myself am increasingly aware of a new and troubling attitude
toward social studies, history and any other subject that is not
tested. We are quickly entering an era of significant de-emphasis with
respect to those subject areas that do not have a test. While I
sincerely believe this was in no way the intent of NCLB, it is, in
fact, exactly what is happening. What is more, it is not just happening
in my district; I have spoken with numerous colleagues across
Pennsylvania, and they all recount the same experiences.
This law also concerns me greatly as a parent. My first-grader
truly enjoys and benefits from school, but I worry about whether this
can continue with NCLB as it is currently written. Her classwork and
homework make it clear to me that she is already being prepared to take
the PSSA test in third-grade, to the exclusion of numerous topics and
lessons I believe are critical to the intellectual and social
development of a young child. This truly takes ``teaching to the test''
to the extreme, but I do not in any way blame the teachers or
administration of her school. Rather I recognize that it is the
inevitable and sad outcome of high-stakes standardized testing--whether
it is federally or state-mandated.
The aspect of NCLB that most urgently needs revision is another
cited by Darling-Hammond. She says, it ``has misdefined the problem. It
assumes that what schools need is more carrots and sticks rather than
fundamental changes.'' The law is based on the fallacious, and,
frankly, insulting, notion that educators have been almost willfully
doing bad things to children, and that the federal government can fix
that alleged problem. Both assumptions are wrong.
As I stated at the outset, teachers want to prepare young people as
best they can for our world. They want students to have the best
curriculum we can provide, not tests that often have little to do with
today's realities. I have taught students who failed my course but
received the top possible score on an AP test. Conversely, I have
taught students who succeeded in my course but were disappointed in
their AP score. The point is, tests are admittedly one valid measure of
the academic success of both students and teachers, but they are only
one measure. Good classrooms use many varied means to assess the
progress and mastery of our students, and federal and state government
should do the same with respect to our schools. After all, while
standardized tests have their place in education, one might ask: how
many students will face standardized tests when they go out in the
world after school? Or rather, will they face real-life situations
where they need to think critically and act and react rationally and
responsibly?
A brief word about testing and evaluation of schools and school
staff: I am neither a researcher nor a statistician. But PSEA has
researched the subject of growth/value-added models and has reached
these two conclusions:
Growth/value-added models can serve as a better indicator
of student academic growth. However, many of the foremost experts in
educational measurement have written that growth/value-added models
cannot isolate the impact of teachers on student performance.
Growth/value-added models can serve as signals, but they
cannot substitute for an in-depth, onsite evaluation by educational
experts if the goal is to meaningfully evaluate the performance and
effectiveness of teachers.
My bottom line is this: I urge you to revise NCLB before tests take
over our schools. We do not want to turn out great test takers who will
be helpless when they have to think through complex problems and
situations. Instead we should allow schools to be places where original
thought and creativity flourish, places that produce enthusiastic
children ready to take on the world.
As a final note, I ask you also to consider the effect of this kind
of testing on student and teacher morale. The system, as currently
designed, makes it virtually certain that all public schools, including
high quality districts like Upper Merion, will inevitably fail ``AYP''
and thus be described as a ``failing institutions.'' The consequences
in the current law are virtually all punitive rather than supportive. I
can tell you from first-hand observation that this can turn a positive,
productive faculty that is in fact succeeding into a fearful and
hopeless one overnight.
Schools do not need punishment; we need support. We need more
relevant professional development for teachers, and solid mentoring
programs for new and young teachers. We, as a nation, need to rely less
on property taxes to fund our schools, because they discriminate
against poor communities and those on fixed incomes.
As you consider its reauthorization, please revise NCLB in a couple
of critical ways. Make it less punitive and more supportive. Focus
those scarce resources--and come up with new resources--on the
districts that need the most help.
Finally, let me and my colleagues do what we want so much to do--
teach our children the best way we know how.
Thank you.
______
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much.
We now will begin the questioning of the witness. I yield
myself about five minutes for that purpose.
Professor Hershberg, you mentioned the need for states to
have quality data systems in place in order to implement growth
models. Do you know how many states currently have such a
system and what would the cost of implementing them be?
Dr. Hershberg. I believe 15 states have committed to this.
I am not sure if all 15 have everything in place and I do not
have a dollar amount that you could attach. But, again, if you
think of the iron rail that--you know, you would have one rail
which is the unique identifier for every student, so you are
really tracing individual children. And two, you need an
individual ID number for a teacher and then you need to link
these two files so that the teachers who teach the kids each
subject and the grades are on the same record.
Chairman Kildee. If we had the--just asking because one of
my criticisms of No Child Left Behind is the underfunding. If
we didn't have a $71 billion shortchanging, which is taking
place, do you think we could develop that? Could that go a long
ways in developing--helping these states develop growth models?
Dr. Hershberg. I think unquestionably more money would
facilitate the development of the data systems. But it has not
broken the bank in the 15 states that are committed already. I
do not believe the expense there is that substantial. I believe
the resistance is more of a political nature than it is a
funding nature.
Chairman Kildee. And we do that for special education
children, the IEP follows the child wherever they may go, so
there is already a historical pattern for having the growth
models follow the child.
Dr. Hershberg. Absolutely right. Special ed has had this
conceptually and operationally in place for a very long time.
The very name, No Child Left Behind, and we are not tracing
kids, we are doing cohorts. That is why this changes, so it is
so indispensably important.
Chairman Kildee. The one thing that has always bothered me
is that we test the third grade in school and then the
following year we test the third grade and find they may not be
reaching AYP but it is different kids.
Dr. Hershberg. Absolutely. It makes no sense at all. We now
can do what we could not do before. We have the technology. We
know how to link these files. We know how to analyze the data.
Chairman Kildee. Mr. Kozol, you mentioned that tests are
one valid measure but only one of students' and teachers'
success. What are some other measures that we might include in
No Child Left Behind as measures of success?
Mr. Kozol. I am glad you asked that, Congressman, because
as a teacher, I would not want to rely solely on a test to
evaluate my students. As you know, we look at their work at
home and their classwork and, perhaps, their writings, their
research, their analysis of books. It seems to me that good
assessment is part of good teaching and good assessment is also
part of good evaluation of our schools. I do and I hope I was
clear in my testimony that I think that tests should be part of
it, standardized tests certainly can be. But we might also use,
for example, portfolios and that is not just limited to written
portfolios. Also art work and music, presentations, research
projects, perhaps interviews of both students and teachers. So
you have probably five or six right there that can be used. As
I said, not necessarily excluding tests entirely.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you. Dr. Abrutyn, can you elaborate
on what a growth model would look like in a typical classroom?
Dr. Abrutyn. Yes, I would. I would be happy to.
There is a little bit of terminology that is associated
with picturing what this is all about and it is terminology
that really is central to the whole issue.
The status model that we use today is most closely
associated with what we call summative assessment, which means
that students are tested at the end of the year, so we have a
summation of what they have learned for the year and we only
test them at the end.
In contrast to that, the growth model is associated with
what we call in education formative assessment, which means
that we are testing students throughout the school year. And so
teachers start off in a regular classroom, the teacher starts
off at the beginning of the year getting a baseline picture on
every child as to where that child is. And then there is the
opportunity to test throughout the school year and test against
benchmarks to see how that child is growing. And the teacher in
the classroom has an idea of strengths and weaknesses and has
the ability to adapt instruction throughout the school year. So
that is what we call formative assessment. And in a classroom
that uses that kind of instruction, there is a much greater
likelihood that every child is going to be able to succeed. We
are not waiting until the end of the year to find out that the
child made it or did not make it. So that is what we are hoping
to do with the growth model.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you. Thank you very much for a very
clear answer. I now yield to my colleague, Admiral Sestak for
his five minutes.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kildee. And I will come back for another round as
I am sure he will too.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you.
May I follow up on that question? Do you also believe or
not believe that it is not just throughout the school year but
over the school years? Do you track the individual throughout
the school years?
Dr. Abrutyn. Thank you for asking that question.
Absolutely. This was referred to earlier. The growth model is a
model that has a lot of promise because we have the technology
today to be able to follow students from the time they enter
school throughout all of their educational years. And we can
track them against a standard--there is a way to do this with
standard numbers so that we see growth over time.
Mr. Sestak. Do you presently do that?
Dr. Abrutyn. We do in Penn-Delco. We use a technology-based
system that is out there and it tracks the students using what
is called a RIT score and this is an absolute number that grows
with the child over the years.
Mr. Sestak. You make a great statement in your testimony
about test preparation and you are talking about a series of
tests here. Would you speak to that issue and those that say
tests take away from valuable teaching time.
Dr. Abrutyn. What I was alluding to in my testimony is the
fact that we do prepare students for the test and, you know, we
are speaking here today in practical terms about what actually
happens in school districts. And that in and of itself, as I
said in my testimony, is not necessarily a bad thing. The test
is about reading and math and writing, in Pennsylvania anyway,
and those are things that we want kids to do. So when I say
that we are preparing students, we are for the standards that
are tested. But it is--the data that we get through the state
test only gives us so much information and my suggestion is
that we shift to a growth model, move away from the state test
and go to a growth model where we are looking at individual
students throughout their school career.
The law is called No Child Left Behind, not no school left
behind. When you look at the legislation or the way the tests
are done today, we are getting information on a school as a
whole, we are getting disaggregated data on groups of students
and subgroups but we are not getting information from the state
test on individual students.
So what we are saying today is we have the opportunity to
look at individual growth and the type of technology that we
use in our school district does track the students individually
and frequently and gives the kids the opportunity and the
teachers the opportunity to teach.
Mr. Sestak. And not to keep coming to you but if I could
then--if you would answer this question, Dr. Hershberg, also
but first, if you don't mind, superintendent is, the comment
was made at the first education summit we had by a teacher that
said that the present way we do testing, standardized testing,
is that it appears to force the attention to be not on those
who are highly proficient or those that are likely to fail but
on that middle element that, just with a lot of focus and
attention, you can get them over the cusp of passing. Is there
something to that and is this part of the issue?
Dr. Abrutyn. Absolutely. In my testimony, I referred to my
vision for our school district, which is to move every child
forward every day. So the idea is whether a child is at the
highest level relatively speaking or the lowest level or in the
middle, we want every child to achieve and to move forward.
So the idea is that with the technology and the growth
model, every child, when he or she walks in at the beginning of
the year or the third month of school or the fifth month of
school, we know where that child is and we are continually
moving them forward.
Mr. Sestak. Mr. Hershberg.
Dr. Hershberg. Yes. The unintended consequence of No Child
Left Behind is to create an incentive. As you just said
correctly, to focus on those students who are as close to
proficiency as possible, that if we get them over that hump
will make AYP. So like a laser beam, we focus on those kids.
Contrast that with the core philosophy of the growth model
which says every child, regardless of whether they start the
year below grade, on grade, above grade, is entitled at least
to a year's worth of growth at a year.
Mr. Sestak. If I might, Mr. Kozol, would you comment upon
that with regard to the last series of questions with regard to
some of the items that you had raised in your testimony?
Mr. Kozol. Specifically in terms of test preparation, is
that what you mean?
Mr. Sestak. Overall the value attendant to switching from
standardized testing to growth that would still have testing
but you are able now to focus on the individual child and
hopefully across the board and they will all be able with this
differentiating data, be able to focus better upon them as you
go forward with curricular whatever?
Mr. Kozol. Well, once again, I want to caution you that
statistics and growth-value models are not necessarily my
expertise but I can tell you that we desire as educators to
focus more on individual students rather than on individual
tests. And I think one gets the feeling, you know, in our
setting that with AYP as it is currently stated that the goal
is to have the school and the school district and all of the
individual subgroups satisfied. The tests, indeed, as I said,
what happens is curriculum can be sacrificed because you--in
fact, you said yourself, time is at a premium and that is
certainly true in the school as well.
So we would--I think the average teacher would certainly be
in favor of any model that allows them to focus, not just on
curriculum, but also the social and intellectual growth of the
child more than on the test as of itself. I think we would like
to see that, perhaps, the test as a means or any tester model
as a means but not as the end.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. Mr. Stevenson, you
testified to the relationship between student stress and a safe
school environment. What are the various sources of stress? It
has been 42 years since I taught so I know things have changed
a great deal. What are the sources of stress that students face
and how has it changed over the years in your experience? I
know you have not been around 42 years but in your own years.
Mr. Stevenson. Well, one of the things when you talk about
a school climate and in relationship to the school setting is
that students bring a lot more of their social and culture
dynamics into the school setting and it is not in the
relationship to stresses at home. One of the biggest things
that we are dealing with is the social component of the
influence of their peers, in which they are--and so those
dynamics that bring into the school is that the school's
teachers and administrators now have to make a shift from being
just a teacher but social workers to address those issues in
relationship to whether it is financial issues that they deal
with at home, it is the peer pressure or whatever the social
dynamic is at home. Teachers are forced now to take care of
those issues in the classroom and to create an academic and a
social balance.
So the whole concept of my testimony is that the school has
to be a place where kids feel safe and they feel that when they
come into school that the school is meeting some of those
particular needs. That they are getting their appropriate
counseling for those outside stresses. That they are getting
the type of support in which to help them navigate their way
through academically and socially.
Chairman Kildee. In addition to the cognitive education, is
there a value we should place upon--let me use the term
although it is controversial at times--affective education
where to help the student have a better feeling about him or
herself where they can relate better to the process of
education?
Mr. Stevenson. Most definitely. I mean, a person's self
concept is probably the best way to help them excel
academically, socially and to inspire occupationally. When a
student has a sense of hope, they have a sense of a drive to
more forward. And if a school setting is in a place and they
feel a climate where that is a place that helps them grow with
their self-esteem, that is only an added component to their
success.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. Mr. Howell, can you
discuss the impact that the No Child Left Behind public school
choice provision has? At the end of two years of not reaching
AYP, you are a public school choice and the third year you
would have supplemental educational services. Have many
students used that? What has the effect been of the public
school choice?
Mr. Howell. Congressman, it has been very interesting. A
school in our situation is required to contact the surrounding
school districts and ask if they will accept our students as a
part of the provision of choice and all of them annually say
no. We at times wonder about that. We do have the extended
opportunity, the after school programs that a growing number of
our students are taking advantage of. But school choice per se,
there is virtually no impact on my school
Chairman Kildee. Is it because most parents or students
want to remain in their own area or neighborhood or locale?
Mr. Howell. Well, I would like to think in part that. They
stay with us because they see the value in our school. But
quite frankly, the other side of it is, there is no place for
them to go.
Chairman Kildee. So really it is very often more
theoretical?
Mr. Howell. Each of the surrounding school districts has
the opportunity to say no to our question, will you accept our
students, and they do.
Chairman Kildee. Ms. Abrutyn, you talked about the law
diminishing returns. I have experienced that in golf. I gave up
golf. I reached the point where I was not getting any better. I
had reached my peak. Could you talk a little bit about the law
of diminishing returns?
Dr. Abrutyn. Not in terms of golf but in terms of
education, yes, I believe it is true. I think it was a lofty
goal. I think we have to have high standards and I think the
law, by setting the goal 100 percent proficiency, that was
admirable. But as we try to approach it, I think we need to
look for different ways of defining success for every child.
And that is why I think the shift towards the growth model
makes more sense because we can look at success in terms of
individual children and if we--rather than 100 percent
proficiency. So the shift would be towards looking at every
child growing every year and setting a realistic goal for every
child in terms of what that growth should be. And in that way
we can assure that no child is being left behind but in a more
realistic sense so that we are not labeling schools as failing
when, in fact, they could have the opportunity to move the
children forward.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. Congressman Sestak.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
If I might, Principal Stevenson, do you find that students
actually take advantage of your services or is there any data
to say?
Mr. Stevenson. Yes, yes, they do take advantage of it. In
fact, at the middle school today, there is what they call an
adolescent day where we have some--in conjunction and
partnership with the Radnor Education Foundation, we are
bringing in speakers talking about social and culture dynamics
to help students navigate their way through. And what we do
with that is that we have breakout sessions and then we have
follow-up throughout the year, through the remaining year, and
as they go to high school, through our SAP team to follow up on
instances of drug and alcohol abuse and to look at those
statistics. And we found that in some instances they have been
very helpful.
Mr. Sestak. Do you see any areas for legislative action,
not just monies, funding to assist in the----
Mr. Stevenson. I think that it has to be a balance between
both. I mean, as I said, we at Radnor are fortunate to have the
support of organizations like the foundation who have helped us
with bringing those social issues. But those dynamics, those
needs of kids to have understanding of how to improve their
social and academic ways throughout society has to be a balance
in places not only at Radnor but a place where I started off,
Coleman Elementary in Baltimore. And so if there is a mandate
that requires those types of things to be in place and the
financial support to back it, all those kids would also have
the same opportunities our kids have.
Mr. Sestak. Do you find progress impeded at all or it is
not the job of the schools with regard to the issue that there
is a documented shortage of mental health workers for younger
children and the lack to have them more readily available in an
area where male parity has become more of a concern as we go
forward? Is this an issue?
Mr. Stevenson. Most definitely. I think that there has been
in some places a resistance and then other places lack of
funding. I mean, schools have to make choices. Whether you add
a new teacher in relationship to make sure that you have
covered the basic support so they make AYP or you bring in a
social worker or a mental health expert to help with the
dynamic needs of the school. And I think most schools would
choose the academic issue because of funding. But if there was
a clear understanding of the basic needs for the youth for
mental experts to come help support their needs, I think that
you find a correlation where kids are healthier, not only
physically and mentally, you find the correlation between their
academic support and success.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you. Principal Howell, these are
questions about special accommodations and alternative
assessments for children that have identified learning
disabilities has been something that we have listened a lot to,
whether it is a hearing down in Congress or at previous
education summits. And recently, the Secretary of Education has
changed to three percent those that we might look at for
alternative testing. Do you think this figure is sufficient to
address this issue----
Mr. Howell. Sorry, I interrupted.
Mr. Sestak [continuing]. Or further adjustments need to be
made and if so what are they?
Mr. Howell. Quite frankly, I don't understand the notion of
a Secretary of Education defining a number. Roughly 18 percent
of the students that took the PSSA last year at Norristown High
had a learning disability, IEP. We were permitted to test one
percent of them in the alternate assessment based on a decree.
Clearly, a definition of which students should be based on
performance or based on their IEP, should be eligible to take
the state assessment or the alternative assessment is
attainable. At that point, we identify which percentage of my
students qualify for the alternative assessment and administer
it. We clearly would exceed the three percent.
Mr. Sestak. If I might, the question I wanted to ask, I
guess Dr. Hershberg, cohorts sizing, they differ throughout the
nation. Pennsylvania, I think, is 40 for the size of the
subgroup minimum. Texas is 200. Is this of concern as we--some
say to be no more than 20. Is this a concern as you are trying
to look at this nationally that we are impacting subgroups by
the size of them?
Dr. Hershberg. This is all part of a set of finding a way
around AYP. Whether it is lowering the quality of the tests,
whether it is backloading the progress rates, whether it is
manipulating the size of the groups you are talking about. Any
way to kind of stay away from the consequences of failing to
meet AYP.
Yeah, it is a concern.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you. If I could then, Principal, I would
like to get back to one other question. It is an interesting
comment you made that you go around and ask another school
district if they could take a student and every school district
has a challenge. But my question is, what is the answer then?
Should there be consideration, I mean, is it more SES focus?
Some people say we should look at vouchers so that you can take
them for private tuition. What does that do to your school
budget then? What is the issue for this?
Mr. Howell. Congressman, I think the most important point
that I could make this morning is that you do not know the
caliber of Norristown Area High School or any other school, in
particular, based on the data that we collect in No Child Left
Behind. And that in order to meet the goals of No Child Left
Behind you need to. So in my proposal, if the data suggests we
are failing, that ought to require a next step, to come in and
see, in fact, if that is so. There are a lot at this point of
recognized high school reform programs that are having a
positive impact for which there is data to support.
My point is you don't know based on the data that you now
have.
Mr. Sestak. So your answer and Dr. Hershberg's answer, when
I hear some of these questions that are being asked like
cohorts or having another school take a child, they are really
symptoms of a disease. I mean, I don't mean to say--in other
words, if you were able to have appropriate growth model
testing, the fact of the matter is your school could
potentially be better, as your testimony alluded to, than some
school that is actually meeting the requirements. We just don't
know.
Mr. Howell. We absolutely believe that but talk is cheap.
The value-added system would answer that question.
Mr. Sestak. And so some of these--if we don't get the
testing correct with the data, we will just be patchworking
certain--a system that is on the whole not appropriate. And
that is what I am hearing from here, correct? If I could then,
I take a school--you know, you see that like up in Darby High
School. Not to comment, they are--there are 43 different
languages. I mean, it is just a couple miles down the road and
there are 43 different languages spoken at that school. They
are one of 15 relocation districts for the Justice Department
in Pennsylvania. So they get 150 refugees every year that will
come in and they get graded on and that is the challenge here.
Should there be? And so as you begin to get the proper growth,
it also seems you can not just have mixing with the growth
model. Would it also be wrong to say, you just do not want to
say those that are highly proficient? I mean, because you could
still have some ranking at the end of the road, and those that
are not making it, should there be a middle category of those
that are trying or something? You know, briefly what I am
getting at?
Mr. Howell. Yes, it is very simple in concept. Is Radnor
High School better than Germantown High School in inner-city
Philadelphia? And the answer is----
Mr. Sestak. In my district, absolutely.
Mr. Howell. Right. And the answer is we don't know because
the question should always be, how do you deal with the kids
that you get. This is the--society deals the cards. Schools
don't control who lives in their community. Under current law,
if you live in an affluent community, you get high test scores,
you look great. If you live and work in the inner-city, you
have low test scores. That is a totally wrong way to understand
and compare their performance in schools. How do you do with
the kids that you get? Exactly what the superintendent said a
moment ago, you see how they start the year, you measure them--
you can measure them in formative assessment throughout the
year but certainly you want to know the growth over the year.
Then you have leveled the playing field and you can say, we are
a pretty darn good school because we grow our kids. They
started well behind but we did a good job with them. They
should not be sanctioned under current law.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. This has been--it is
and will continue for a while yet. We are getting such good
responses. I really appreciate this panel. This is why going
out of Washington is extremely important for the Congress and
that is, again, the reason why your testimony will be used as
we reauthorize this bill.
Superintendent Abrutyn, you testified that test preparation
is not necessarily a negative, could you expand on that?
Dr. Abrutyn. Yes. People will often say that it is bad. It
has a negative connotation to teach to the test or prepare for
the test. I maintain that if you look at the test, the test if
about reading and writing, math. These are things that our
students do need to know and that it does have critical
thinking skills and the state standards, that is what is being
tested. So we certainly want our students to be able to do
those things.
And I do maintain that in all of the different subjects
that we teach in school, we need to be able to have kids read
critically. It is more important today in the world that we
live in, with the technology that we have, with the internet.
Reading is back big time. You know, students need to read
critically. They have unfiltered types of information on the
internet, so we feel that these are very important skills. And
we don't discount the types of things that are being asked on
the state test. So I would like to balance that with people who
are critics of the idea that we need to hold kids accountable
and we do not, as superintendents by in large--no, we do
believe that we should be accountable but we want to level the
playing field. We want to have the proper opportunities. We
want to have the proper funding. But we don't think that it is
a bad thing or I would speak for myself personally, I think,
and say that we do feel that kids should be able to do the
things that are on the test.
Chairman Kildee. Could you answer this, is AYP defective or
just not as good as growth model?
Dr. Abrutyn. I think that we have, as I said in my
testimony, an opportunity to go to something that will serve
all students in the nation better. And I think that the concept
of AYP at this juncture--defective is a strong word but I think
it is not doing what the spirit of the law says. No Child Left
Behind means we want to move every child forward. We cannot
tell that with adequate yearly progress because the unit of
measure is a school and at best it is a subgroup. So there is a
mismatch between what the spirit of the law is, which is to
leave no child left behind. The unit of measure is the child,
so there is a mismatch between the spirit of the law and the
way we are measuring it. And we want to move to a growth model
which is much more in conjunction with the spirit of the law,
which is the growth model measures individual children. And
then you have a true match between what the law is asking for
and a way to truly measure that. And it gets us totally away
from the idea of labeling schools as failing when they have
been dealt the cards that Dr. Hershberg mentioned, you know, a
very challenging group of kids or a very high socio-economic
group. We don't deal with those things anymore. We are dealing
strictly with the ability of the school to educate every single
child and demonstrate that that child got a year's worth of
growth in one year.
Chairman Kildee. Dr. Stevenson, did you have some comment
that--okay, again we will take a two-minute break for the
students, and again, I appreciate the students being here, to
go back to your regular class. Thank you very much. We will
take a two-minute break. Okay, we will reconvene. It is very
appropriate that we have these hearings, right, in an
educational environment and with the people who are really so
concerned with education. The Admiral and I were talking, this
is just a great panel. It has been very helpful to us and we
are carrying ideas, not just their written ones but some ideas
up here we are carrying back to Washington. Dr. Hershberg, I
was fascinated by your chart here, it is very interesting, and
I love charts. My counsel here knows that. Can you discuss how
Congress can reauthorize No Child Left Behind to help schools
in that bottom left cell of your Figure 2, those who have both
low proficiency and low growth?
Dr. Hershberg. Well, you know, there is a perverse
incentive debate that says if you give more money to failing
schools, you are rewarding failure and if you take the money
away, then you are punishing. How is that going to help the
kids? So neither of those approaches are the way to go on this
one. Those schools are failing and something has to change.
Now, there are a variety of different comprehensive school
reform models. In some cases, they might as well close the
school or if not close the school, then reconstitute the
faculty. The reality is that they are not providing the
children in their community with the education to which they
are entitled.
So one solution that I would propose would be to have
technical assistance teams that would be composed of
outstanding teachers and administrators on a voluntary basis--
they could pay but they volunteer to be in the program. They
are regionally based. They would parachute into a struggling
school and they would be given the decision-making authority
and the discretion to use the money on a per capita basis to
turn that school around. So you are not putting the money in
the hands of the same people that have failed but you are
bringing needed resources, both intellectual and financial, so
that children can benefit from the change.
Chairman Kildee. You want to comment on that?
Mr. Howell. I did, thank you. I would simply ask Dr.
Hershberg to name a place where that worked.
Dr. Hershberg. Well, we have very little evidence that has
accumulated but in North Carolina, technical assistance teams
are in place and they are getting some success but I think it
is just beginning. We would use in Pennsylvania--take the
regional, take the intermediate unit and have--if you can get
high quality--what is the alternative is the question that I
would put to that.
Mr. Howell. I certainly support the concept of the
technical support. And Pennsylvania does have the--I forget the
term now--gifted scholar or something like that, experienced
scholar--that are made available to school districts. I just
have not seen any evidence where allowing those teams to make
the decisions for those communities has had any positive impact
at all. And, in fact, there is a sizeable school district,
pretty close to where we sit, that is living proof that turning
that over to the outsiders is not accomplishing much.
Chairman Kildee. I thank both of you. Admiral?
Mr. Sestak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doctor, you wrote a
book back in 1997 called, Introduction to Using Portfolios in
the Classroom. Could you talk just a moment on what you mean by
portfolios, so everybody gathers it and tell me, do you really
think that we can do this and can it possibly be legislated?
Dr. Abrutyn. That book was written in, I believe, about
1997, so that was far before technology had the ability or we
had the capability to do what we can do today. And the idea of
portfolios just goes along with my vision, again, of moving
every child forward and being able to understand where every
child is and have rigid information. And today I think that
portfolios have a place because we can store the information
electronically and be able to document what the child has
accomplished throughout the year.
Mr. Sestak. Just to make sure we are on the same page, when
you say portfolios, you mean?
Dr. Abrutyn. When I wrote the book, it was talking about
any type of information, reading or math, and it was storing
samples and we still do this in our school district today. What
we are looking at is we keep the portfolio through the child's
career, so it is all another version of a growth model. It all
ties together. And so I think there is a place for it. I do not
know that we would necessarily have to legislate it and I think
some of the components of the growth model that we talked about
earlier this morning would suffice.
But the idea that you have a portfolio of some sort stored
electronically for children, so that we can see through the
course of their career in a school district what kind of growth
they have had and track it from year to year. It is very
valuable. We do not want to have to start over every year with
a new teacher and have the teacher wonder what they did the
previous year. So I appreciate the question very much because
we want to continue to keep going and not spin our wheels at
the beginning of the school year.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you. You know I joined the military
during Vietnam and it was ranked 22 percent as far as the
lowest of all 15 institutions the Gallup Poll does every year
as far as respect. Now it is ranked number one and I went to
Congress and it is ranked next to last. So we are working on
it. But the point is I have not--whether it was in the military
or the Congress, in both places and in government that I served
in 31 years, people would throw bombs at us, government
bureaucrats. I was always taken by how much, including, I mean,
in Congress how hard they work.
I feel the same way about the teachers and administrators.
People say, well, you know, when you rank us as a failing
school, it really does have an impact. And I can imagine that
particularly if no one is taking your children and all. Could
you both speak to that shortly because it is an intangible but
having lived it in the military where people were not welcomed
as they came home and even if people questioned politicians,
would you speak the importance of this?
Mr. Howell. Certainly I would be happy to. I mentioned the
reform efforts that we began two years ago. Every teacher at
Norristown High for the past two years has become a first-year
teacher again. Nobody did last year what they did the year
before. Now, we knew that we were not going to turn the scores
upside down in one year but we worked awfully hard and by a lot
of other measures, had a very good year. Yet we are a
Corrective Action I. That is one step worse than we were last
year.
It is a frustration for the teachers. It is a morale issue.
But it is also for the students as well because they also--I
have invested in this reform and no one requires more immediate
ratification than they do. So my proposal is simply that, while
I do not want you to report my scores any differently. I am
okay with that. But I want there to be a next step where
someone comes in and takes a look to see which of those four
quadrants of Dr. Hershberg's that we are, in fact, in.
Mr. Kozol. Yeah, I agree with many of the things, in fact,
that Mr. Howell is saying and I think that our building
principals would probably echo that sentiment even though they
may not be at the same stage of the AYP game.
The reality is that as currently structured, all public
schools will eventually be failing and that is a very sobering
thought for us in this field. And that is what leads to the
narrowing of curriculum that I spoke about in my testimony. The
preparations that include things like free breakfasts and tee
shirts and class trips, not that it is not great to take a
class trip but not really for this purpose. The idea that a
curriculum of a young child does not include social studies or
science. You know, as a member of the Pennsylvania Council of
Social Studies, I have been part of a debate which some of our
directors have said to me, we need to have a test so that our
subject will be taken seriously. To me, that alone indicts the
law as it is structured very much.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you. Again, I am taken by the word data
all the time. When I visit various high schools whether it is
Springfield or Upper Darby, the teachers all say this, good
thing we have this No Child Left Behind. This data we will be
getting to focus upon and here all the heads are nodding when
you have done this. If you do not mind, Mr. Stevenson and
doctor, to some degree if you go--say, well, wait a minute, I
am not going to throw more money in the school system. That is
just throwing more money down. The thing I have become taken
with is--and I come from a background where we invested in our
sailors but we held them accountable. It seems to me that data
now has the ability for us to measure the value outcome of
putting more investment in education. In other words, it is not
just throwing monies to school boards, the superintendents, the
teachers, you can actually measure what they are doing with it
now because of No Child Left Behind has given us a data to
measure. Is that a wrong way to think about this when people
say you are just going to throw more money into this issue?
Mr. Stevenson. I will speak from the school climate and
school safety perspective but the data, it helps a lot and we
are making a shift now academically but socially too to show
the data. For instance, you know, in relationship to our drug
and alcohol task force, data helps us to show that only the
students and the teachers but the school community what our
basic needs are and how--by implementing certain programs, how
those things have helped address and bring a remedy to it.
Socially, when you talk about kids who have had needs for
substance abuse counseling, students who have had need for a
mental health support and also look at the data relationship of
the funding and the relationship that is required to keep the
physical plant safer compared to pre-Columbine. Those kind of
things are important to show that this is not just we need
money, it is for the basic safety of our children.
And I will just also talk briefly about the academic piece.
The same thing in relationship to--because, you know, we are--
reality is No Child Left Behind is a part of our school setting
and we are, as I say, we are slaves to the test and we have to
make sure that we have incorporated all the necessary standards
and the necessary supports to make sure that students have the
best academic testing scores possible.
Having said that, then we also show the data of saying,
what things do we have in place that improved, what things that
if we do not have them in place, if we had the appropriate
funding, could help us improve those things?
Mr. Sestak. Doctor, did you want to shortly add to that?
Dr. Abrutyn. Yes. I think the question, and I appreciate
the question, I think it has to do with, is it worthwhile to
spend money on what it would cost to get this rich information
to districts and I say absolutely yes.
Mr. Sestak. It is yes but it is actually a little
different. Is to some degree, is it also that if you have this
data, you are now able to say to the person who is giving you
the money, not just us or the taxpayer, wait a minute, I can
show you if it is going to have value?
Dr. Abrutyn. Yes, you are able to show that. And I think
that some people might feel threatened by it, so I would say
that it is all in the implementation of how you use it. And we
have to be very careful about the implementation of using that
data. It has the opportunity to be very motivating because it
allows our teachers to have a roadmap and they find out they
are being given extra tools to move kids forward, so that they
have a better idea of how they need to structure their lessons.
We actually use that data for the children. They find it
motivating and they set their own targets, so they are very
highly engaged in their learning. And our kids can tell you
what their target is throughout the year. And parents, we are
starting to let them use that information. They have access to
the data, so that that is true parent involvement. So there are
a lot of opportunities with this data.
Mr. Sestak. I would like to ask you a question I asked you
earlier but just before I did, the reason I am taking with it
is, we all saw the Philadelphia Inquirer article about three
Thursday's ago that was on the front page of the business
section and it is not dissimilar to what I think we face in our
district where we have lost 670 small businesses and the
concerns with the workforce and attracting and maintaining
people here. As it said, why have not we been as successful as
we think we should have in the Philadelphia region of
attracting the types of industries--we have been somewhat
successful but not quite as full as we might. And it has always
come back to the issue of education and that is what the
business section said why this is such an important issue. But
it brings me to another group, you go to the Pathway School in
Montgomery County or the Easter Seals School. You sit down at
the intermediate units in Montgomery County or Chester County
or Delaware County and talk about the disabled and you listen
to those in the summit that talk about the need to address this
issue but at times the burden to address this for whether we
should have teachers that are now having to be highly qualified
teachers to teach the disabled. And now if they teach just not
a core subject, they teach several subjects, they got to get
qualified in each of those. What is the best approach somehow
to make sure that these children do not fall through the seams
because we will be better for it if they do not and yet I hear
consistently that this is an issue for school districts. So did
you want to address this kind of----
Dr. Hershberg. We certainly welcome the issue of
accountability with regards to all of our students, so those
with our special needs, as well as our gifted and talented. The
highly qualified issue that you raise is a serious problem in
that area. We know what makes a good teacher of multiple
handicapped students, for example, and just because that
student or that child is 15 years old doesn't mean that he
needs someone who is highly qualified in math, for example. And
we, quite frankly, are going to face some serious issues
because there is simply someone who can pass the math test is
probably going to be a math teacher. Someone who can pass the
science test is going to be a science teacher and finding and
encouraging those people who want to work with special needs
students, for example, we are now hindering them with the
highly qualified label.
Mr. Sestak. Mr. Chairman, May I just follow up with one
additional question?
Chairman Kildee. Sure.
Mr. Sestak. But is there a better way--I can see you want
to drive this and you can--to link the IEPs to No Child Left
Behind or is there a better way to address or different way to
address this issue by and large? Is this where you were going?
Dr. Abrutyn. The question about highly qualified teachers--
--
Mr. Sestak. Not just highly qualified. I mean the whole
issue of the cohort group of disabled and the need to get them
properly reaching out so that they are not left behind. Do you
know where I am going?
Dr. Abrutyn. Well, if you are talking about achievement
levels for those groups----
Mr. Sestak. Yes, and the correct measurement of them. You
talked about one to two percent, but what is the criteria? Is
it more towards the IEPs again or is it----
Dr. Abrutyn. It truly is.
Mr. Sestak. But yet if we felt as though it wasn't working
right, I gather, when this legislation was passed. Is there a
stronger link between IEPs?
Dr. Abrutyn. The criticism was that you are trying to fit
say a square peg into a round hole. The state test, for
example, was not appropriate to measure their levels and, in
some cases, there was an alternate test and some people were
calling out for the IEP to be the sole measure. Their
individual plan to be the sole measure of their progress.
So I think it goes back again just to the growth model
because special education children can be measured on a growth
model as well as any other child. So the growth model would
answer that question.
Mr. Sestak. It is again back to the cause of the disease.
Thank you. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. Principal Howell, you
mentioned Pennsylvania's value-added system. Could you describe
this system and how it is used?
Mr. Howell. Well, we do have access to it now and based on
student performance over an extended period of time,
particularly on standardized tests, we can measure that growth
from year to year and as importantly we can predict it, so that
I have not only a measure for myself but also the ability to
identify students who might benefit from particular services
that we have to offer.
We have that right now for our students in third through
eighth grade. I think we need one more year of that so that
that will be applicable to our eleventh grade students as well.
The issue is that while for us a PVA system is far more useful
and a far better indicator of our performance. The No Child
Left Behind, the AYP data tends to invalidate it. So that if
a--we talked earlier about the people who were giving us money.
If the people who are giving us money choose to say, we gave
you all that money, you still did not make AYP. And my response
to that can be, under the PVA system I can show you substantial
growth for kids in third to eighth grade. I can show you
quarterly testing and other things that shows it in high school
and the answer always is, but the important score is AYP.
So while we have these other things, we have the
availability of them, we need to take the AYP scores off the
altar and allow us to have the opportunity to use this other
data as well.
Chairman Kildee. Let me ask you this also, you testified in
support of differentiated interventions. Can you explain what
sort of interventions we could change No Child Left Behind to
support in order to help schools implement systemic reforms?
Mr. Howell. Again, Congressman, my position really is that
you do not know based on the data that you collect. If, in
fact, the data consistently says that Norristown Area High
School is underachieving as a school, then that ought to be to
somebody coming in and seeing if, in fact, that is true. And if
it is true, the things that Dr. Hershberg talked about are fine
by me. The things that our governor's commission suggested
which includes coming in and removing me. That is okay with me
too. I just want it to be based on a real assessment of our
performance. I gave the PSSA test last year, the reading test,
to 15 students who do not read English. Now, I knew what their
score was going to be before I gave them the test. Yet when
you--even though they are disaggregated in some reports, when
you look at our scores, you see that a certain percentage of
our kids did not score advanced or proficient. Hello? I knew
that. So all I am asking--I am fine with the accountability. I
am fine with the interventions. I just want the measure to be
equal and to be relevant and then No Child Left Behind is fine
with me.
Chairman Kildee. Dr. Hershberg----
Mr. Howell. Except for that high stake testing thing.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Howell. Dr.
Hershberg, Pennsylvania has its test, the standards in this
test, we have the state set their own standards and do their
own testing. Michigan is changing from what is called the MEAP
test. So each state, and they vary. Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, Michigan, I think, has set pretty high standards
for itself and pretty tough tests for itself. Some states have
lower standards and easier tests, so that creates a little
confusion when people compare schools in various states. Should
we somehow not use the NAEP test to test the students but use
the NAEP test to see whether the state tests have reached a
certain standard or level of----
Dr. Hershberg. Congressman, that is a critically important
question. The coming crisis in education is that even when
students graduate from high school meeting the proficiency
standards set by their state, they are almost everywhere, there
are several exceptions, falling well short of what is now
required for success. After high school, that is whether you go
into the military, whether you go into higher education or
whether you enter the workplace, there has been a convergence
of the requirements for success and the gap between what kids
are leaving at proficient levels and this reality. That is the
coming crisis.
I think all but three states have standards well, well
below NAEP. The rough averages--you will see twice as many kids
proficient on their state tests as on the NAEP. The range--the
latest NAEP data show that only between 27 percent and 35
percent of fourth and eighth graders in all tested subjects are
proficient or higher in the United States of America.
Now, I would much prefer the NAEP standards [tape cut off]
by states in my mind are how much failure will the tax paying
public tolerate. That is the legislature's question. They are
fearful. But the NAEP standards themselves are not set in a way
that meets the crisis I just alluded to at the beginning.
We ought to be asking--instead of asking a set of experts
what their professional judgment is, let us set the tests that
cut scores here, we should be going to those three arenas, the
military, the workplace and higher education and say, what do
kids need to graduate with to succeed in these three arenas?
That is the way we should be doing this in the future. But if
we do not speak to it right now, we are going to be in a deep
and deeper hole because the state standards are watered down
and totally inaccurate in terms of what is required for success
in today's world.
Chairman Kildee. Should we use the NAEP, the National
Assessment of Educational Progress--should we use NAEP to test
the students or to test the test?
Dr. Hershberg. I think we need a better way. I think we
need better tests and I also believe that this nation, as an
issue of national security, is going to have to come up with
national standards. Because what we have done with No Child
Left Behind is create an enormous incentive to lower the bar.
It is a race to the bottom.
Chairman Kildee. Mr. Howell, you had a comment on that?
Mr. Howell. Congressman, the problem with using the NAEP
for anything is getting kids to take it seriously. We struggle
to convince them that the PSSA test that they are about to take
has a potential lifetime impact on them. And so with tee shirts
and breakfasts and all those things, maybe we get them to do
that. And then in a matter of months later we give them the
NAEP and say, here this is real important too. They do not buy
it. So I do not know that I would use the current NAEP results
for anything.
Chairman Kildee. Could we use NAEP though to test the test
to see whether the--I mean, we do know certain states have
very, very--well, they have lower standards and easier testing.
Could we use NAEP to test the test to see and at least report
whether this state--and I know Pennsylvania, I know Michigan,
Massachusetts have high standards and a good test. Some are
rather old. Could we use NAEP to test the test to see how that
state stands in relation to other states?
Mr. Howell. And I would say no.
Chairman Kildee. You would say no, all right. Very good.
Mr. Sestak. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I thought this last
discussion was extremely important. I really loved your comment
on national security. Everybody thinks national security is
about defense. They just do not understand true national
security. It is how well educated and healthy our individuals
are. And this is what this is all about. The value of No Child
Left Behind is that it has become an ongoing debate about
education. Not like Sputnik that did it for two or three years.
This will go on for a long period of time. And it is why, it is
just not my district but these inner-city ones, they are all
part. It is a globalized world. It is certainly a globalized
Philadelphia region. It is so important. I go down to Acker
Shipyard. They cannot even find 180 tig welders. They import
them from the Gulf Coast because we do not have the training
attendant to the kids. Jerry Parker, President of Delaware
Community College says I trained a couple hundred, I cannot get
the skilled force to come and learn how to do mig and tig
welding because you do not flop your helmet down, light an arc
and lay a bead like 40 years ago when I had the HDs. But you
now sit at a computer and have to lay that metal fabrication
bead out, you have to have a higher level of education in
science. This is not about going to college. This is about
doing high-value manufacturing, the artisans skills and
everything. So your points are very well taken and I am sorry
to go on here. It is why next week we will have an education
summit, another one. After our first two--this can be an
economic development summit. After our first two education
summits, we had the first on the economic summit. We train kids
or educate them, not just out of curiosity, but then provide
quality of life. And I think your concept of the workforce and
businesses, small business community to understand what is
attendant to what they need.
And I am sorry to go on but I thought this whole point is
so important. Could I ask you a question on violence and come
back to you, that you do not mind, you know, giving your test
scores out. But we have heard in testimony that schools are
loathe and districts are loathe to report the real violence
that occurs.
And so, therefore, we really do not have a grip upon that
and there are lots of stats and studies that show that. Is
there something to that and, if so, what do we need to change
that? What is the criteria for what we call violence and there
is study after study that shows that this is a significant
issue. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stevenson. I think, first of all, in our district we
are very open and clear with the annual state reporting for
violence report that is required each year. But I think the
larger question in relationship of schools reporting violence
is some schools, who do not have the resources in order to keep
their schools safe and secure, they sometimes may or may not
report some things based on perception or some of what the
media will report.
Mr. Sestak. Because it makes the school less attractive?
Mr. Stevenson. Well, it makes the school less attractive
and I think there is an unfairness in relationship to how you
view certain schools. I think that certain schools, depending
on where they are located, whether it is urban, rural or
suburban, get more attention than the others. And so, I think
that the bigger question is how do we know one, ensure that all
schools have safe facilities, they have the safe training on
safety and then talk about what do you do when a school reports
the violence.
Mr. Sestak. I understand.
Mr. Stevenson. Because I think that is the bigger thing.
When a school----
Mr. Sestak. Although if you----
Mr. Stevenson [continuing]. Board says the issue----
Mr. Sestak. Excuse me for interrupting. But if you do not
have the data, you may not understand the depth of the
resources needed.
Mr. Stevenson. Well, I agree with that. You have to have
the data but, you know, there has to be a balance with
reporting that data and also--so when a school reports that we
have a high level of incidents of violence, do we then say to
them they put them on this list or then we have intervention
support to make it better.
Mr. Sestak. Do you have just a quick comment on that?
Mr. Howell. I agree completely. It is not the collection of
the data, it is what you do with it.
Mr. Sestak. But the studies seem to show we do not get the
data.
Mr. Howell. But that may be why. Two years ago our pupil
services guy called me in a panic because he was doing the
report and it looked like we were one felony over the line.
That is an absurd way to think about it. We do what we need to
do to serve our population and there are times that that means
asking the police to support that. I am proud of that. I am not
embarrassed about it. But if, at some point, that is going to
get me put me on the bad guy list, then maybe the next time I
report one less felony or I call the police one less time.
Mr. Sestak. One last question. I think I am out of time.
Can we--actually that is fine. You have kind of actually
answered my question which is already--can we really achieve
100 percent proficiency in our students? Again it goes back to
the growth model, correct? Am I answering my own question?
Dr. Abrutyn. 100 percent proficiency would be measured
against a state test, for example, so if it is a standardized
test that has a finite number of questions and right answers or
wrong answers and every child has to take it and that score is
what gets reported and that is the status model. And we are
saying that by the year 2014, every child is going to get 100
percent of those questions correct. And that is the concept
that we are doomed to failure on because it is just not
possible.
It is a lofty goal and it is a high goal and it was
admirable but we just will not get there, everyone knows it. So
we are saying instead that the growth model is a different and
better way to go because it will let every child grow every
year. And we will have a target that is realistic and we want
every child to grow every year. And we have a more realistic
way to do that now. And even more so because we have the
technology that we did not even have when the federal law went
into effect. Technology is at a place where we can actually do
this today.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you.
Chairman Kildee. I am going to ask this question. I
probably should have asked it earlier so you could think about
it but what would be the most important single change? And if
somebody has already mentioned, you want to mention another
one, you can do that but the most important single change we
could make in No Child Left Behind that would move us in the
right direction. Congressman Sestak or Congressman Kildee, what
would you recommend? We will start down here and move down the
line. Mr. Kozol.
Mr. Kozol. I was hoping you were going to ask that
question, Congressman. There are a number of things, as I have
indicated, that I think I would change but if I had to pick
one, it would be to change the nature, the structure of the law
from a punitive one to more of a supportive one.
I think that that is what it really comes down to. I mean,
whatever you are going to use, whatever model you are going to
use to measure success, whether it be AYP or whether it be a
growth model, I think there is too much to be gained on behalf
of our children, not to mention the educators, by being in a
educational institution that is supported and does not live in
fear of failure. Especially where we have so many public
schools that are, in fact, succeeding but are distortedly
painted as failing because of the current structure of the law.
Chairman Kildee. Mr. Howell.
Mr. Howell. And that was stated eloquently. The only thing
that I would add to that is that we need a way to acknowledge
that many of the things that our public schools are called upon
to do to enrich the quality of life for our students and things
that we do well, do not fit on a standardized test.
Chairman Kildee. Dr. Hershberg.
Dr. Hershberg. I would like to begin by saying the notion
that before No Child Left Behind, we had a really terrific
public school system and this terrible federal law came in and
screwed everything up is an absolute misstatement of reality.
As flawed as No Child Left Behind has been, I do not know any
superintendent who has not said something to the effect of, we
have spent more time in the last couple of years thinking about
how to make kids learn than we ever have in our career.
Now, the single most important change is everything we
talked about in terms of tracking individual kids and going to
a growth model. Without any reservation, that is the single
most important thing we could do. It will change everything we
do. We collect the data secondly at the classroom level. Let me
make a very important point. The unit accountability in No
Child Left Behind is the school but the variation in the
quality of instruction is much greater within schools than it
is between schools. So when we get an average score, it
obscures the outstanding teaching and the really terrible
teaching, the kind of teaching that harms our children. So if I
were to go a little further, I would say growth models at which
the data is collected at the classroom level, then we will have
the building blocks to understand what is actually going on in
our buildings.
Principals are running schools, they have accountability
and they do not know empirically what is going on inside each
of their classrooms. This has to change and it should change
and this technology will enable us to change.
Chairman Kildee. Dr. Abrutyn.
Dr. Abrutyn. The single most important thing that the
reauthorization can do, I think, is level the playing field and
give us a more accurate picture of success in the schools. So I
would say moving away from the descriptor of adequate yearly
progress and labeling schools as failing or not failing and
moving towards the growth model would be the thing to do
because it does level the playing field and gives us an idea of
whether individual students are moving forward and it gives us
the information through technology and this is the age of
information. So we have the opportunity today to get that
information and use it as a tool to help us move kids forward.
Chairman Kildee. Mr. Stevenson.
Mr. Stevenson. I would just add to what the superintendent
said but in a larger context of equity and funding. As a native
of South Carolina who grew up in one of the poorest school
districts in the state and then compare myself to working and
had an opportunity to work in a place like Radnor. My niece and
nephew, who attend that school, take the same test that the
students at Radnor take. The highest math in that school
district is Algebra I. There is no honors English. There is no
AP. So when we are talking about taking tests, you have to take
in account the equity in relation in backgrounds of the
students where they come from and then have them to have the
same expectations of students who in districts that have more
resources.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. You were hoping I
would ask that question, I am glad I did. I think it was very,
very helpful. For a final round or a final statement, Admiral
Sestak.
Mr. Sestak. Thank you. One comment and then a statement. I
would gather in the growth model we just have to make sure that
the growth is sufficient particularly for those that are
further behind. And so I gather whatever that marker or
stalking horse is, is a very important part of determining not
just the model but the standards in that. And that would have
to be determined.
I would just like to say before the Chairman summarizes,
thank you again to the Radnor High School principal and
superintendent, to the panelists, in particular to everyone who
took the time out of the day to come. I know if this was not
during the school day for it to come at many times teachers
hold these on Saturdays and others. That shows how much
interest there that people wanted to come out. Trying to get a
schedule to have a Chairman up here was very much appreciated.
I cannot say thank you enough to you, sir, and I very much
think--I learn always something from this. So I think it was a
great panel and, again, for everyone who is here, the comments
and statements can be submitted and I am always open, as you
know, to getting e-mails. Just thank you. It was a very
worthwhile time spent.
Chairman Kildee. Thank you very much. I concur with you.
This has been--I think you can tell yourself, this has been an
outstanding panel. It has been very, very helpful and this will
be helpful to us in going back to Washington to reauthorize
this. I cannot tell you for sure what the bill is going to be
like but we certainly have learned a lot by coming to
Pennsylvania and listening to you and I am very glad that
Congressman Sestak asked me to come up here. I know we may
phase in certain things, so we had a five-year reauthorization,
that is when I first met the present President of the United
States, on a formal basis in the cabinet room and he and I had
a disagreement there. We have agreed on certain things since
and disagreed on certain things since, as I have with all the
six Presidents that I have served since I have been in
Congress. But the President proposes and the Congress disposes
and we come out and listen to people like yourself who are
really on the front line of education. We have an enormous
responsibility, the future of this country. It depends so much
upon what you do. We are competing in a global economy and what
will give us the cutting edge in that competition is an
educated and trained workforce and that is very, very
important.
I have already said that education is a local function. You
have your local boards of education. It is a state
responsibility. I know the Michigan constitution says that the
legislature shall provide for a system of free and public
schools. And it is a federal concern. It is a federal concern
for two reasons. First of all, we live in a very mobile
society. A person educated in Michigan may wind up in
Mississippi. A person educated in Pennsylvania may wind up in
California, vice versa. We live in a very mobile society. Plus,
as I said, we are competing in that global economy, so it is a
federal concern. But ultimately, it is a local function. It is
a state responsibility and we want our federal concern not to
suffocate you but to help you. And that is my goal. We are not
perfect. No Child Left Behind certainly is not perfect. Quite a
departure from the federal role before but you have been very,
very helpful to us today.
So I will have to use our parliamentary procedure to close
this up since this is an official hearing. First of all, those
of you in the audience who wish to submit, as I mentioned
earlier, testimony for inclusion in the official record, you
will talk to counsel, Mr. Horwich. He will give you his e-mail.
You may e-mail that or mail it to us. And as previously ordered
also, members of Congress, of this Committee, will have seven
calendar days to submit additional materials for the hearing
record. Any member who wishes to submit follow-up questions in
writing to the witnesses, you may get some questions in
writing, should coordinate with the majority staff within the
requisite time. Without objection, this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]