Transcripts For CSPAN Education Department Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Request 20140505

The committee will come to order. Welcome to our guests. Thank you so secretary duncan for joining us. We know your time is valuable and we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today. Each year the secretary comes before the committee to discuss the priorities of department of education. Each year he is faced with the underequirable task of defending new programs, burdensome mandates that adopt the president s preferred policies. The budget request for the department clocks in at an incredible 82. 3 billion. This includes 70 billion in Discretionary Spending and mandatory funding for pet projects such as new teacher prep pardonness, which are redone ant of existing programs. Families deserve a better way forward. We needed administration to work with congress to advance Lasting Solutions facing schools nationwide. Instead of supporting ourests to strengthen education, the administration is implementing a con via luted scheme that has waivers to waivers that makes the secretaries of session the sole arbitrator to education policy. Instead of helping us address problems through the reauthorize of the Higher Education act, the Obama Administration continues to push for shortsighted mandates that will levy new burdens on colleges and universities. Instead is a of working with us by prioritizing funding with those who disabilities, the Obama Administration is ramping up spending. Worst, the budget plans to reduce i. D. E. Fopping for most districts by shifting the funds into another competitive program. Each of these initiatives are undermining projects and prevents students from accessing opportunities they need for success. The house education and Work Force Committee has advanced a number of proposals that will post secondary leaders with the flexible framework necessary to move students. Last summer, the house approved the Student Success act, empower parents and reduce burdens in the classroom. It is the first bill, the first bill to reauthorize the act that has been considered on the floor or house or senate in more than a decade. You have noted the importance of this law. Clearly many differences remain. Prospects may seem unlikely, i think we all share a enough Common Ground to put the student first but we need support there the administration not more waivers. In addition to our progress the committee has spent more than a year preparing to reauthorize the act. We have held more than a dozen hearings facing post second institutions and students and most legislation to enhance transparency that will harm lowincome students and threaten the strength of the Higher Education system. As we continue to work toward a rewrite, i urge the secretary to abandon the intrusive policies regulatory proposal outlined in the president s budget and instead work with us to craft legislation that will help meet our shared goals. Before i yield to my distinguished colleague mr. Miller for his opening marks, i want to make one final request to secretary duncan. After each hearing, the Committee Members submit to your Department Questions for the record. As our time here in the hearing is limited, these questions help our oversight of the programs and policies, however, im troubled by the significant delay in these questions. Just a few days ago, mr. Secretary, the Committee Received answers to the questions at this hearing last year. We hope this will not be the case with the questions following this hearing. I will yield. Thank you mr. Secretary for joining us today. This hearing comes at a time where the parties are putting forth two different visions of our nations system. On one hand, my republicans passed a budget that guts resources for students and schools and puts sequestration back in place and slashes education event further. President obama recognizes that education leads to better jobs and a more perspectiv comprehenk force. Republicans want to be no accountable and no equity forward for students. President obama put together a budget that encourages greater equity. This is more than just opposing theories. How the Budget Priorities play out will have real consequences for our teachers, schools and our economy. It is a shame we find ourselves at such odd when we talk about the future of our nation. The past has shed light on possibilities of our future. Over the last five years, schools have undertake an massive transformation on a scale ive never seen. Schools are raising expect takes. Schools are ditching bubble tests in favor of those who measure criminal thinking critical thinking. Including efforts improve struggling schools, communities are setting children up for lifelong success by priding high quality preschool programs for more kids than ever before. We need to support our educators as they under take these dramatic shifts in education in this country. We in the federal government should be helping to make these leaps not cutting off at in knees. We should pass a bal by partisa. We should strengthen the work force by improving college access, increasing transparency to help students make smart choices and not gutting the program at the backbone of student aid. It is time for congress to get back in the business of partnering with states. This is the time to say yes, then always saying no. Im pleased we have taken small steps to do this. The recent passage of the school bill are encouraging signs as with the funding of the Development Grants on the by partisan bill. They are just the challenges that lie in front of us. Given the heavy handed ryan budget on pressing education matters, i want to recognize and commend the actions your department has taken to equity issues. I would like to commend you in allocating funding. I like to praise the office of civil rights to deduce discipline practices. Im heartened by the work with students with disabilities to ensure states continue to hold the population to high standards. I appreciate your ongoing efforts to ensure that college prepares students for gainful employment. I appreciate the ongoing efforts to help childhood education for all children not just a privilege for the few. I encourage you to maintain a laser like focus. You have a authority in the process to bring focus back to equity for disadvantaged students. You must hold the line when states or districts want to dilute to serve all students. Thank you for being here today, mr. Secretary. Thank you for the work you do day in and day out. In behalf of our schools and communities and i look forward to your testimony. Garaggentleman yields back. Without objection the hearing record will remain open for 14 days to allow questions for the record to be submitted in the official hearing record. Mr. Secretary, welcome back. Youre recognized. Just quickly mr. Chairman response to your last question. We were too slow in getting response back to the last questions. I apologize and it wont happen again. To all the members, the story of American Education today is a good news, bad news story. Let me thank you for your work on the 2014 budget, which increased our budget in the last year. Our students are making substantial progress and graduating from high school and going to enroll in college, be it a twoyear university, four year college. Our nations on Time High School Graduation Rate reached a record high in 2012 of 80 . There are a number of headlines that i thought were positive about the hard work that is going on. I want to thank our students, our teachers, families, community members, administrators for all the hard work in seeing the Graduation Rates hit a record high. College rates are high with latino and African American students leading the way. The majority, minority, that is a hugely important step in the right direction. The bad new, the flip side of that, we still have unacceptable opportunity gaps in america. It will be difficult to close those gaps when federal discretionary funding in education remain the 2012 level. Our internal competitors are not making the mistake of disinvesting in education and the students are making more progress than American Students and dangering our competitiveness and prosperity. In a Global Economy, the need to close the opportunity gaps and strengthen the competitiveness is one of the most urgent challenging facing our nation. Before the states ratify the constitution, the congress requires townships to reserve money and grant federal land and states to Public School. During the civil war, president lincoln signed the moral act, which today educate more than to returningselves members and veterans. After the soviet union launched sputnik, Congress Passed the act to boltster mathematics and science education. Despite these key investments and the educational progress we made as a nation, large opportunity gaps remain at a time when education is more important than ever to accelerate in economic progress and reducing social inequality. President obamas budget will boost that progress and close those opportunity gaps. Sadly, those opportunity gaps start with our youngerrest learners. If we could look at the first slide please. America is 25th in the world. 25th in 4yearold in preschool. Four in 10 Public School systems in the United States dont offer preschool. Setting a stage in School Readiness that not only president obama but most of our nations governors find unacceptable. In the real world, this has been a by partisan issue. 30 governors and more republican governors, 17 republican governors and 13 democratic governors increased funding for preschool in their state budgets. They chose to use scare taxpayer dollars to expand access to high quality, Early Learning opportunities. Budgets, not words, not empty rhetoric reflect our true value and these 30 governors walk the walk. One quick example, Governor Snyder in michigan committed to putting 65 million in the state program to ensure children in need of preschool have access to it. He said he was going to make mic a no wait state for early child education. We need to help every state make the same claim. That is why the president s request for 75 billion in mandatory funding for preschool for all program is so essential to the nations future. They would support state led efforts to provide access to preschool through a mixed Delivery System both public and private from 4 year olds from load and moderate income families. A coalition has come together and is working together to support these efforts. States attorneys, sheriffs and Police Association support high quality Early Learning because it reduces crime when kids grow up. They are tired of locking people up. Military leaders,e admirals and generals support it as well because three fourths of young people cant join the military because they are physically unfit or cant pass the Entrance Exam or have a criminal record. Our military is our strongest defense. The americas Education System must be the strongest offense. Hundreds of hard headed business leaders, c. E. O. s are advocates because they know high quality Early Learning produce a better work force and have a high return on investment. An economist found a return of 7 for every dollar in preschool programs. How many other users of scares taxpayer returns opportunities to the American People . As new data from our Civil Rights Data collection shows. Next slide. Students of color, students with disabilities and english language learners dont get the same opportunity as their white and Asian American peers to take the courses necessary to prepare for college. That means the students cant take classes they need to apply to fouryear college. Or that means they go to college and they burn through pell grants and Financial Aid taking nonbearing classes. Black and hispanic students are 40 of High School Students but only a quarter of students taking a. P. Classes and 20 enrolled in calculus classes. This dumbing down of expectations is devastating to students, families, and communities, and ultimately to our nation. This final slide highlights opportunity gaps in our schools. Most schools today have nowhere near the bandwidth in their schools. Twothirds of teachers wish they had more technology in their classrooms. It engages students in their own learning and helps students to visualize their own instructions. Other nations take these opportunities more seriously than we do. In south korea, a highperforming nation educationally, 100 of their students have access to highspeed internet. Here in the United States, it is 20 . 20 versus 100 . Our student, our teachers and our schools lack the bandwidth to take advantage of the new tools that could accelerate efforts to close glaps and ensure that is all students graduate from High School College and career ready. How is it fair to our children . How it is fair to our hardworking teach centers teac . The theme running through president obamas budget request. It is the overarching goal of the preschool grants and the preschool for all proposal. It is behind our request 300 million race to the top to help states develop road maps to ensure all students can reach their potential and our 200 million Educators Initiative to provide teachers with the expertise to use technology to raise them to highehighstandards. The House Republican budget would widen, increase opportunity gaps. O. M. B. Estimates that the ryan budget would cut funding for education by 15 in 2016 or by 10 billion. If that cut was applied this year, title one of our nations poorest children would be cut by 2 2 6789 billion. I. D. E. Grants, special need student, special education, those would be cut by 1. 7 billion. Mr. Chairman, with the recovery, act which you voted against, that increased funding by 12 billion. The ryan budget would cut funding, you voted for. There is one thing to talk about but i want folks to Pay Attention not to our rhetoric but to our votes. The cuts to the disadvantaged students, poor children, children with special needs, that is the wrong direction to go for our children and our nations future. We can and must do better together. The American Dream has always been about opportunity. Today, our nation is failing to live up to the core american ideal for all of its citizens. We must do more now to level the Playing Field and make education available to every child i think that is who we are. As former Florida Governor jeb bush says the sad truth is that quality of opportunity doesnt exist in many of our schools. The failure is the great moral and economic issue of our time and it is hurting all of america. Lets get back to working together to close glaps that are deeply at odd of equal opportunity. I appreciate the by partisan work of the committee to pass a Charter School bill b bipartisan bills have been far and few between to no ones benefit. I hope you can take that work to scale again and great bipartisans support for an f. Y. 2014 budget that will provide the teachers and students ith the support they need. Before i close, i would like to say a quick word about my good friend congressman miller. I think this is the last committee that i will be testifying where youre at. I have loved working with you over the past six years. I talked to a retired member of congress over the weekend. He said of the entire congress he thinks youre the smartest member in toamples education issues. [applause] i think that is an accurate sediment. What im more impressed with your is your intelligence is your courage. Youre willing to take unpopular positions. Youre willing to take it on in a profound way. If we had more members of congress that had that level of courage, i think our nation would be a better place. Thank you for your service and leadership. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Secretary. Im going to talk about budgets for a minute. You mentioned the socalled ryan budget and the president s budget. The president s budget never balances. It continues to add to our nations debt and the burpeddens of our children forever. The ryans budget balances within 10 years. Just to note the ryan budget doesnt cut a dime from special ed. It allows priorization and i hope we start to priorization, republican and democrats the spending for special ed. You remember very well, mr. Secretary, if you dont i do, your first appearance here and i asked you about special Education Funding. You pointedded out the spike that you did again that was in the stimulus bill. We had a discussion about that one time when one year spike is not useful to i. D. E. A. And special education because it does not allow them to get an ongoing program. A oneyear spike is a oneyear spike. That is additional 12 billion. It was a spike, im reclimbing my time. It was a spike. Will the gentleman yield . I will not. Hang on. What weve been asking for, what ive been asking for is a commitment to increase funding for special education. It is a short coming that were republicans and democrats have had in administration and in congress and we need to Work Together to increase that funding. When i travel to schools, not only in my district in minnesota but around the country, the thing they want most from the federal government is for it to start to step up and meet its commitment toward that 40 of increased funding. We never got over 18 . My question then, mr. Secretary, youve got over a dozen new programs in this president s new budget but you dont have increased funding that is available for special education. Again, i want to be clear. Our budget has 100 million increase for special education. The act increased it, the largest increase in special ed funding ever, you voted against that. I absolutely voted against that because it set us on a path where were running up huge deficits and debt. That spike spending does not address the needs for the children, whether youre special needs or not special needs, we need steady funding for special ed and that is what we need to work towards. The 100 million socalled increase you put set aside so actual funds go down. That is not accurate. Just to be clear, were both repeating ourselves. 12 billion that you voted against a ryan budget would lead to a decrease. We are repeating ourselves. The ryan budget will not decrease special ed funding. We can increase the spending if we so choose. Apparently, youre not going to increase that spending. Let me be clear, our budget asks for 100 million in special ed funding. Youre not going to increase yearoveryear funding. In the last two weeks, you rerended washingtons waiver in the teacher evaluation law that is inconsistent with the waiver requirements and granted a waiver in illinois despite the laws are inco consistent with the requirements. In washington you have overruled the washington citizens as enacted by the elected officials. On the other hand, illinois and other states you have shown willingness to bend requirements to fit state needs. How do you find consistency . How do state expect to find consistency under those situations . Washington made commitments in writing a year or two ago. In good faith, both parties need to live up to their commitments. In washington, despite the governors best efforts, despite the lieutenants best efforts, washington could not live up to their commitments. In an agreement, folk cant do that, the agreement has to end. The door is always open. We welcome them to come back any time they want. Both parties have to work in good faith. Mr. Miller. I yield. I was trying to get your attention mr. Chairman because i think history is a good thing to remember. You werent here and i dont think is secretary was here either. There was a point where republicans had 10 points were running on. One was to increase spending for idea. When we got into congress after that election and the speaker of the house was the chairman of this committee, i offer an amendment to the bill that would fully fund idea. Not a Single Member of your party voted for it, not one. Everyone on this side did. It a degree of seriousness on who wants to do something and who wants to talk about it. They would have specified it and they were going to cut the dollars and not tell you where. I thank the gentleman. I would also point out at that time, there were 345 signatures on the letter to the administration calling for full funding of special ed and we could not get a vote in the sub committee. There is always a reason. When you talk about prioritizing, we have an amendment after amendment to cut special ed to provide money for another program. They are always playing the shortages in Education One against the other. The question always was, if you increase special ed you had to savage another program to do that to grow the pot. The record is not great in special ed expect the rhetoric from the officials who say when the vote comes they are never there. Thank you for adding money at the administration level. Well see where the congress falls through with that at the budget level. By the way, there is 380 billion in tax cuts coming out of the ways and Means Committee that arent paid for. They are going to add in the base, they have a gimmick. It is not paid for. If you need to among the wealthiest enterprises in the country, you dont have to pay for it but if you want special education, you have to pay for it. I want to touch on an issue that you touched on in your Opening Statement that is important to me in dealing with the renewal of the waivers. That is the issue of equity. I had the honor of participating in the anniversary in austin, texas, two weeks ago. President johnson made a dramatic commitment to equity with that civil rights act. He made the commitment to equity that the in his recognition that equity was not just the absence of oppression, but the existence of opportunity. That is when we look at title one and the executive federal role it is about ensuring there is opportunity there for all kids no matter what their zip code or their neighborhood they that have the opportunity. As we go through the renewals of the waivers. My concern is are we starting to see people mask and combine groups to disgues disguise onceo they dont know how individual students are doing in the school and whether or not they have the opportunity to take full advantage of that education . I just wonder if you might play out and look that the renewal process. Everything were trying to do is try to increase equity. The access of focus on technology, the Early Childhood play is the best we can make. A Great Partnership has been with chairmans home state of minnesota. Minnesota had high achievements but had some of the largest achievement gaps in the investigation. Very strong but huge disparity in outcomes. Thanks for couragement and they have cut districts in half. They have been tranders parent and putting this data out. Still a long way to go. It is those kinds of examples with people being honest, truthful, being out there and being transparent. We want to support that and people who are trying to hide things please hold us accountable for challenging that. There are other great things that minnesota is taking the real challenges seriously and in an honest and straight forward way. The average child coming from a Disadvantage Community starts kindergarten at 5 years old at 14 months behind. The fact that we dont always do a great job catching them up. We have to get our babies off to a better start. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you mr. Secretary for being here. I have a little statement i want to read and i would appreciate your reaction. Im concerned about the state of the student loan system. These are Serious Problems that need to be addressed by this committee. Other defaults are easily avoided and we must consider how we restructure the repayment process for Student Loans. In a recent paper, the vast majority of students do not borrow large amounts of money but many of the students are defaulting at high rates. The average loan in default is 14,000. She argues for these students, we do not have a debt crisis but a repayment crisis. The Current System turns reasonable levels of debt in crippling payment burdens that can prevent young workers. Automatically protecting in the periods where they are lower. We have options like this in the federal system and incomebased payment. President obama added the pay as your earn proposal. Everyone knows it is a bureaucratic nightmare. At the same time, by providing generous forgiveness, pay as you earn is likely contributing to overborrowing, particularly among graduate students. This process can be overwhelming to people and trying to help them understand that. There are some some fantastic forprofit universities. There are some taking advantage of folks. Clearly, there is an imbalance there were people and it up in a worse position than when they started. The president has challenged us to look at a College Rating system. Getting more information out to people will be very important. Incentives for people to go into the Public Sector and to take on critically important work that we need them to do in classrooms and legal aid clinics. We feel good about that. There is an important federal role. This is about shared responsibility. States have to increase their investment to Higher Education. When states cut their funding, universities jack up their tuition. Universities have to do a better job of using technology in better ways. We have an Important Role to play. This should be a topic we should work in a bipartisan light on. Mr. Holt . You, mr. Secretary. A few comments before i get to questions. I noticed it was said earlier that your commitment to preschool for all is a pet project. I do not think this is a frivolous pet project. Often you were attacked for waivers. If the leadership of this house would get to work and get a elementary and secondary education act up to date and working, there would be less need for waivers. I want to commend you for the funding for the state longitudinal data systems. That is critically important for understanding students progress. I want to invite you to respond. It is not a question. I want to call attention to teach grants. I think this needs to be enhanced. It is not sufficient. Last year, the Deputy Assistant secretary for international programs, the office of international and Foreign Languages stepped down and has not been replaced, has not even been named. Beenlacement has not named. Given that one of your isives is degrees to increasing global competency, what are you going to do to address the continuing lack of support for language learning, global competency, problems and Higher Education with anemic funding for title vi and the department of state. A second question i would like to bring up, it has to do with your comments about novell economist nobel economist findings that the highest return on investment is in the first three years of education. I am a cosponsor of representatives millers stronger start for americans children. Disparities are evident. They are large by 24 months. I understand that early head is administered by the department of health and human services, but can you provide a would work with the states to expand Early Learning opportunities. Sufficient . Etaside if there is time, i have other questions. The waiver plan was always plan b. Lannett was always bipartisan reauthorization. In democraterested bills. I am not interested in republican bills. I am interested in your charter bill. That seems to have bipartisan support. We are ready, willing, able to work in a bipartisan way to fix the law. Teach grants are very important. We want to make sure they are going to individuals that are truly preparing future teachers for the rigor of that very complex job. Do a pretty good job. Many, frankly, dont. Of national competitiveness, we want to do more. I am happy to talk to you about it. I met with my counterpart from japan yesterday to talk about increased the number of Exchange Students going both ways. Finally, we have worked in partnership with dhhs. All of this work on the early has to be aace seamless continuum of opportunity. Hhs team has been fantastic partners. Where linked at the hip. Hip. Are linked at the since you did not really answer the specific questions i have on those programs, i hope you will provide that in writing as soon as possible. Happy to do that. Thank you very much. A gentlemans time has expired. Mrs. Fox. Thank you. I remain concerned about draft regulations coming out of the negotiated rulemaking session. It is one thing to say states authorize institutions that operate within their states. It is entirely another thing to dictate precisely how those states are to do it, and then if you do not agree, punish the students for attending the institutions within the state. Are you using the federal regulatory process to push states into regulating solutions according to a federal idea rather than what might work for students in the institutions within the state. I am happy to continue that conversation with you further. We want to make sure young people are being well served. I would also reiterate what the chairman said. We would like answers to some of the questions that we send you in a more timely fashion, so i look forward to getting more information. I apologize for that. Last year, the president announced the development of a new College Rating system that would compare colleges with Similar Missions and it would be based on access, affordability, and outcomes. I appreciate you have taken steps to gain feedback from the community on this proposal. I speak to a lot of students and families about their college search, and, actually, spent sometime during the easter break visiting campuses with my grandson who is a junior in high school this year. So, i am saying this from a very personal level. Your state is not the similar to probably every other state. You have institutions of Higher Education that have a 95 Graduation Rate, and others that have a 12 Graduation Rate. We at the federal level, thanks to your support, put out about 150 billion in grants and loans to institutions with a dash of Higher Education each year, and the hundred 50 billion is based on input. None of it is based on outcomes. This is an area that should be of huge interest of two republican friends of trying to have accountability there, and are Graduation Rates going up or down . Are people taking their mission seriously on the access side and the completion side . It is a massive investment and we want to make sure it is being used widely wisely. Many, many hearings on the Higher Education act as well as all the legislation we have put forth in this committee. One of the things that we hear over and over and over again, is that the department collects mountains and mountains of data, but from that we get very little information. So, rather than the Department Setting up Rating Systems there are a lot of Rating Systems out there done by the private sector. Why dont you just make information public . Why dont you revise the way you collect data, and then make that available to the public . We like transparency. We do not think we are getting a lot of transparency from the department. Why not put out useful information and let the public make the decision about how to rate the institutions . We have done a tremendous amount to increase transparency. I would agree with you, we have to continue to do this. As youre going through with your grandson, it could be an overwhelming process. For those navigating what is a grant, what is a loan, what is the fouryour cost, the Graduation Rate, the chance to get a good job there is a huge of amount of information. We are trying to do everything to increase information and please challenge us to do a better job there. At the end of the day, we think the hundred 50 billion annual investment, over time we would like to see more of that money going to places that are serious about Graduation Rates, serious about reducing their own costs, they can sure young people are prepared to go into the world of work and get a good job, and away from those places that do not take College Completion seriously, that just see a free paycheck coming from the government every year. We think that next up is important in addition to transparency. Thank you. Mr. Every home a. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank you, mr. Secretary for being here today. I appreciate you reminding us that the issues we are dealing with our indeed civil rights issues, equity issues, economic issues, opportunity issues. With that backdrop, let me ask two questions with regard to equal access and opportunity. How will the president s new proposal on Early Childhood affect existing state and local Early Childhood oh grams such as prek or programs such as prek or early childcare programs, you particularly in particular head start, which under the ryan budget is taking a 700 billion hit. Our goal is simple on the Early Childhood space. We want to remove children from waiting lists at the state level, and as i have traveled statetoto statetostatetostate, you see 8000, 13,000 kids, routinely on waiting lists. Our goal would be to keep kids going to existing programs, but for those hardworking families trying to do Something Better for their kids before they start kindergarten, giving them the chance in the concrete way. That is what this money would go for. I want to be clear. You cannot do this on the cheap. You are paying for teachers, classrooms, materials that do not exist today. Anyone that says they are for Early Childhood education but not willing to invest more money, they are not walking the walk, they are not living their values. And, secondary education the 2013 gao report outlined the failure of far too many Charter Schools to report critical data, particularly with regards to students with disabilities, english language learners, and poor kids in general. In the current budget climate, title i is that presequestration levels, below prequel presequestration levels in this budget. What assurances can you tell us about that 248 Million Dollars proposed for Charter Schools that will go to institutions that provide equal access to distinct populations, english learners, and students with disabilities, and poor kids, compared to what traditional Public Schools are being required to do at this point . Happy to follow up, but simply put we want our money to go to highperforming Charter Schools. There is often the debate of charter versus traditional. I think it is the wrong debate. We need more highperforming schools. Traditional, or charter, whatever they may be. We want to expand to be very clear that those charters that are getting great results, but working with their proportional share of poor children, english language learners, special needs kids so many children, it was their mission to serve kids that did not have advantages, and hold us accountable to make sure we are doing that correctly. I appreciate that. We talked about the ryan budget is about prioritization. If it goes to ida, that is a priority. By definition, the ryan budget means a severe cuts will be in other areas on top of the cuts that are already in the ryan budget. If indeed prioritization for ida and meeting the mandated 40 as part of the issue, that will require extra resources, and we should not be afraid to talk about extra resources as opposed to robbing peter to pay paul in this particular instance. I yield back, mr. Chairman. The gentleman yield back. Dr. Rowe. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and i know our chairman is one of the most supportive people of people with disabilities. Mr. Secretary, i think the biggest challenge we have in education is to narrow the achievement gap, and i have spent a lot of time since you were here last i read a number of books and research, and one of them i read is i got schooled, and i know you have met with the author of this book. We find out the achievement gap our schools in a lot of places are doing a fantastic job, and in many places a very poor job. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. We know what works and what does not work. We know we need effective teachers, leadership in the classroom, and data to find out before we were doing is actually working. We need, probably, smaller schools, and that is a bigger one because it is a very extensive thing, and then more time in the schools. I want to start with your early education. If you look at a child that lives in a poverty area, they hear 30 million less words by the time they get to kindergarten than a child in higher income does. 30 million less words are the problem is if we go through prek and do not continue the other metrics i have talked about, you lose all of that. Vanderbilt published a study not a year ago that showed those very things those gains are lost by the end of first grade, i think it is. One of things i would ask you to do is look at hhs, the Head Start Program that works in some places, does not work in other places, find out what works there, and if youre think in about increasing this, and certainly governors are, combined the programs instead of committing to another gigantic program. Lets look at what we have because our resources are limited. Just so everyone in this room understands how well some schools are doing, if you take schools that have 10 or less poverty, and 75 more free and reduced lunch, we have the highest scores in the world. It is pockets we have to go and focus on. Are we doing that, or taking a gigantic shotgun and shooting up the whole country . You have really studied this issue and i appreciate your sincere commitment to thinking it through. I agree with many of the points you made, but just to challenge you on the w o we have to look at headstart and everything, but to be clear, we cannot get to where we need to go simply with existing dollars. We want to go from about 1. 1 Million Students with access to prekindergarten to 2. 1 million. Second, to the assumption that all the gains disappear, it would be great to have a doctor comment testify. He came to this with a great deal of skepticism, frankly. What he saw, not over a year, but on 3, 4, now going over five decades, massive return on investment. I agree with that, mr. Secretary, but one of things that is also lost that is not in your budget year, in the summertime i do not know if there are summer programs are not low income children lose gains during the summer. Your children, my children, they do not. We will have them at the library, doing all kinds of things. That is a fairly simple thing that would negate those losses. If you lose 2. 8 months in three or four years, you are a year behind no matter how good you do. Could not agree more. More schools are thinking about yearround. Many successful Charter Schools are just working longer hours. We love that kind of innovation. One place we do not need another study is around Summer Reading loss. You hit the nail on the head, and when he to and that cycle. I agree. Legally, because my time is limited, one thing that affects my district specifically is the impact aid payment for federal property programs. You eliminate that. I cannot hear you, say it again . You eliminate that. It is the impact aid payment for federal property programs. In lieu of taxes. 55 of that county is owned by the federal government. I grew up in a county where fort campbell, kentucky, was and took the best farmland and Agricultural Land they had. Those schools are hit severely with that. What of my schools, 180,000, it is a not it is not a lot of money from here but it is a small rural county and it puts them at a great is advantage. There are School Systems this affects. I dont know the details of that specific situation. I have to follow up. Another thing i wanted to ask you can you tell us with the Graduation Rate is for pell grants . I want to brag on tennessee. Our governor just produced a program passed by the legislature to provide Free Community college and Technical College for everyone in our state. The democratic time has expired. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Last time i spoke was one of the few brief shining moments of the 133th congress where one of the 80 bills that have been enacted was about to be signed by the president last august. That protected the Stafford Loan Program from going to 6. 8 and as you know it is 3. 8 a shining moment of bipartisanship. The president at that time was saying our work is not finished. That is why when i look at the ryan budget, in terms of its impact on higher ed programs, it just takes your breath away. 260 billion in cuts to pell, 145 billion, 41 billion on stafford, wipes out incomebased Repayment Program and incredibly gets rid of the American Opportunity tax credit that allows middleclass families to get a tax credit to pay for college. About 11 million families lost 1100 under the ryan budget. I always thought republicans were for cutting taxes. Nothing seems to surprise me, i guess, in terms of the way their priorities play out. But on the stafford program. Again, everybody was kind of patting themselves on the back for the fact we protected the rate increase from going into effect effective july 1. What their measure does is it eliminates the in School Interest protection which is therefore subsidized stafford loan students. It is about 7 Million Students who, again, do not have interest accumulate while they are actually in college. The estimate from the cbo is that it adds about 3000 to the interest level of students at time of graduation use stafford. So the 1 trillion price tag of Student Loan Debt which is stifling our economy, hindering peoples advancement, they just added another 41 billion, and this is a program which, by the way, doesnt cost the taxpayers money. Stafford is an interestbearing program that the federal government actually nets out with a positive cash flow according to cbo. They basically raise the revenue through this measure of in School Interest by eliminating that protection for students. Again, i think the record has to be Crystal Clear here, they are taking us backwards in terms of the issue of Higher Education affordability. Now, your budget came out with a number of proposals which, again, just as the other side of this, which i hear about all the side all the time at home which is, when will we do something about rising tuition costs . Again, limiting this help for students does not do a thing as far as that is concerned. Your proposal is trying to change incentives so affordability is one of the criteria they have to demonstrate and i wonder if you could talk about that. There is lots of room for honest debate and disagreement and discussion. Right now we are 12th in the world in college Graduation Rates. One generation ago we were first. It is not that we dropped, but we stagnated, flatlined and 11 countries past us. In a flat economy, flat world where jobs will go to where the most educated workers are, i think we can all agree that being 12 in the world is not a badge of honor, not something we can be proud of. We have to figure out how to go from 12 in the world to first as fast as we can. And anything that reduces access to college, that makes it harder to go, more expensive, takes us in the wrong direction. So we have to get better faster. We have high school with High School Graduation rates going up, that is huge. We have to make sure they are college and career ready. And there is significant work going on. But it has to translate to higher College Completion rates. So lets find ways to Work Together to get their, but reducing to get there, but reducing access and making it more expensive rather than less, i think we are hurting our country, cutting off our news despite our face and jobs will go to countries to take that responsibility and opportunity more seriously than us. If we want to keep high wage, high skill jobs here and we want to build the middle class, the only way to do that is to increase access to some form of Higher Education. I think the Rating System which, again, helps families and students make smart choices and not intimate with the default that was talked about. And mr. Chairman, i want you to know the president of the university of connecticut, hungry huskies embraced the administrations plans and is willing to go along with the Rating System. I thank the gentleman for not talking about basketball. [laughter] i yield back. Mr. Wahlberg. Thank you for being here, mr. Secretary. I would concur with what my colleague from tennessee indicated about the ideas what about in i got schooled. All those ideas i read from individual certainly does not come from a perspective on a lot of issues but on education, it made sense. And all of that went more to the power of the local district, the power of the local administrators, especially the building principal. Being able to do a mentoring process, developing Great Teachers. And promoting Great Teachers. And even suggesting to teachers who have certainly plenty of wellmeaning aspirations but yet are not going to make it in the world that we have right now to bring kids through the education process. That certainly says to me that the topdown Central Planning that goes on from washington, congress, department of education, yourself and responsibilities that you have, may not be the best direction if you want to give, as he indicated already about my governor, making some significant payments and attempts and strides as a growing education in our state, dealing with early education, having a no wait plan in place, a k20 process, all sorts of good ideas developed at the local and state levels where they actually know what is happening at the schools or at least have the ability to do that. We ought to be encouraged. The chairman already asked you about what appeared to be inconsistent application of waiver. You indicated the waiver was not your first plan. But that is where we are at right now. I understand michigan is one of those states whose waivers have been flagged as being potentially problematic. Largely for the same issue washington faced. Michigan is and that the has an active teacher evaluation law that gives School Districts flexibility and incorporating student achievement and evaluation than you would prefer, as i understand it. Are you planning to rescind michigans waiver . What i dont know the details of the situation. That has not come to me. I have a great working relationship with the government and state superintendent. Your first statement, i think you presumed we somehow disagree. I want to be clear there may be more Common Ground than you realize. Part of the reason i have been so angry about no child left behind is it was very, very loose on goals. 50 different goalposts, 50 different standards but very prescriptive from washington in terms of how to meet those goals. I remember when i was running the chicago Public Schools, i had to beg our department of education to allow me to try to tutor about 20,000 of my kids after school who what washington was telling me i could not do it. It was crazy. What we are trying to do hopefully in a bipartisan way in terms of reauthorization, i think the right tradeoff is to be tight on goals, make a high board high bar, make sure all of our students are graduating and graduating college and career ready and not having to take remedial classes, but much looser, but less prescriptive. How do you make it happen . So, tight on goals, loose on means, that is where what i think no child left behind got fundamentally wrong. Those are the values i think absolutely essential. I evidently think that is the direction the chairman and his committee would like to go, making sure we provide opportunities for the local School Districts and our states to meet high goals, yes, but have a great deal of latitude. Yesterday i met with a class in the largest landbased area of the School System of the state of michigan. A rural School System, a lot of land space. I weep before i met with the largest will system in michigan but that was not detroit the week before i met with the largest School System in michigan, but it was not detroit. We have a great amount of variety. For our top down management moving us back to a setting where we are number one in College Graduations as opposed to number 12 and the like is something we ought to be moving toward. I want to ask a final question. You listened to Higher Education institutions give you feedback on the Rating System you propose. What have you heard . I heard lots of things. I will be very clear. It is very difficult. Complex. I am very aware of some of the perverse incentives of no child left behind in the last thing we want to do is replicate that in the higher its phase. We want to make sure universities who are working with a more challenging population are not compared to harvard, yell, stanford. That makes a lot of sense. You want to make sure you are maximizing choice and transparency. You want to make sure that young people who want to go into teacher teaching, or going to the peace corps or work in nonprofit. Earnings in the backhand not creating incentives that take individuals or her universities from encouraging folks to do public service. Those are the types of feedback you heard. There is trepidation on any kind of change and also significant support. The we are taking this very, very seriously and going into it with a real sense of humility. The gentleman top the gentlemans time has expired. Thank you, mr. Chairman, thank you for the secretary. With all due respect to our chairman, the ryan budget is not fiscally or morally sound. It fails the test of even a budget. If you cant determine where your revenue is really coming from in any reasonable real way or where your cuts are coming from, it is not a budget. Mr. Secretary, i just want to talk to you a little bit about pell grants. We know that right now pell grants are eating more than 9 million lowincome americans in the country. And a iding more than 9 million lowincome americans. In the president s budget i am working with some of my colleagues across the aisle on a bipartisan bill that would expand eligibility for the Pell Grant Program for Early College and duly enrolled High School Students. What are your thoughts . First of all, i want to appreciate the your leadership and i think you are passionate on these education issues and extraordinarily thoughtful. We have not talked much about this today but all the dual enrollment taking ap, classes, college classes, those are huge, huge programs. I am a big, big fan. To be very clear, this is not just for the highfliers. I actually think these are good dropout prevention programs. If students on the margins start to take the classes and think maybe i can belong in college, maybe i can be successful. I went to an amazing Early College located on a College Campus in el paso, texas. Low income students, virtually all immigrants. Ninth grade biology class and these ninth graders were Getting College credit. Take about what it does in terms of not just academically but psychologically, how empowering that is. How you create opportunities, i am very interested in. Pell grant being an interesting possibility. If we had more students let me just be Clear High School diploma for me as a starting point and not an ending point. If every High School Student was graduating either with College Credit in their back rocket or with certification, then i would feel much but about where what they are going to be will to do long term. Thank you, mr. Secretary. What happens now is the high schools we are so excited about that these programs are not bearing the cost of the programs are bearing the cost of these or these kids are and i think it would be unfair if were going to promote this. I do not who is here from iowa, but iowa has about 25 of the High School Students taking collegelevel classes. They worked out at the state level some pretty interesting partnerships where k12 is not bearing all the cost. I heard you mention all of our students a lot of times the day and the testimony and i am greatly concerned with the rising number of competitive Grant Programs coming out of the department of education. How do you land on ensuring equal equal funding and opportunity for all students and not just the limited number of students in School District that have the infrastructure in place to write good grants . To be clear, roughly 80 to 90 the formulabased and 10, 12 is competitive. It is pretty consistent. But it is a swing since you came in, more competitive grants now than there were prior to this administration. We feel proud about that. Two quick answers. One, we tried to make sure that as we do these types of competitions, that we have a very diverse slate. There are lots of concerns that rual communities rural immunities cannot come eat compete and we are improving and getting their fair share. People that have a real and sincere him in. We can go Grant Program by Grant Program and show who the recipients have been and we think it will be pretty representative. We are not going to highfliers but going to the most is advantage communities. The other thing that is so important is what we have done these heights of things, we have seen significant changes in behavior so it is not just those receiving the money that are benefiting but the district moving and more profound ways. Neighborhoods are a good example. There are dozens and dozens of great applicants of which we could fund but we did not have the dollars available. That many of the communities that come together have a blueprint, edition, and are working together with or without our money. I wish we can fund them but there have been residual benefits from putting these programs in place. Inc. You, mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you, gentlelady. The Budget Review in today, i know it was saying the right budget was not moral or physical fiscal. It does raise taxes and does not close loopholes and so have chosen to dollars of debt. I just want to if we are going to be honest. If you read through the build you have brought this question on waivers and the application of that. I was hoping when i first got on the committee we would we authorize or change no child left behind. That is the process to have them send it back were doing it with the workforce investment act. Went out of here. I think a partisan vote and we are hopefully having a final bill through the senate. Not impossible to do. Just have to have the will to do it. Our leadership has taken a stance on fixing no child left behind. It is possible but i think it is not the most strategic or successful. Does to let the senate would like to do it in a partisan way. The bill is in the senate and it happened. The other way is for the president to grab the attention of the company country, like george bush did, it was a very bipartisan bill that passed. The thing with the waivers, i think thats my issue, as broad discretion there. I think there is broad discretion, that it takes the pressure off the senate to fix anything. If there is an issue that is before us and we need to fix it, we know, and you can wave and the senate and say, well, we dont like this though but were getting what we want by waivers, then why would they ever come to the table to negotiate . That is the problem i have with the waivers. I fundamentally disagree. You should be absolutely feeling the pressure every single day because i am feeling the pressure every single day. Second choice for fixing it. Has to be nothing less to do nothing would be educationally morally irresponsible. You see with states have begun in the waiver process, moving away from focus of a single test score and looking at High School Graduation, reduce dropout rate, looking at College Going rates, College Going not needing remedial classes. Many states have brought in hundreds of thousands of kids who were invisible under no child left behind. It gets technical. They were not part of any accountability system. States are stepping up and saying we want to better serve for children and homeless children. I am not disagreeing with what theyre doing on the senate you should feel huge pressure. We did. And there is a bill sitting in the senate. Six years over door there is a bill in the senate. Met lou lets not point fingers. I am happy to work in any way constructed to move forward in a bipartisan way. I am willing to do so as well. The question i do have on the blueprint for career and Technical Education. From kentucky a program. The concern going from a state formula to a stay competitive grant and you are trying to focus on consortia between pau secretary and secretary which i agree with. Getting out of secondary with just these skills are not going to post secondary trying to incentivize, that is absolutely right. But the concern of some of my rural it is easier for us and western kentucky to have consortium. There is a swap of land not cover by higher institutions and there is a concern to answer the concern of rural Small Schools will may not be able to form a consortium, how will they be able to prosper under the situation . All we are trying to do is cut through silos. That we have high schools talking to Community Colleges and both talking to the private sector and making sure we are preparing students for real jobs that existed not the jobs of 30 years ago. Anything we can do better, that blueprint, it is probably two years out of date so we are happy to update. Because of the competitive nature, it will go to more cities in bigger cities in the programs and they are concerned about that. Other things we have done in absolute priority or separately we could go through the stuff we have done, but we have had very significant rural opulence and in that part being left to decide, i am less worried about that but the consortia idea is what we want to continue to i agree with that. Just a way to get there. Look forward to working. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Polis. Thank you, mr. Secretary, for joining us today to discuss the department of educations priorities. I want to thank you. Under your leadership we truly are witnessing the transformational power of an innovative and disruptive federal role in our schools. Your Signature Program race to the top, to which i introduced a standalone bill earlier this year has spurred and continues to spur a wave of policy changes that helps states raise the bar for students and teachers, promote innovation and accountability for School Districts, school leaders, and educators. Thanks to race to the top, states and School Districts including my home state of colorado built systems to evaluate and support teachers and principals and invest in our youngest learners by expanding highquality preschool and turning around our nations persistently failing schools. Your administration has shown strength and courage despite this bodys inability to act to reauthorize a long overdue and antiquated no child left behind law. Many of your budget request will bring us closer but only a full reauthorization of nclb will truly move the needle. I was encouraged to hear your complimentary words about this committees work on the Charter School reauthorization. I hope we will have the opportunity to pass the bill on the floor of the house. It truly is a bipartisan encroachment that improves the quality of the limited Resources Available to go to Charter Schools startups and i hope that you conveyed your support for these efforts to the senate where we believe this bill is a realistic way to focus on what we agree on rather than what we disagree on. And i look forward to working with you and the administration to move forward on the full overhaul of nclb or whatever we can find to agree on. A few months ago i wrote a barb bipartisan letter with 25 colleagues in support of the administrations connect initiative which aims to connect 99 of schools with broadband in five years. How will the connect Educators Initiative give resources to take advantage of the bandwidth . Really quickly education always moves so slow. Technology has changed the way all you guys do business. It changed the way you guys interact socially. It led to democratic revolutions around the globe and technology has changed education by two percent, on the margins. When i look at what other countries are doing for the children, i worry for our kids. I see south korea being at 100 access and our school that 20 . Our kids are at a competitive disadvantage. I dont understand that. What we are looking to do is to dramatically increase access to highspeed draw broadband was i thinking drive equity the weather and the city or will remote or rural remote, and it can drive excellence. Students can move much faster and ahead. We need to increase schools capacity there but we also need to train teachers. The budget request is to give teachers the skills they need to customize learning, to individualize it. Teachers can support each other not in their buildings but across the country and across the globe in new ways. So i think this could have a Transformative Impact over time. We want to make certain features have the skills to fully equip and are fully equipped to ticket vendors. My colleagues questions, talking about the grantbased programs. In addition to allowing the administration to have the highest and best possible impact on Student Learning with limited resources by directing them food grants, including many of your Signature Initiative a race to the top, seed, Charter Schools how did these grants help raise the bar across the country for policy changes and develop a basis of best practice that everyone can benefit from . For all the noise or whatever, every single time we do a grant competition, we have way more great applicants than we have dollars available. So clearly there is a net need there. At the end of the day, it is really not about the money but about unleashing innovation. We have played at the state level, at the district level, at the Community Level and we try to impact all of them. As i said before, you have seen the level of coverage, the level of creativity, you have seen a level of collaboration and innovation that simply didnt exist before those opportunities were created. I just want to thank you again for your courage, your leadership. You lived in this work in a way that many of your colleagues, frankly, havent. I think you understand both our strengths but you share the sense of urgency how far as a nation we have to go. We have to get better faster. We have to do it with scarce resources and more of the same, more just incremental change is not going to get us what we need to go. And my home state of colorado, even though we do not win the first is a toronto race to top we are winners in the policy innovations we do not win first or second place at race to the top we are winners in the policy innovations. The gentlemans time has expired. I want to congratulate you for the celebrity nba allstar game. Your ratio could have been better. I am working on it. But you were in the arena and the rest of us were not. When i listen to criticism of our colleague paul ryan i cant help but think, mr. Secretary, his budget passed. The president s budget which, by the way, none of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle had the courage to introduce. It has to be done by republicans it is that zero votes last year and two votes this year. When we want to talk about moral courage and bang on paul ryan while he is not here, people might, your bosss budget got a whopping two votes the last two times it was offered. Let me ask you this do you think government can engage in intentional Racial Discrimination to further a compelling governmental interest . Talking about important state goals. I want to ratchet it up to an important state goal to compelling state goal. Can government de jure discrimination to further a compelling governmental interest . I dont know the details. What guidance. The letter with respect to discipline from education and doj. Im happy to talk about that. I was you learn something new every day in the job. I was stunned when the data came out that as a nation we were suspending preschool students and expelling them from school. I had no idea. It was mindboggling to me. That we would be kicking three or fouryearold out of school and not serving them. Let me stop you right there because in a former life i was a prosecutor and it sounds great to say not serving them, but you also have kids in preschool and first grade who are following the rules which leads to the question, are you serving them by putting them in an environment not conducive to learning . And the question then becomes, is washington better able to make that decision or the local School Boards . Your letter i am saying your letter. You did not write it but you and the attorney general had a press conference on it. What i am trying to get at is i dont know how you would have voted on the affirmative action case last week in michigan. But there was a dissent lauded by some of the other side of the aisle the government can engage in intentional not de factp in Racial Discrimination to further a compelling government interest. You used the phrase important government interest which School Safety and discipline would be but yet you are not looking at intentional discrimination but you are focused on de facto dissemination. If he just has a disparate impact. You are a prosecutor and i am not. I am a former prosecutor. Just go to the data around the preschool stuff. 18 of enrollment, half the kids suspended more than once. Thats what i want to get at. That first statistic Means Nothing to me. 95 of the people i prosecuted for child pornography were white. That is a disparate racial impact, but i never stopped to think i wonder if we ought to reconsider our prosecution on child pornography. But you used several examples in this letter, one of which was a hispanic student fighting with a nonhispanic student. One got a twoday suspension and one got a threeday suspension. Who was the aggressor . Of course that matters, but at the end of the day, i for i take that first statement, which you said as low through i take it very seriously. The fact that 18 of children are receiving virtually half of the out of school suspensions, and these children are three and four years old. Im going to be very clear that is deeply, deeply troubling to me. Troubling to the standpoint that they are engaging in conduct that would warrant being disciplined or troubling from the standpoint that they are being kicked out of school . Troubling from the point of view that three and fouryearolds are being kicked out of school. How do you deal with it and who is best able to deal with it . Let me explain i worked in very challenging communities all my life. I work with kids coming with huge challenges. The easy thing to do would be to kick them out of the program iran and put them back on the streets. What we found was ways to work with them, to work with their families to get to the root of issues. If i had a child who was acting up in my after school program, and they witnessed perfect Domestic Violence last night at home, it makes you think differently about how you handle that child. Thats the kind of thoughtfulness that has been missing and that we want to put in place. Ive been to high schools that have had huge discipline problems, and have had to actually step back and create peer juries and challenge students to own their behavior. Thank you for being here today. I am pleased to see that the president s budget invests in education and begins to address some of the gaps and opportunities for American Students, and this is, as we have discussed, in stark contrast to the ryan budget with its cuts, i am particularly concerned about pell grants and i. D. E. A. When i visit schools in my district, i hear repeated concerns about that. I want to make a couple of remarks in response to some of the things we have discussed regarding the achievement gap. I want to point out the importance of the 21st Century Community learning funding and the importance of extended learning opportunities. Some of these programs i have visited have shown a tremendous opportunity to help especially kids at risk. With regard to the student debt that was discussed earlier, portland Community College in oregon is doing some great work on Financial Literacy, getting financial plans in effect with the student before the academic term, and they have been able to cut the number of accounts assessed with late fees by 70 and reduce the number of accounts sent to collection by more than half just with that increase in Financial Literacy. Theres some great work being done out there. My first question is about the president s request for the 170 million for the new stem Innovation Initiative that would use competitive grants to recruit educators and get more students ready for stem careers. In the budget it says that scientists and engineers are innovators and we must ensure that our nations capacity to innovate and compete is never limited by a shortage of talent in stem fields, and i could not agree with you more. I have had a lot of conversation with a lot of tech communities in my district and also with Companies Like boeing, intel, Lockheed Martin about the importance of developing a workforce capable of thinking creatively and driving innovation. It talks about the importance of immigrating arts and design into stem curriculums and helping students stimulate both halves of their brain and ultimately produce innovation. Can you talk about whether the competitive awards under the stem Innovation Initiative will be available to schools and educators that are pioneering the steam model, which integrates Arts Education into stem. Stem, steam, i am for it all. If you want to improve mass results, try a little music. Exactly. You know all the stuff. We think there are far too many children who have great aptitude and interest in stem fields and do not have access to Great Teachers and great courses, and we lose that. So many jobs in the future a hugely disproportionate number have been replied with passion and expertise and love of the stem areas. We want to create a Master Teacher corps were Great Teachers can get extra money so we do not lose them. We want to make sure we have great stem teachers not just for ap calculus and physics, but in third and fourth and fifth grade when so many children start to turn off. I appreciate the value of the program. My question is will that funding be available to steam schools as well . Again, i do not see a conflict between stem and steam terrific. Thank you. On a related note, i am concerned about the consolidation of the arts and Education Program into the wellrounded Education Program, especially since the Budget Proposal requests only 25 million for the consolidated program, which would support arts, health education, or foreign language, civics, government, history, geography, environmental education, economics, and Financial Literacy all important. This request is less than last years request and represents the amount arts and education had received independently. Im concerned as we are looking at ways to educate the whole child about that change. Are there other programs in a budget that could support a students creativity. Just one quick example, we have to put a huge emphasis on turning around financially underperforming schools, and part of the reason High School Graduation rates are going up is because dropout rates are going down. Down. One are the strategies the one of the strategies the still early, but it looks very promising. Schools have been turnaround using the artsbased curriculum. There are eight schools around the nation. Its Pretty Amazing to see, so that is another place where significant resources are going to enhance an arts curriculum in disadvantaged communities. Thank you. I see my time is expired. I yield back. Thank you. As you know, the department of education recently proposed a cut in Financial Aid to programs whose graduates have high debt to income ratios. The court spoke on this and blocked the measure in 2012. We recently convened a field hearing in arizona where this issue came up. I asked the question of two of our public universities. The president of nau was not there, but one of their representatives was. I asked the question if this rule were proposed for forprofit universities, would you support the same rule for notforprofit universities and public universities . Everyone of them said yes. All three said that if such a rule comes out, that all should be held to the same standards. Secretary duncan, when you released the gainful employment regulation, you said protecting students is at the core of the rule. If that is truly the case, have you examined how nonprofit programs like expensive law degrees or culinary arts degrees fair if the proposal is applied fare if the proposal is applied to everyone . If the bill is proposed for all of education, would you support it . We are trying to get this part right now. President crow is a remarkable leader. He is the best. Its Pretty Amazing what he has done there. Honestly, many of the values not just on the gainful stuff, but many of the values around the College Rating system are values i have to learn from him and others. Let us try and get this part right first, but your basic point about greater accountability that is what the College Rating system is about. About trying to make sure the 150 billion in taxpayer money is being used more wisely than it is today. So it should be applied across the board, and you would support legislation to apply it equally to all Higher Education . Again, we are doing two different things. We are working on the gainful regulations and also trying to develop a College Rating system. Specifically on the idea, why should the students that go to public universities why are they any less important . We are not there yet, and we are just trying to get these two complicated pieces of legislation right first. Would you agree that all of these are important . Every student is important. We may be introducing legislation along the lines to make sure public universities would be under the same rules you are proposing. I think that all students ought to be equally protected. Thank you. Happy to have that conversation. The gentleman yields back. Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you for joining us this morning. The share of president obamas budget for education i applaud you for supporting increased investments in education for all. Federal Higher Education in institutions which are vitally important to educating students of color and preparing them for College Since fiscal year 2011, however, funding levels for these programs have decreased, due largely to sequestration. I am concerned that those cuts have never been fully restored. Why are you recommending that congress invest in a host of new hire Education Programs instead of increasing the funding levels for those that i enumerated . Those programs are working for disadvantaged students. Obviously, we are big supporters, and i want to personally thank you for your leadership in education. You have worked as hard on these issues as anybody, and that means a lot to me personally. While we have to work to increase access, the president and i are extraordinarily concerned about the affordability of college. Its one thing to get students ready if they cannot afford to go where what they have this mounting debt, we worry about what that means to young people and the country, so we are strategically making a choice to invest more not just on the access side and preparing students, but in making sure they can afford to get through college and not have prohibitive costs prevent them. I want to work with you on that. By 2018, numeral two 3 of the nations jobs will require 2 3 of the nations jobs will require at least some postsecondary education. Fortunately, the nation is making progress. The Graduation Rate among latino students has increased 10 Percentage Points since the year 2006. However, our progress is uneven, and we must do more to improve High School Graduation rates and prepare those students for college and careers. Mr. Secretary, i and several other colleagues here will soon be introducing the cap and gown act to help strengthen americas high schools and support president obamas High School Redesign efforts. Can you tell us more about the president s vision for High School Redesign programs . We simply want to make sure that high schools are engaging students and are relevant. I worry that many students drop out of high school not because it is too hard but because it is too easy. They are bored and do not know why they are coming to school every single day. As many people know the economy has changed, and if you drop out of school, youre basically condemned to poverty and social failure, and that was not true 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. I will tell you about one high school i went to a couple of months ago. It was worcester tech in worcester, massachusetts. A couple of years ago, it was a failing school. Huge issues, huge dropout rates. They have done many, many things to engage students in their own learning. They have a fullfledged clinic where young people are taking care of animals fullfledged veterinary clinic. I have an auto body shop, a culinary program, a fully functioning credit union where students work there and get paid to do that. The school has become this Amazing Community asset. Not surprisingly, dropout rates, which were a huge issue, have almost disappeared. Graduation rates have soared. We want to see more high schools thinking about how they link what students are learning during the school day to the real world. Though students at worcester tech and other similar students other similar schools know why they are coming to school every day. The republican or the ryan budget cuts pell grants pell grants by eliminating mandatory money and reducing funding to the nondiscretionary funding. Experts believe this would potentially cut millions of students from the programs, leaving them to borrow more in loans, or they just may drop out of college. How would this cut impact our ability to reach president obamas goal to lead the world in College Attainment by 2020, and how would these cuts impact students of color . Anything that reduces access to Higher Education hurts young people, hurts families, and hurts our country. Our goal together should be to lead the world and college Graduation Rates, again, as soon as we can. Lastly, we have worked together to expand the Pell Grant Program. The College Costs continue to increase as the state is invest in Higher Education. How is the department of education creating incentives for colleges to control costs . The gentlemans time has expired. We will take that for the record. Thank you, mr. Secretary, for joining us again. Several questions to go through with you. In my role as a subcommittee chairman here, i visited some travel communities recently, and a lot of the jurisdiction belongs, of course, to the department of the interior, but in terms of School Structures and some other things, i think theres some small pieces that you in fact have. One concern that i saw was one tribe in particular was afraid quite literally to invest in School Buildings for fear that the government would then come back and say, so you got that done however you got it done, and therefore, we do not need to do it. And of course, promises have been made, and promises need to be kept. Can you quickly comment on that, and would you join me in an effort to write your boss or the department of the interior to help solve this . Absolutely. I want to be very clear that if we talk about neck goodies and disparities, no one has been more poorly served than our native children if we talk about inequities and disparities. I appreciate that. I want to be clear. While the department of interior has much of this, i want you to know i have but one of my top deputies there fulltime to try and help them figure out a better way to educate children, so we are all working on this together. Thank you for that. That is not the same guy that is supposed to be responding to our letters, is it . No comment. That was on me. Thats my fault. Thats a strong mark of character, frankly. I want to say that. I was in a meeting this morning where the apology could have been made and was not given, and it goes to character and leadership, and i appreciate you saying that. More specifically, you say responses will be more timely. I would like to know what that isnt what youre going to do to correct whatever situation you clearly have going on inside your office so we can have on both sides a reasonable expectation about what reasonable response means. I will go to the chairman gives him a timeframe, and he will not be shy. Thank you. Moving on to Washington State, noting that no one from that state is represented on this committee, and again, my role as a subcommittee chairman, we in the chairman talked about this as well. I am concerned about the way for waiver being revoked. I get it. I understand about accountability. You and i agree on that. However, if evaluations of these teachers were performed, what would be specific measurable outcome be . What should we expect as federal policy makers from this . Again, we are trying tremendous discretion. Every other state so far has figured this out, so there is no single way to do this. At the end of the day, what i believe in what i think you believe is that the goal of teaching is not to teach. The goal of teaching is to have children learn. And a piece not the whole thing, but a piece of teacher evaluations should be based on Student Learning. That is the commitment that Washington State gave. Unfortunately, to date, they have not fulfilled that. All were saying is that we think teaching is hugely important. We think teachers make a huge difference. Having been there like you have been there, talking to parents and teachers and community leaders, surely they care. Surely they understand the frustration and issues, and i agree that schools must exist for the students. They do not exist for the adults. I think what you are trying to do serves that purpose. Would you also, though, acknowledge that no person, no staff, no bureaucrat in your department knows the children of Washington State better than the parents and teachers and taxpayers of Washington State . Absolutely. On gainful employment, you believe the public Education System should be subject to that same role . Again, i want to be clear we are working on gainful employment regulations and also working on a College Ratings system, and those other two pieces of work we are working on. The gentlemans time has expired. Thank you, mr. Chairman. First of all, secretary duncan, i would like to thank you and administration for proposing a budget that makes Real Investments and our Education System from prek to post secondary education. I cannot tell you how disheartening it is to see the ryan budget with all its cuts to education passed the house. I note that it did not pass by a huge margin. The clock was kept open, and it barely passed. I think it was, like, 219 votes is what i recall. I am pleased to see this budget includes an investment in High School Redesign through a competitive Grant Program. I was excited to hear the president mention it in his state of the union address. However, the contours and details are mystifying to me. Can you tell us what are some of the key elements of a successful grant proposal, what they would be . And what are you really looking to do with High School Redesign . We talked a little bit earlier, but what we want to make sure is that we continue we are thrilled High School Graduation rates have hit an alltime high. But i worry a lot about the 20 who do not graduate and what their life is going to be like. We know there is not anything out there for them. What we want to do is make sure that high schools continue to be very relevant for young people, that they understand what the jobs are in their communities, why they are going to school, what that leads to. We want to make sure that they are rigorous with more access to highlevel education. High schools that are serious about making sure 100 of students graduate and graduate college and career ready, we need more schools to look like that. Early college and concurrent Enrollment Programs are part of the redesign. Absolutely. We talked earlier i dont know if you were here, but i am a huge fan of the dual enrollment Early College program. I would like to see a lot more of that so these resources can be used there. Finding ways to expand opportunity there, i think we should all be working hard on that. As a teacher before i came to congress, i have been involved with some of these concurrent Enrollment Programs. I have had actually students that come to my classroom from texas to california who have told me about their experience with some of these Early College programs. Do you see Early College also being applied to career and Technical Education . It absolutely is. I see many places doing that well, but i think our collective challenge is always how we can scale what works and do this in a way that many folks have not. We think we have done some pretty good work to increase these opportunities tom of but i know there are many more children out there who could benefit if they had the opportunity. We would love to work with you to figure out how we expand. To you believe that concurrent enrollment and Early College and Middle College strategies could have an impact on lowering the cost of education on middleclass families or Higher Education, im talking about. To be clear, we now have some high schools where students are graduating with an associates degree. By definition, they are reducing 50 of their Higher Education costs. It absolutely reduces costs, which is very important. I am as excited about the not just cost savings for cost reductions to families, and i think this is a really important dropout prevention strategy. Creating opportunities for children who did not have is a really big deal. A lot of the strategies require a counterintuitive approach, which is that we have to reduce class sizes at the secondary level in order to enable seminarstyle teaching that some of the pedagogy requires. I was interested in your conversation about somehow pell grants got mixed into the conversation. We had a conversation about the justification of the federal role in some of the Early College models. Since we are offering instruction, could you elaborate on thats amore . She asked the question if i am recalling correctly of whether we should be looking correctly at pell grants as the potential use of funds to help expand access to Early College opportunities, and that is the kind of created inking that i think we should all be engaged in thats the kind of creative thinking i think we should all being gauged in. We should leave no stone unturned and think about doing that. We would love to have that conversation. We have staff working pretty hard on these issues as we speak. The germans time has expired. Mr. Thompson. Click thank you, mr. Chairman. Secretary duncan, good to see you. The last time we talked, we were breaking bread and talked about how to best serve the needs of this nations youngest learners. I always appreciate those opportunities for conversations. The departments budget request focus heavily on a clipping the need to fill the jobs of the 21stcentury economy, and i think that is very appropriate. However, you do not propose any Additional Resources for the perkins funding. Last month, over 91 members of the house through the advocacy of the bipartisan career and Technical Education caucus requested the Appropriations Committee return career and technical Education Programming to presequester levels, and we talked a lot about the unemployed, the underemployed, and probably not enough, but some about the dwindling workforce participation, which is, i think, incredibly important to the strategic success of the future of this country. The solutions to address some of those problems is ct programming through the carl the perkins career and Technical Education act. Theres not too many social ills that cannot be addressed through a family sustaining wage job. Career and Technical Training enables individuals to have education to be career and college ready. My first two questions kind of go together. Why does the department continue to prioritize spending on untested and often duplicative education initiatives when we have a triedandtrue solution in perkins, and why move money funding away from a full commitment to fund the program . First, appreciate your interest in the Early Childhood space, and talking about that funding. Some form of Education Beyond High School has to be the goal. A huge fan of this. What we are simply trying to do is make sure that those programs are training students for the jobs of tomorrow and not of 20 or 30 years ago. Quite candidly, i go to hundreds and hundreds of schools, and i see some programs that are cuttingedge and worldclass and others that are a little bit outdated. What we are trying to do is we want to take to scale what is working and to make sure that these scarce resources are being used wisely, being used well to prepare students for the jobs and for the skills they need going forward. Quite candidly, that is not always the case. In many cases it is. In some places, its not being used as thoughtfully as we would like, so we are just trying to challenge that status quo. I share mr. Guthries concern. The program really is consistently proven, and i think it puts a disadvantage, whether its 32,000 School Districts in this country, approximately 30 of all schools fall in that category, and many obviously do not have the resources to be as competitive. We have to check whether it is a competitive priority a separate slate. Weve made absolutely certain that rural schools and communities are well represented. We have gotten better over time at doing that, but i think we can address that specific concern pretty well. A shifting of 100 million i think is a significant concern i have struggled to get the data. Thank you. Thank you for your commitment. I will try to hit three different areas if i can. Number in mye district. One issue that has come up his student debt. The fact that we are at 1. 2 trillion, second to only home mortgages. A decade ago, we were a quarter of that. One thing that does not get attention is the ability to refinance Student Loans. S the cost of debt. A study shows 40 of graduates with College Loans delayed making major purchases. I have been working on a bill to introduce the house companion to senator gillibrands bill that refinances lower rates. Has the department looked into any research regarding that and the ability to put more money into the economy and what your thoughts are on that. We should be working on that together. When you have that much debt out there, young people trying to buy a home, a car, started family, start a business it is a huge challenge. We have a staff of experts in this. The status quo needs to be challenged. We need to do that together. We are open to any number stations that increase access. I am from wisconsin. I served 14 years in our legislature. 2013, they discussed increasing funding by 90 . Of past, some people on the other side of the aisle supported that. We had a study of the Foundation Report that children of color achievement inf discrimination. Has the department looked into research about how vouchers could cause divide between the achievement gap with students of color . Equitiesating in there. I think our role in government should be to prepare and to create Great Schools for the vast majority of students who always have and always will attend Public School. What worries me on the vouchers, we think we are saving three kids and we leave 500 to drown. If you look at the data from milwaukee, that data is mixed at best. I think our collective focus should be and making every Public School in this country a great Public School so that we serve the overwhelming majority of students in this country better than we are today. I visited a number of schools in milwaukee. A problem is when these kids havein, they do not records or anything. We are at a loss. I will yield back. Thank you. It is great to have you here we agree on many topics, disagree on some. I admire your work and your courage. Cleark we want to be very , we want to make sure that every kid in america has a great opportunity. We cannot let any kids drown. Working to improve the challenges we have, we need to be mindful of who we are leaving behind along the way. I think you will agree with the on that. Themers ought to be one of we are trying to make sure everyone has a chance to succeed. We are exceeding a little bit, and we have talked about this before. One of the most important reforms is changing our dropout age from 16 to 18. I am not sure a federal mandate is the appropriate way to handle that. It has made a big difference. I appreciate the leadership and the nation only moves when the statements. Indiana is going in the right direction. The other thing that is very interesting is we talked about Early College enrollment. Young people graduate from high school in three years. You take that fourth year, that Senior High School euromoney and put that towards a college scholarship, that is an innovative idea. No additional costs to taxpayers, that is great thinking. We should be looking at that kind of program in other places. Many kids struggle because they are bored and they do not see what is relevant. I do not know how that has gone. We will work on getting that to you. Raise i wanted to one of the most important the dropoutorms is rates. We used to only count you as a dropout if you only showed up in your senior year. We got a National Call to improve i think indiana has been the most improved overall. A lesson that for some of this dialogue we have had about hell grants and perkins grants. It would serve us well if we had the reporting of those Graduation Rates. Not hiding things, not maxing masking things. I am a big believer in transparency, and we have more schools and districts looking at freshman on track rates. Theyre much more likely to graduate. If freshmen are not on track, it is tough to catch up. Not just warning systems, but interventions will help drive this to a 90 national goal. We have talked about this. My act is designed to asked the department to lead an effort in what should be determined and what shouldnt be. I want to raise an issue regarding the impact of the Affordable Care act on schools. Any School Systems across the country are seeing this impact. The employer mandate has been delayed. I do not know all of the details. I will send you the letter. We would ask for a timely response on that topic. We will work on a timely response. We will be looking for the timely response. Thank you for joining us today. I think two points most appalling is hell grants will to build in a 90 billion of the mandatory that we have already paid for. When you talk about Student Loan Repayment benefits, it would eliminate 9 billion again, which we have already paid for. Glad to see the president s. Et did not the next report on that, students are out with private loans. Maybe a good idea is to form a pool so that people can refinance and put it back into our economy. Last Higher Education opportunity act, we put in a provision that states would not be able to take federal money and use that. They had to maintain their efforts and their commitment. What does your budget do with respect to continuing that . We are committed and continue to be. I have talked to a number of president s in states that have seen significant cuts and have ueen states cut to the mo point. It has not been enough. It is a backstop to a number of College President s trying to do the right wing. Right thing. We have been trying to be clear and unequivocal. It would be worse if we did not have those mous in place. Research showed it had been effective. What we need help with this some ideas of what we are going to do the enforcement provision we put in was week. Way to makeind a schools know that we are serious about it. We listen closely when he speaks. Research on the program for technology. I think it is a good idea. It has worked in energy and the defense. Question. Ciate the it is fascinating. I do not have all of the details. Basically, they have done things in terms of training young people who did not come from a gray background on a very Technical Skills and in a short amount of time, a matter of three or four months, helped those young people outperforming folks who are more traditionally trained and have been on the job for a long time. If we are challenging unemployment rates and help young people be successful, can we take those innovations to skill, using technology. Their goal is not to train to the middle, which many programs r goal wasgoal thei to train to the best of the best. We can give people those opportunities and a scale that kind of Technical Training using technology, i think it would be extraordinary. We want to learn some of the on the defense side and move them into the education arena. Ideas have a long list of and things we could do to improve school performance. Providing strong leadership and ensuring that teachers are effective. Have a scaling up ideas. We get into the Charter School realm, one of the constant is wetions of everybody do not seem to be using it as a tool to find out things we could do better than scaling it up. What measures do you contemplate that would move that ball forward . Whether it is republican, democrat, the other is charter versus traditional. It should not matter. It is not just the charters and have something to teach. Great traditional schools have something tremendous that Charter Schools can learn from. Cutting through the conflict and thinking about what is right for kids that is sharing best practices. Some places are starting to break through and think about this. It has to go in both directions. We want to do everything we can to facilitate that and move forward. I do not see it happening in minnesota. People are squandering around in that argument. Kids willults fight, lose. It is simple as that. Gentlemans time has expired. Thank you. It is great to see you. I appreciate your patience through the hearing this morning. Commitment to making sure that this Education System that we must have for 21stcountry is for the century. We are concerned that the ryan budget, because it does not seem to respect the need to invest in this country and grow the economy and that way, it cuts off the opportunities that businesses are asking us that they want education to do to be able to bring these young people into the system. One of the concerns that has been expressed you identified you wanted to be focused on new areas. The center for International Business education and research, that is one area a different way of saying cyber, the ryan budget is having that budget by about 43 . What businesses are telling us is the kind of investment that around like this do. What, within the area we are talking about how do you see we are going to strengthen and grow those programs . They are focused on foreign language, the ability of young people to work in an international setting. We have to think about cradle to career. Do we want children to have access to highquality learning or less. Do we want them to have more access to rigorous high School Coursework that prepares them for college or less . Do we want more young people to have access to college and be able to afford, or do you want to see College Going rate decrease . I think we have to, as a country, commit to having the best educated workforce in the world. We have to stop cutting off our nose to spite our face. Invest inproposing to the status quo. Always pushing innovation and challenging the status quo, going to the next level. It has to be high quality. Whether it is specifically pell grants, or ask us to prek, what are we trying to do here and how are we going to get there and strengthen families and the countrys economy . Package,g at the total trying toat you are do. We have not seen it. When we have cuts in major areas, that is not going to happen. I want to go back to the social that thel learning discussion earlier hit on. That has been research that kind of opportunity for young people to interact in a safe environment, which is the big priority that i know you have, that the president has what are we doing in that area to promote that idea . It is not to say that kids need soft skills. These are the critical skills. They bring success for all of our children in school. How can we talk about that in a way that makes sense to everybody and to the country as a whole . We are looking to put some to resources 10 million 50 million and i hate soft skills and not any of these names ring. Perseverance, it is fascinating. Workok at a longitudinal on the benefits of Early Childhood learning. Some of those benefits are academic. More than half of the benefits are to learning those skills that some children are lucky enough to learn in church, around the dining room table, but too many of our kids do not have those opportunities. How we start to think of these as important as reading, math, social studies and science. If our children have all the Academic Skills but no ability to persevere through adversity, we are not helping them. We have spent a lot of time trying to work on this. Is devoting the rest of his life to this work. We want to better understand it and how to teach it in a systemic way. Away fromes not take a parent offers possibility and their desire to teach . It is about strengthening emilys. Families. Thank you. Gentleladys the time has expired. Were getting close. Mr. Scott, youre recognized for five minutes. Can you say word about what the ryan budget would do to Early Childhood education and the future of our next generation . To other nations, today we are about 25th in providing access to Early Learning opportunities. That is not a badge of honor. We want to do everything we can to increase that. The average child coming from a disadvantaged Community Starts kindergarten a year to 14 months behind. We have a budget that has 50 two percent cuts, that will mean not more children, but less children having access. When we send kindergarten underprepared, that is not the childs fault. About longterm dropout rates, how many of the junk people could we have saved by giving them access how many of the young people could we have saved by giving them access . A lot has been said about school discipline. One suggestion is more School Resource officers. A lot of people have suggested that the major contribution is promoting the school to prison pipeline because they arrest the children rather than protecting the children. What is the evidence you have seen about School Resource officers . More resources or counselors or better trained School Resource officers, that is the key. We are doing everything we can to fight the schooltoprison pipeline. Options do a fantastic job and others are part of the problem. We are tryingat to create a safe environment in a safe climate is a culture that weree all trying to do the first instinct is not to call 911. Do you have studies that have followed this . I will have to check on that. How much money does the government make on Student Loans a year . There are projections on what folks think we may or may not make. If you look at the gao study, it says it is impossible to predict this. We have no interest in making money on Student Loans. Was around 10 billion a year. Does that sound right . Of estimatesa lot out there. Congress works to prevent rates from doubling. If congress was interested in taking this up, we would be happy to have this discussion. What would it take to get the rates down to zero . I do not know. Have you studied the effect of the summer hell grant elimination . Imination . Ant el pell work hard to see recipients increase. We were not able to keep the which wasl, disappointing. We are serving almost 3 million more young people. No one has looked at the effect of the elimination of the summer pell grant . A lot of people were going to school and theyre going to have to skip the summer. It lengthens the time theyre out of work. I am sure some folks are doing analysis there. One problem we had was upward bound competition where we had programsrd bound performing adequately. When the dust settled on the competition, none of them got refunded and none of the children in the area had access to an upward bound program. In these competitions, do you do anything to make sure that, at least in each area, somebody gets funded . That the children in that area are served . We try to make sure there is diversity. Given the Living Limited amount of funds, i am sure we were funding in every community, but the reality is far from that. Thank you. Back hisntleman yields question time. He is recognized for his closing comments. You for your perseverance and for your very enthusiastic support of our next generation. We need to make sure we have the appropriate investments in education. We are falling behind. We were leaving, and we are way back in the pack. Our advantage in a Global Economy is a welleducated workforce area and if we lose will not be able to compete. That is our main focus competition. We have a lot of work to do to restore ourselves to number one in the world. I would like to submit a letter from the committee for Education Funding which points out a lot of funding a lot of problems with the ryan budget, particularly pointing out it is below and cuts a lot of important programs. Without objections. The gentleman yields back. I want to thank the secretary for being with us. I think it is safe to say that we all you and i, and everybody on the panel, shares a kids andee that our not kids, the nontraditional students are the tradition. We want them all to learn and prosper and have the chance to achieve their goals. We have some differences in how we go about doing that. We are comparing budgets today. A lot of discussion about the ryan budget and what it does and does not do. Budget like you are defending part of, but never balances, it adds to the debt every year forever, you can funded is some programs and some new programs. The real world youre talking about says we should not do that forever and ever. We should have a budget that eventually balances and we need to set priorities. Special ed we had back and forth about who was funding special ed. As i said, i am disappointed in both parties. Administrations and congress from both parties. Held theblicans majority from 1995 to 2007, we took special ed funding, which is supposed be 40 of the excess required, we took it from the single digits, from eight percent to 18 . It is down to 16 . Millions of dollars of competitive grant to special ed, that is in the words of one of my colleagues a few years ago to get adjusted 18 , which was the high point, it would take about 1. 5 billion. I read a rate my request. I will work on a here. I will talk to appropriators, everybody a can, about increasing cap hunting because about increasing that funding, because no matter how old the program is, i have not talked to a superintendent, principal, or parent that will not say the most important thing the government can do is to meet that commitment. We will work on that. A lot of discussion about prek, preschool education, you have your budget. The federal government spends close to 13 billion a year on prek programs. Over 8 billion of that is headstart. We need to make sure that is doing what it is supposed to be doing. Going. F things are i appreciate your comments about the Charter School bill. We feel good about that. I wish we had not had to pull it out of the esea reauthorization. Being denied are an opportunity to achieve success. The Charter School bill is important and very bipartisan. I hope we can count on you to help us move that through. It will pass next week on the floor of the house. We would like the senate to take it up and see if we cannot address the needs of those kids and those families. Thank you for your patience. Thannt a little bit longer i know you would like. I appreciate you staying and hanging in. With holdinge another hearing so you can have a hearing with mr. Miller, that may not happen. Thank you very much for being here today. There will be no further business for the committee. We are adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] on the next washington journal, a look at the midterm elections. Our guest is nathan gonzales. Then, a conversation on tax credits. David cotterwith of american university. Washington journal, every day on cspan at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. You can take cspan with you wherever you go with our free cspan radio app for your smartphone or tablet. Listen to all three cspan tv channels or cspan radio anytime. There is a schedule of each of our networks so you can tune in whenever you want, play podcast. F recent shows take cspan with you, wherever you go. Download your free app on loan for iphone, android, or blackberry. General halt carlyle speaks this morning for at the center for strategic and International Studies about u. S. Military strategies in the asiapacific region. You can see these remarks live at 11 15 a. M. Eastern. This afternoon, discussion on russias intervention in ukraine. Is also live from the center for strategic and International Studies. Eastern,ee it at 1 30 here on cspan. This week on q a, author and journalist Myra Macpherson discusses her new book, the scarlet sisters sex, suffrage, and scandal in the gilded age, as well as her career covering politics and culture for the washington post, the new york times, and other publications. Myra macpherson, when you think back on your career at the washington post, how many years were you there . I think it was 23 years. What is one of the highlights that comes to mind . One of the highlights has been that i was covering the mets in 1969 when they finally won. They wouldnt let me in the press box because i was a girl, as they said in those days. I had already covered the indianapolis 500, where i had been the only woman in the country. I found this interesting because it was a magical place to work. Ben bradley hired me for style, and it really transformed and revolutionized the paper business. It is not at all like it was then. You would do 2000word pieces and people would read them. That business of not being able to go into the press box to write and file my copy it struck home and red smith, the