Transcripts For CSPAN Public Affairs 20130810

Have been picked by the industry to be here and share information. You are all very intelligent people. We would invite you to send us any information you have when it comes to how we do this better and best and make america safe. Please read the bios. They are all impressive people. I want to thank them for being here. Lets take a 15minute break. Hank you [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] lookmorrow we will take a at the july unemployment numbers and the role of low wage and parttime positions. Then threats from al qaeda with a former u. S. Ambassador to iraq. Hen u. S. Russia relations all of that starting at 7 00 a. M. Eastern time on cspan. The relationship between the u. S. And russia is one of our topics tomorrow on newsmakers. He is the chair of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on europe, eurasia, and emerging threat. Here is some of what he had to say. It is imperative we have a Good Relationship with russia. Yet we have this administration and many republicans pushing russia away, still thinking about russia as it was during the cold war. For the causeood of peace and it is no good for us. Is it possible you are being naive . Officials have said Edward Snowden is the most damaging leaker in American History. I think caring what mr. Snowden did by alerting the American People to over surveillance on the part of our own government of our population, to call him a traitor is going too far. In fact, he was being loyal to the rest of us by letting the American People know their government was getting out of hand. When our government suggests it has to keep a record of every phone call every citizen makes in order to protect us, it has gone too far. ,he fact russia gave him asylum i think it is very symbolic. Russia, a country and we attacked i was Ronald Reagans speech writer for seven years. Oforked with him on most his hard core speeches concerning the soviet union. I worked with the mujahideen in afghanistan fighting the soviet union. During those days, we were against the soviet union because it had too much control and surveillance over its own people. Now many of the same things were claiming the soviet union was evil about we can see happening in our own society. Snowden was just alerting us to our government getting out of hand. Russia accepting him. Expecting him for hostile andot as act as it is being portrayed. You can watch the interview in its entirety tomorrow on c span. All of the handsome young officers were surrounding my grandmother at the time. My grandfather had been trying to talk to her but could not because of all the handsome young men. They all rushed to go upstairs to do what they were trained to do. They left her standing there. Behind herher fell. Oing up the steps they said do not let her find out her father was dead. When she heard that, she fainted into his arms. He caught her tenderly and gently. Next week, the encore presentation looking at the public and private lives of our nations first ladies. Weeknights all this month at 9 00 eastern on cspan. Next a look at consolidating School Districts with examples in new jersey, North Carolina, and tennessee. A look at how technology and socioeconomic factors affect the Education Systems in small and rural towns. The host of the conversation was the center for american progress. The conversation lasted about an hour and a half. Good morning and welcome to the center for american progress. I am cynthia brown, Vice President for educational policy. Thank you for joining us for a party but small group, but we know that you are deeply interested in the topic for today, our own port on School Report on School District size. Thanks also to the panelists for participating today, ontributing to our ongoing conversation about education reform. Across the nation, policy makers have begun to look at the fundamental design of our Education System. Our education governance structures were built in a different era, and in many states, little attention has been given to improving the organization and design the states Education Systems. Over time, many states have allowed some exceedingly on governance systems to evolve. In nebraska, for example, there are a number of non districts School Districts that are noncontiguous. In other words, nested like islands within the confines of other districts. We have been long interested in the issue of school governance, and a few years ago, we and the thomas Ford Institute join forces to tackle the issue of governance and ask how our system of k12 governments might be modernized. As part of a collaboration, we released a book and education governments in january and we are planning a never report over the coming years. This paper is also part of that cooperation and it focuses in particular on the issue of School District size. The issue is timely, and many states and districts have recently been discussing consolidation efforts. In his 2011 budget address, ill. Gov. Pat quinn called for a commission to consider the number of School Districts in the state. As governor, ed rendell also pushed for consolidation in pennsylvania and proposed consolidating their 501 districts into 100 districts. Michigantes including and california have also discussed merging districts in recent years. We would like to talk more about these initiatives over the course of this event, but before i do, i would like to take a moment to introduce the panel. First we have charlie barone, policy director for democrats for education reform. He lives and grew up in new jersey and will give us a national and statelevel look at the issues. We are are also fortunate to have with us today doris terry williams. She is the executive director of the rule school and community trust. She was previously associate professor at North Carolina Central University school of education. Doris also led the institutions Teacher Education program. Now i would like to turn the podium over to my colleagues, a senior fellow here. He is the author of todays report and will delve deeper into the study and explain the methodology behind the report. After he concludes, we will have a Panel Discussion and some questions about the report and the issue, and then we will open it up to the audience. Thank you. Thank you, cindy. I also want to thank Juliana Herman for the help that she provided on this report. She did a lot of Data Analysis and writing while she was here at the center. I also want to thank rob hanna, who also provided a lot of work on the report. He is not here with us today. I wanted to make sure that both of them got credit for their hard work. When it comes to education, not all spending is people. Is equal. Some education dollars are spent for more productively than others. Some districts spend their resources well and show much higher levels of achievement than others. In this time of lagging revenues, policy makers have increasingly been paying attention to the question of whether or not were getting the most out of every school dollar. At the same time, we have an increased focus on governance. Part of the issue is that governance issues, structures, have led to haphazard spending configurations in states. In new jersey, for instance, one School District spends 50,000 per year to send their High School Students to another high school nearby. The issue is largely a governance one. All,w jersey, over spending per student is 17,000. The two strings of work, productivity and government, have led us to ask, can we restructure our Education System in ways that might save money and increase student achievement . The debate over School District size goes back centuries. School to reform small districts started in the early 19th century when education was highly localized and towns and cities were the major funders of schools. As states took responsibility for education, many chose to institutionalize town and city structures as local indication education agencies. Dourly the early 20thcentury, the push to consolidate became more aggressive, and the result of these efforts between 1940 and today, the number of districts dropped dramatically from 117,000 to just 14,000. Many areas race played a role in how districts consolidated in which did not. So did issues of wealth and poverty. Ittever the root cause is, is clear, small districts today are not necessarily isolated. In illinois, 91 of the states 392 districts are classified as suburban. 138ew jersey, there are suburban districts. Smaller is clear, districts have higher costs. Why . For one, small districts have Smaller Schools and larger overhead expenses. Another issue is they have to provide students with a full array of courses, even if there are fewer students. This could mean hiring a chemistry teacher for only four students. This problem is highlighted in states such as colorado where School Districts have on average a teacher india teacher to student ratio of 16 to 1. There is no easy answer to the problem of small districts. Policymakersme, have been focused on consolidation. Our report tries to put national and statebystate estimates on the scope of these problems. Let me explain how we approached it to give you the sense of our methodology. We relied on cost estimate studies produced and we used these studies to create a cost curve, and then we apply that to expenditures in the 2010 school year, the most recent available. Another way to think about it, if a School District has 750 students and the additional costs associated with that was 4 to get them to 1000, we would say that they had a loss of potential cost, and then calculated it out for the per people expenditure. These are not firm numbers. There are shortcomings with our methought methodology that i am happy to talk about in the q a, but what we wanted to highlight was this issue. The other thing i want to mention is there is an optimal size of School Districts. Most researchers put its between 2000 and 4000 students. We made sure to exclude rural districts. We used census code to do that because they wanted to highlight a lost capacity of School Districts that could function in a more productive way. Based on these calculations and the research, we uncover the following. Small nonremote districts may represent as much as 1 billion in unnecessary cost. In some states, these costs were relatively large. In new jersey, the estimated loss per capacity was about 100,000 per teacher. 650ates account for million in lost cost. The existence of small districts is hardly universal. In new york, we found the states small nonremote districts represent almost 100 million in lost cost. In illinois, the estimate is more than 90 million. In other states like maryland and florida, with larger districts, there was no lost cost associated with small districts. To address the problem of small districts, we present a number of recommendations, fully aware that there is not one of my solution here. One optimal solution here. We recommend states should generally avoid one size fits all approach is to maximizing district size. The report finds that many districts suffer from lost capacity due to their small size but there is no easy solution to the problem. The best solution for one district may not be the best for another. The evidence also suggests policy makers should take more into account the context of local districts and their needs. We also recommend states and districts reform their School Management systems. We believe policymakers should create Management System that are flexible on inputs and strict on outcomes. States and districts should also take the opportunity to rethink the role the School Districts play in our Education System. Finally, we recommend states and districts consider regionalization and the sharing of services and resources where possible. States can ease the burden of small districts through the creation of statesupported Education Service agencies to increase overall productivity. I will turn to the panel now to discuss this more in detail. I am happy to answer any questions you might have. We want to talk about small districts, and we want to expand the conversation into what i would call legitimately small districts, which are these more isolated, rural areas. Youro you identify as constituents . We consider rural, we used to locale codes 40, 41, 43 and those are School Districts that are geographically apart from urban centers. Some are considered remote and isolated. Others are small towns. Certainly, not those clustered around big metropolitan areas. No. That is not the situation in new jersey. Charlie, talk to us about your new jersey experience . People like me think of new jersey as a suburb of new york or philadelphia you do not think of Bruce Springsteen . [laughter] i had an aunt and uncle on the shore, but i was able to get to the outer parts of new jersey. That i have installed in insulted you your state, could u talk about it . We are used to it. Actually, really nice in some places, but we play that down. Just think of the opening of the sopranos. Ais report got me thinking lot about new jersey. It is a unique state. You do not have one large city that dominates the state, like you do in new york, illinois, california. You have a lot of smaller cities and a lot of small towns. Part of the reason for that is they are old. You have real communities, so it is different than what you have in virginia, maryland, places like arlington. They are not really towns, so they do not have the same identification. One thing that is different, you have a lot of tourist areas, particularly along the coast. They are dense in terms of housing, but the yearround residents, the number is very low. Mays thinking about cape county. I do not know what it costs them 50,000 to send their kids to a regional school, but there are not a lot of fulltime cape may residents who are there all year. In some ways, it may make sense to send their kids to the regional school. Further consolidation there may be limited because they are already going away to get this to this regional school, and they would have to go further if they would consolidate more. I am glad the report said you do not want a onesizefitsall solution, you want something that is tailored to the state and the goal of academic achievement. Where does consolidation fit into this . First, the issue with cape may, to get into that area. Byy are being charged that the other School Districts. Ae other School District had choice of six funding formulas they could choose from to charge cape may. This highlights the broader issue i am no expert on cape may but this issue of governance structures over all where you have a lot of these suburban k6 School Districts. With that comes a lot of additional costs. Back to your question, a lot of policy makers recently have been looking to the issue of consolidation. We have seen it in michigan, pennsylvania, illinois, and it seems like a onesizefitsall approach, but the evidence is mixed across research. You have a lot of destruction in communities when consolidation has been pushed down. A lot of additional cost with house School Districts that have to work with the buildings that are closed or shut down. So this argument is not necessarily that consolidation is necessarily the wrong approach is the wrong approach to take. When we have Consolidation First pushed, this was the 1950s, 1960s. Today we have the internet, which allows us to deliver education much more flexibly, we have a better sense of managing systems for performance. The end target is to increase student achievement. We knew this was a problem, but we need to think more broadly about how we can provide these districts with better support, whether it is regional cost saving measures or allow them greater flexibility around staffing, that allows them to take advantage of supports and capacities that are out there. Doris, i know that some of your members have been very concerned about consolidation. What is the landscape like . Rural is very diverse. It is difficult to say what is happening in Rural America in general. What we have found is, particularly in the south and southwest, rural School Districts have been consolidated almost to the hills. Very large districts in very large districts in their role self. We think, to a large extent, we have reached the economies of scale in these communities. That makes sense for those communities. But what happens, for the most part, you do not achieve cost savings and the quality that most proponents of consolidation assume that you will achieve by consolidation. Particularly in the rural sites, you see it increased costs around transportation, lots more travel time for kids on buses, a much longer day. We have kids getting on the bus before daylight and they are getting off after sunset. When you factor those things into the formula of what is working, what should be the response to the small School Problem and i do not like to think of it as a small school or small district problem it is a situation that exists that does not have to be problematic. When we look at it in terms of dollars saved by increasing numbers and reducing costs, i think, that is also not the right perspective for all places. What we have proposed is a focus on place. When we think about the economies of scale, it is bigger than what the dollars are that you are spending to educate a child. What is happening in that total place, and how can partnerships and other kinds of strategies come together to have a greater impact. Looking at the dollars does not get at the quality and opportunities. What we are fighting also in rural places is we have been increased concentration of children in poverty, with special needs. The research has shown us over many years, all of these things contribute to higher cost. So the cost is not just about the numbers of kids in a building or district, but also about the needs of those kids. It is bigger than just the per people cost. Is consolidation an issue in new jersey . Two interesting things are happening that are affecting the mix. When Chris Christie first came in, he capped property taxes in new jersey, so he limited how much revenue a district could generate based on property tax structures. That was pressure from the state to consolidate things like Police Departments and schools. Every town wants its own Police Department and school system. The other thing that is interesting that is happening is there is an intradistrict Choice Program in new jersey that is up and running now. 6000 students in that program. Looking at some of the small School Districts in new jersey, one is the stockton borough School District, mercer county, the trenton area. It is a k6 school. They have 54 students. 12 right now are coming from other parts of mercer county, primarily trenton. Next year they will have 17 more, so they will be between 25 and 30 of their students. In terms of numbers, not a huge impact, but it may be good policy if that could move to scale. Stockton is in the top 5 of k6 schools in the state, whereas trenton is near the bottom. Of the 16 elementary schools, 16 of our Primary Schools, or they are focus schools, which means they have large achievement gaps. A lot of other districts are looking into this. Stockton is not the only one doing this. Some financial pressure from the state to consolidate because they are limiting when you can raise at the local level. At the other end, you have a new Revenue Source for schools that may be good policy, and it is working in the other direction. It is hard to say how this will play out over time. It is interesting how these two things are operating what about the race of the kids going to stockton . Almost 100 white in stockton. It did not have reece data for the kids transferring, but there has to be some integration, i would think. Trenton is a majorityminority School District. It could be it would be interesting to look at the race numbers. That is a good question. I want to talk about race in small districts. In the report, you talk about a North Carolina county where there are three different School Districts, two of them have only black, only one majority white. I take it race was the reason they were created . I think you live in the area. It is a very hot issue in that county, and in fact, in the state. The county has school three School Districts. Most of the districts in North Carolina are countywide districts. This county has three School Districts. A smaller district is probably 97 africanamerican. Then there is the County District itself which is also predominantly africanamerican. Then there is the smaller one that you mentioned. They have been fighting over the consolidation issue for quite some time. There is the assumption that if they consolidate, kids who are in the County District, the smaller africanamerican district, will have more opportunity, will fare better educationally. The white district is terribly against consolidating, of course, for reasons, but what is often missed in the conversation is the economics of those communities. This School District is separate from the boldin School District, predominately africanamerican, by a bridge, interstate 95, which crosses the main highway through town. As you cross under the bridge, you are hit by a totally different world than you see in run of rapids. You have lots of hotels and businesses. Weldon has a tremendous economic history, but it is in total decline. You have high rates of poverty in the two africanamerican districts, a high rate of poverty in run of rapids, but not as high as the other two. So they have historic free underperformed in test scores and that kind of thing. What gets cut out of the conversation is the differences in the districts, the impact of poverty. That is not to say that poverty is an excuse for low performance, but when you do not have the resources, when you do not have the opportunity, the funding to do extensive learning there has been a lot of research on the impact of poverty on school achievement. Which is again why we try to take a bigger view, understanding that what affects achievement in schools is not just what happens in schools. There is a bigger piece, it is about place. It is about what kids have the opportunity to do and participate in the outside of school as well. Kids in higher Resource Communities, families with greater resources, are able to have those extended learning opportunities that allow them to keep up and accelerate during offschool time. Kids in poverty do not have those opportunities. And then, of course, there are historical issues around race and oppression, those kinds of things in the south that are playing out in the situation that you describe. Have there been lawsuits tried to dismantle this . There is a lot of activity with the civil rights project at unc chapel hill, looking at the issue of equity around that issue. Interestingly, recently, the county commissioners for the county of halifax provide local funding for all three of the districts. But they are anticonsolidation. Recently, one of the members of the county commissioners made a motion to consolidate the district. He knew that the motion would fail. But what they did was table the issue for two more years, unless he chooses to bring it back up. So when you think about that, what will happen if those districts are actually consolidated and they are still generally locally, financially dependent on this white body that has been totally anti consolidation from the beginning . As many folks know, i have a background in civilrights enforcement. Although how you prove discrimination by the law with conservative courts it has been more constrained over the last 40 years. Still, i wonder if there is a racial pattern in how they distribute the money. Today do it on per capita, but not based on need, like poverty . A local support for School Districts in North Carolina basically comes from property taxes. Even if you distribute to the weldon city schools, they share the property taxes. It is not equitable at all. It is a low property they do not do it on a countywide basis. They do not take the county property tax and each of these three districts get a perpeople amount, weighted amount. No, or property tax comes from your district. If you have those different districts, that is when you have. The big consolidation going on that people are watching around the country in is in memphis. Of course, it may have something to do with small districts outside of memphis, but that is a very racially charged effort. The thing that has interested me about new jersey is the racial aspect of the small districts. Listening to you talk about the origins of small communities, i suppose they changed very dramatically when the migration from the south, particularly during world war two, during the transition to the chemical and Defense Industry my own father could not enlist because he worked in the Defense Industry and was prohibited from enlisting. They needed him on the home front. He lived in new jersey. The question i have in my mind is, now you have these School Districts in new jersey, heavily white ones next door to heavily black and hispanic ones. I have always wondered about the racial motivation in drawing the boundary lines, but that may not have been what happened. It may be a part of African Americans coming up from the south to take jobs and move into communities. I do not know much about the history of new jersey to really make an intelligent comment about it. As a native, charlie . It is interesting. You hear about North Carolina, and your mind already goes to racial discrimination. In new jersey, it is up north. Part of the motivation has to be racial, at this point. New jersey is drawn in an incredibly complicated way. You have cities, towns, something called townships, counties that also have government in new jersey. You can tell that there is a different level of service in the hire minority, lowincome towns. You can see fewer street lights. If it has snowed you know, my street is 75 africanamerican. Our streets do not tend to get plowed when it snows. The next street over its 75 white, they tend to get plowed. I do not know if it is the way they drew the boundaries and if it is anecdotal, but some of it has to be racial. Even if it is not, your point is still valid, that you have these isolated the urban areas like camden, patterson, newark, pleasantville, which is a troubled School District. That is one reason why this interdistrict choice thing intrigued me. You could have the rhode island schools are doing this where you have schools on the periphery and you can leverage Small Schools. It makes a lot of sense and certainly people on the right have argued that we should have the small districts to foster that, but for that to work, we need to provide these other supports. New jersey has been innovative in some ways of treating this shared superintendent program. Districts can lessen administrative costs. Even looking at Charter Management Organizations, to think more broadly about how you might create virtual support and Capacity Building for disparate School Districts that allows them to grow and shape. The choice alone can provide some levers, but also thinking more broadly about ways that we can be more thoughtful about the management that will make this work. I totally agree. I do not think choice will do it alone. In california, to me, the Charter Management Organization example raises this. A good followup to that would be, what thing to do a larger entity do well . In california, what the sacramento do well . It will be a pretty short list. I do not think it is a coincidence that the states that have tended to have more accelerated to an achievement are smaller. Maryland, delaware, massachusetts, louisiana, which is unique in some ways. We could have a debate about whether it is good or bad what is happening in the louisiana. The small school thing is in that mix, nested in that mix. What does a school and do well, what would be better to farm out to a larger entity . You do not have a lot of that farming out in a lot of states. Not so much in california, new jersey. This superintendent sharing program is interesting and hopefully somebody will study that. How large do the other entities have to get to take on certain tasks in order to be affected . I think your paper and the position that one size does not fit all is the right position to take. Interdistrict choice may help in some cases, but there needs to be real choice, if that is the case. It has to be about quality and kids, as opposed to the politics that we see around choice right now. In the places that we were, in most of the rural communities, high poverty, already consolidated, interdistrict choice is often not an option. There are transportation costs. North carolina had a cap of 100 on its Charter School program. That has since been removed. Now we have charters popping up all over the state, but they are not held to the same kind of responsibilities for students, for transportation, food programs, and those kinds of things. If you are going to exercise choice, you have to be in a position to transport your kids to school, too nonparticipation in the school lunch program. That will exclude many students and that means they do not actually have a choice, except to stay where they are. The other part of that is, for example, in northeastern North Carolina, and this is true in other states in the south. There is concentrated poverty not just within an individual School Districts, but in the districts that are contiguous to it. So if i have a choice, i am going from my district to a district that is very much like my district. I think the better strategy there is to do what we know works, to improve student outcomes. One of the things that we are seeing, and i wish we could see it more, is full Service Community schools. For example, the report talks about facilities. If the schools are consolidated or if enrollment is declining and you have extra space, so to speak, one of the ways we can get to the economies of scale is by paring down the barriers between schools and Service Organizations and all these other things that happen in the community so that we have this situation in my home county. There was one high school and the school board and district got on board with other schools and pulled out kids into three other smaller high schools within the county, in a High School Building that was built to accommodate 1000 kids. You pull out 400 kids for a new tech school, another school, and that leaves a handful of kids at the high school. So what do you do with all that extra space . To get to economies of scale, one, we could put Health Clinics in those schools. Students and their families would have greater and easier access to the health care that they need. There are lots of other services that could go in there. Senior programs that could get students to bond with older citizens in the community, mentors, and that sort of thing. If we look at the unit of analysis as a space for development, as opposed to individual programs, we can get to greater economies of scale and address it in a more efficient way, a more full way, those outer school issues that impact schools success, as well as those Family Support issues that need to be addressed in order to insure greater success. Are you a fan of the effort in mcdowell county, West Virginia . I am. There is a great effort to bring all kinds of support services. With the reduction of resources, they will have to build those partnerships. That is where a lot of lost productivity comes, when you have a crack Transportation Program for the Senior Citizens, Transportation Program for the Senior Citizens, for the schools. And then when the school board need transportation to go on field trips, to get the kind of experience they are not getting in schools, and then you have the church bans here being unused, the Senior Citizen vans being unused, we are wasting resources in that way. I would rather see partnerships and true collaborations within the place as the greater response to the small School Problem. I know you talk about small districts, but again, the district conversation always ends up focusing on schools. As districts consolidate, they tend also to consolidate schools. So the services, the relationships get to be much more distant, so we have kids who are more alienated, less connected to caring adults, and have less opportunity to take advantage of what we believe to be greater opportunity with the larger schools. Actually, your argument for services is relevant to urban areas as well. They do not have the transportation issues so much that you are talking about, although, transportation always seems to the efficiency of transportation always seems to follow the income level of a community. Just as charlies example of snowplows on snowy days. So i want to open up to the audience for questions that you might have about these issues we have been talking about. Please tell us who you are. Mindy. I am a sociologist. This is for dr. Williams. I remember reading that canada was doing some interesting things with its rural schools, using technology in all sorts of thoughtful ways. I wonder if you could talk about interesting developments that you know, in terms of how you are using these new our opportunities to give kids access to interesting courses, a teacher training, opportunities to see other students from other parts of the state or country. Good question. We have supported a number of efforts. There is a foundation in the Appalachian Region in tennessee which has a consortium of School Districts where they have brought together i think they got a grant to help with this but they are using Distance Learning to fill the gap in curricula, programs at small and lowresource schools. We saw this happened some years ago in missouri with a product of your working with called education renewal zones. The idea that Small Schools do not have to hire a teacher, for example, for two or three kids. They could use technology. That is what they are doing in the Appalachian Region. Provide those courses that the school are required to provide if they are going to be able high school, graduating kids, an accredited academy, but they do not need a teacher physically there. The difference between that kind of arrangement and when we see as a virtual high schools is that this consortium brings together teachers who are already in the region who are certified and have the content knowledge, who are trained to deliver in that Technology Format in a way that is engaging to students. So you were able to provide the chemistry course for Foreign Language courses, but you do not have the teacher in the building. Sometimes, that effort is hampered by a lack access to the Actual Technology that is required to do that, bandwidth and that sort of thing. Even in lower Resource Communities where they have the technology, they do not have the support to maintain it. Lots of times, they are just unable to continue in those kinds of efforts. The other thing that we see it is partnerships between schools and higher ed, offering these courses and filling in the gap as well. You also have a growing phenomenon in rural places, partnerships with local community colleges, so you have more course offering offered in partnership. Some of it is a blended format. I always prefer that. If you are unable to bridge the transportation issue, then that is fine. That is different from a virtual school, and of itself. I am not a fan of full virtual schools. Lots of times, the content is coming from somewhere out there, not necessarily placeoriented, not necessarily what the local schools and especially need. If you have Something Like what North Carolina has, nclearns, a technologysupported curriculum space, where teachers around the state developed in gauging curriculum, they place their work on line, and other teachers have access to that. It gets to the issue of teacher time. We have lots of resources where teachers get preparation for multiple courses. It helps with those kinds of things as well. So, yes, the use of technology is preferable, in my opinion, over consolidation. It helps with those kinds of things as well. So, yes, the use of technology is preferable, in my opinion, over consolidation. It has to be relevant for the small districts, but in your report you talk in your district in new jersey, there is no way they could have enough teachers administrative costs are a small percentage of the cost of the districts. When you look at colorado, districts that have less than 1000 students, is to itto teacher ratio of one to 12, other larger districts, one to 16. That is where technology could be a real savings mechanism, if used in a thoughtful way. Do you know if technology is making a big impact in new Jersey Schools . I do not know. I am not saying that choice will not work. Or the quality is not an issue. New jersey is different from other places. You have small School Districts that are single School Districts, but theyre pretty nearby other districts drafted whereas in rural areas, you dont have that. The other thing that is interesting about this, 8 for 10 years ago you could not have this conversation because everything was small is better. Especially if you wanted gates funding. I think technology and more innovative approaches will change the dynamic of size, whether it is for technology in rural districts, or other things. Public impact is involved in something called the opportunity culture. They are doing important things, trying to maximize the role of thing that works, particularly talented teachers, and get them to as many students as possible in a way that does not require you to staff up. In that case, you are pooling a resource of talented teachers, but the analysis could get down to the classroom level where it is making a difference, particularly for a Smaller School that just cannot come up with the resources to pay an additional teacher. It is a mix of technology and human capital, where you have not taken people out of the equation, not 100 for travel, but the creative mix of small and scale. We are working with Public Impact ourselves and we will have an event in october which will look at extending the reach of teachers and the technology culture. We have a bunch of questions. Thank you so much. My name is dr. Moyer. I teach in one of the local colleges here. I first question is to the president of your research. In your recommendation, did you factor in the issue that doris talked about in North Carolina where there is a tendency for certain schools to not really except the holistic approach to the type of structure that could be helpful in elevating the academics for everyone . And if you did, did you consider things that had not happened in new jersey you are from new jersey . We looked at Public Schools and saw there are a couple of they paid new jersey, what they had to pay to get through harvard school. People begin to look at contemporary works. There is a real issue. Some look at finland, saying they had the best education in the world. Going back to what you said about what is best for the child, having these different psychologies looking at these issues. The reason they are there happens to be and we agree. The reason had to be because of the preparation. And we agree. What is your question . My question is how do you in your Research Plan to push it forward, to seek equal education for all . We decided to look at a narrow slice. We know there are economies of scale that operate in School District we knew from previous work that use all these very small School District in places where they did not seem like they should naturally occur, right, like in suburban new jersey or on the outskirts, areas of chicago where you have these very small School Districts. So what we did is use these professional judgment studies to create this economy of scale and then use that to look across the nation. So we did not look specifically at the issue that you brought up, which is how can the communities become more full service, we really just looked at a very narrow slice for the specific report that doesnt dig into how can you rip figure out what is the associated cost or potential cost and capacity of these smaller School District. I would refer you to a lot of other work we have done here at the center. Finance equity, we have numbers of papers about it, looking at sea in equities you are talking about. Also about Community Schools. Actually, doris once in a paper for us on Community Schools in rural areas, and we are advocates for equality. But we cant we dont take on these big, broad issues in everything we do. This is looking at this one particular issue. Other questions. Hi, i am sasha with the superintendents association. I had a question for charlie. I am also a jersey girl, so i personally think there is a rural areas, and we are advocates for equality. Little bit more going on to the christie property tax caps, but i just wanted to say that i was wondering in your research how much you look at the inefficiencies that are created when Education Service issues are working with districts because to me it seems like that is more of a half measure that should be explored. I know there is one in middlesex. I do not know how common they are in jersey compared to new york. If consolidation is the answer, i was just curious what the Research Says about the efficiency that can be as a result of Education Service agencies doing everything from administration of taking care of hr, taking care of special Education Services, i mean, they can do a lot for small districts. And rural district that are small as well. Before we kind of go to the consolidation and what the pros and cons of those are, i just was curious if either of you could speak to what you know about Education Services and their ability to really save district dollars but also do so in a effective, studentfocused way. One thing on the School Finance of i want to touch on in and i will get to your question, School Finance is tied up in this. I have got to do it, jeremy. [laughter] i agree with you, what you said about christie. One thing they are doing it that by basically telling districts you are going to be able to raise less local money, it does but more of the pressure on states to come up with the money that they can validate. Illinois is kind of the opposite example. You have the lowest state contribution to k12 education pretty much in the country, and a lot of the schools in the areas are islands of wealth. One high school, which is not far from chicago, but is an island of wealth where they do extraordinarily well. And they like it that way. I know governor quinn had tried to do something around schools consolidation. I wonder if part of the deal in a place like illinois could be we will encourage you to consolidate, but we will chip in more money as a result into the state public Education System both in terms of taking the burden off property tax, and trying to make things more equitable from the state level. I dont know the research on Educational Service agencies. I know from having been a hill staffer, asa and other angencies to come to us a lot and want to preserve their role in the Education System, and we gave them the benefit of the doubt on that and let them stay involved. I do think we keep getting back to the question what is it that you want to consolidate, and what is it that you think might work better at a broader level . A lot of this could be done more strategically. You are going to share superintendents, it might be a good idea, and you could still have individual districts, to pair a superintendent of a district that is doing very well with one that is not. Again, where i live, there is a high school a few miles in one direction, very low college entrance, very low college completion, very few students take ap classes. It is a middleclass school. So it is not going to go under priority, it is just going to float unless somebody says something. And the other direction, i high school with similar demographics, twice as many kids. Take ap, get good scores, and the college, complete college. It would be nice if the state said hey, when you have something that is geographically close, and what district is doing better than the other, maybe it makes sense to turn management over, if the superintendent wanted to do it and say hey, you seem to have a good team and you are doing as well. And so that most of the Education Service agency model, but it is more strategic in the sense that it is built around trying to build entities where they already have a proven model that is working well and invest there. Well, in your paper you do discuss the paper goes into some length discussion of this model as one approach to tackling this issue, both specifically as it exists in new york and has been executed, and delaware has started to experiment with this for a long time. Relatively small, you have let students and delaware than you do in new york city. For a long time, state law did not allow them to do any joint purchases whatsoever. That is something we recently pushed through. The issue though i think that we have to keep in mind is that ultimately this is not going to be a major costsaving for School District, and most of your money is in teachers. So while i think this is important, and my paper goes a long way, to shine a light on these approaches, and i think the cmos, not that they are ancillary, but they provide a way of thinking about how we manage School District that is different in the way that we do now that can provide a model, rethinking how we pay teachers, how we build teacher ladders, how they are reaching for students, are really going to be key if we want to reach more students, increase student achievement, while keeping our eye on the bottom fiscal line. A lot of things that may develop, particularly where there are smaller School District, you will see centers like Regional Centers take on responsibilities around teacher evaluation, and perhaps even professional development from highly effective teachers. But you could share observers, evaluators among schools as well as districts. That will be better in certain parts of the country. Other questions . Thank you for putting on this panel. My name is sean. My most relevant affiliation if i attended a very Small Public School in illinois, graduate class of 1998. I wanted to ask you about are their constituency that are affected in the wake of consolidation . I went to a school that had been consolidated in the past and looking for the potential of being consolidated again. It seems to me that anecdote of glee when a town loses their school, that you seek lots of loss and Community Identity and vitality. You see the communities age, people tend to move where the schools end up. You see businesses dry up and Property Values drop. At least it is conceivable that efficiency the cost for students, you see losses in that communitys economy and their kind of identity because a lot of these small towns, the school is what kind of brings the town together. So i was wondering if the panel had any thoughts about that. I know that small, rural districts where the focus of the report, but it has been brought up. That was one of your main points. I absolutely agree with you. There have been a couple of studies that looked at what happens to communities when they lose their school. You are absolutely right. Which is again the reason we have to consider place. It is not just the bottom line dollar, cost versus students in the school. Because the cost of educating kids has to be part of we have to consider what happens in the Broader Community and the support around that child when we consider cost. Again, i think we really want to achieve economies of scale and increase productivity that we will look beyond the school. Right now, we have summary policies in place that send our children from school into the criminal justice system, for example. We have a real problem with mass incarceration, and our kids are being put into a system at younger and younger ages. We dont hear a whole lot of pushback about what it costs to house an inmate for a year. So the costs 17,000 to put kids, you know, the catalog for some School Districts per child, to educate a child, and we are spending 3, 4, 5 times that amount to house an inmate, then what is it that we need to do . What are we really trying to do . If we want economies of scale, lets look at the Bigger Picture as well in figure out what does it take to really provide the opportunities for every child to have an excellent education. What does that cost . And lets do that. If we do that on this end, then we can reduce all this cost of these fancy new prisons and all of these things that we are billing to house the kids that we are not educating. Yep. That is one thing that it does. Im here with education week. The question that you just asked, but the district they came immediately to mind was those tiny, this tiny district in michigan that went bankrupt and now they have to dissolve a do not know where to send their kids, but i was thinking about this question of does Building Political will for this consolidations, i mean you talk about this, working with the place and you are in, but its not like the question in new jersey is what is the place . Is it the township i am in, should all the schools be working together in the township . The School District that are drawn out as they are now, in these strange considerations configurations. I have not read the report yet, but i wonder if you talk about how do you build clinical will to make changes to things that may have been in place for 100 years where people may have ties to, you know, to what exists. One solution that has worked in a some areas is just putting incentives on the table, this is what iowa has done. And i believe it also happened in kentucky is to sort of say if you want to consolidate, we will provide you over the next five years with these additional dollars, so it is not something that is necessarily coming from the state as a topdown mandate, but it is something that School District can provide for themselves so that they feel like they get other dividends from the state and types of incentives and figure out if that type of approach works best for them. There has been a number of School Districts over the past few years that have approach in this way. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to. The issues that cynthia has been bringing up regarding race and other things in geographic areas. It seems like there is a role for a facilitator or Something Else to step in and start having the conversations that go beyond the financial incentives to go about, and how we bring communities together, what is our community, really . We need more local advocacy than we have right now. There are a lot of dollars being put into advocacy around education issues right now. But not a lot of it is aimed at local issues. Even the stuff that is being done at a statewide level could focus more on local issues. There is no group in new jersey that is really following up on this report. There are a lot of questions that the report raises, and in return for this, i had to track down some information that was not easy to get. No Advocacy Organization had put together. You do have a segregation issue here, it partly has to do with the way boundaries are drawn. So how do we push forward on that . I also say it has got to be fairly pragmatic. You have to be able to Say Something good about what christie did, even if you did not vote for him. He is not going to get a lot of credit, and again im not thing thats is a solution because there will be some democrat that will say we cannot say anything about what christie does hurt for most of us in the room, we have got to get past that. And it works in both directions. You have on the republican side just anything that this is a union they consider School Reform, even in School Reform happens around. Outside of the local unions pushing back, you dont have people at the local level trying to address those issues around what would make education better for kids. It is spotty around the country, but with all the resources being put into advocacy right now, even if the war on local, if we focus on local issues where this is more local. I do think your question about political will and races really interesting to look at in the memphis, Shelby County situation because the memphis vote is to disband their School District. And become a part of Shelby County. A lot of folks think of memphis, it is heavily africanamerican School District, but it is not an all africanamerican School District. Memphis itself is a racially mixed city. What i am not sure of is how the votes went down to abolish their School District. So there was clinical will, whether it was one race or it multiracial, there was political will to do that. On the other hand, i say most of the political will is negative around this, but still i have worked on the issues of School Desegregation and integration in one way or another my entire career. My first job was investigating segregated schools for the office of civil rights. And my view is this is very personal about School Integration is that it is an issue that never goes away. About the time you think all, my gosh, there is no hope, you see a growing number of School Districts, Rick Kahlenberg at a College Organization has written a lot about socioeconomic integration, which had a big racial effect. Big. They are trying to integrate their schools on a socioeconomic basis with very strong racial implications. It is growing in number. I think as the country becomes more diverse, as gap income wealth rose, i think you do see education leaders at local levels and communities around the country that are willing to tackle that issue. So that is political will. Is it very organized . Or in some kind of National Movement . No, not particularly, but i do think it is an issue that never quite died, thank god. I think the question of political will is a good question. There is a lot going on into advocacy, but there is not a whole lot of will to even talk about the real issues of race and socioeconomic in the context of schools. And school performance. We tend to look, again, at dollars and test scores. And if there is this perception of broadly and the communities now thats we are postracial, we have got a black president. So there is not a lot of will or space to really talk about those racial issues that are still very present with us. Integration of schools it is going to continue to be an issue. But as we look, for example, in the south again, where we see a growing concentration of children of color in Public Schools many of these schools and School District are much more segregated now than they were 20 years ago. So there is a growing issue around those things that we have not as a public prepared to talk about or willing to talk about and to tackle. Just a jump in on this, to answer your question more specifically on this type of Community Building of political will that it is very much a local issue. It needs to be done from the ground up. There was a study done a few years ago by this sociologist and canada who was looking at communities that were growing more racially diverse over time. When they started looking at the communities, they found some population of people who are more racially diverse trust of their neighbors less, but when i started to interview those people more closely and look the people who actually communicated with their neighbors of all races, those people actually their levels of trust increased. So i think that when we think about how were going to deal with these issues, these kind of local Advocacy Organizations and trying to build this up from the ground up as opposed to sitting in a state capital or in washington saying we can sort of figure out ways to create these types of communities as much as they are organic forms. There are things we can do to support that type of work, what also realizing that it is something many to come from the communities themselves. We have to remember that local political will is formed within a broader context. So the images that we see in the media, the kinds of messages that are put out with respect to diverse population helped to form local will or the lack of it. Again, it is all connected. We have to call on the media to do a better job, a different kind of job in creating the images that it creates. All right, oh, jeremy, we have to hear from jeremy. He used to work your with us. Im jeremy with the house of Education Workforce committee. What i have a question one of the regulations in the report was to create focus Management Systems. My guess is one of the goals was to increase productivity and efficiency, and that may or may not have to do with consolidation if we move to performance Management Systems, could you just can any of you talk about that a little bit more . You started to do that. If you want to talk about the federal level, that is great, but if not, that is fine too. But what are some of the ways you think those Management Systems can help us improve efficiency . For a long time, we sort of had a factory mile in education. We were focused on students coming in and those types of input. I think when we think about what we have done now in education, from the federal level, we have been very specific about outcomes. But we have not actually open up schools to do things in new ways. We have lots of regulation around that that is not allow for new types of blended learning or virtual schools. It is not love students who perhaps are doing better on exams to progress to the next level. So we have kind of created a system where we have been very persistent on the outcomes, but have not been opened up in enough ways to allow for that innovation to occur. So when you think about what are ways that might increase productivity look, if you are a superintendent and you get a fixed amount of money to spend on school technology, you would be an idiot to not spend the money. You get that technology money, and you spend it on whatever technology you can buy. It creates a system and a culture that is the rational thing for that superintendent to do during if we move to student funding ways or other ways that allow for focused on trying to make sure that all students are achieving, and you get your money, and you are allowed to use it anyways, technology might not be the best way to teach algebra, but it might be a good a great way to engage students in physics or english language arts. Sigh think about when we think about that input more the focus then output, that is the thought that goes behind it. I think for me productivity model, it is specifically important because you want to have ways in which local leaders are able to use their dollars in innovative ways. Our productivity reports, now a few years old, we did find good examples about the village in massachusetts that was able to save money by combining their i. T. Department of the local village with the School District. There that will not work in l. A. Unified or new york city, but that is an example of ways where you can be more flexible in tackling these issues. All right, last question. On cable one, you have a list of the 10 states that have the largest test potential. I got these questions, on the state level, it is a very small percentage but what are the percentages look like if you grant that down into the press that particular district . What is the largest saving her district, and what does the range of savings look like . Overall, it looks like most of them are pretty small, but it looks a couple have 1 savings. It depends on it is a curve, and it is not linear, so your biggest savings would come from your smallest School District. So actually dont recall if we had a School District of 20 students, but that is where right, because we are saying however far you are away from 1000 students, you get a certain amount of if you have 999, you might us get a 1 savings, but if you have 20 students, you get a savings along the type of curve. So we say how much money would you potentially save if you were a School District of 1000 students . We dont know for sure that this money is in fact wasted. Some School Districts have been doing some really cool things with it. Maybe they are spending this money on some great filters. We dont know. We are just there saying we know the economies of scale of this in education. We try to look at it across the country so that ignores all sorts of significant variations in terms of what the School District look like. Together, we wanted to highlight this is not a rural issue. What we see it the top state, which of the largest numbers of districts with this type of unnecessary cost or loss of potential capacity, new jersey, is not a state that people would come to mind when i think about losing money when it comes to economies of scale and Education System. Could i just yeah, sure. I would like to comment. I guess anyway, it is sort of a pushback because generally what happens in urban or suburban, trickles down to rural, we do a biannual report called viral matters, and our last report, we looked at the prevalence of Small Schools or small districts in rural. More than half of rural schoolteachers are small by the definition that we use, which would be less than the median size of School District in the country, which was 500 thirtysomething kids or Something Like that. Even with that low bar, more than half of a rural School District would be considered small. If we used 1000 as the measure, then we are looking at perhaps 75 , i dont know, of rural districts as a small. If we see that as a problem, then we are seeing rural schools in rural districts and Rural Education at the problem. It would be more inequity issue than it is now. I want to underscore your point that one size does not fit all. Thats because it costs more to educate a child or when investing more dollars per child in some of the Smaller Schools does not mean that that is a waste of resource. That we really have to look lace by place, and we have to consider demographics, we have to consider economics, we have to consider a whole lot more than just the cost per pupil. Well said. I want to thank the panelists for doing this report, and thank all of you for your intense interest in this topic. It is a little different than a lot of the topics we usually discuss from the stage around education, but it is a very important one, and in fact what proportion of kids are in rural areas, by your definition . [indiscernible] a very significant part of our population. So thank you very much, and thank you for joining us. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by ational captioning institute] next we will hear from education secretary arnie signh from rajeed the Global Education summit. Then the aspen security form, and then on the communicators and when lee talks about the state of the newspaper industry. 150 years ago our nation was engaged in a civil war. 1863, we were reminded of our evolutionary past, when henry produced longfellow this, and one entry began, listen my children, you will hear of the Midnight Ride of paul revere. 1863, the revere name it was being uttered. Time, that name is being chastised because one of paul reveres grandsons is a Brigadier General of the army of the potomac, he is up for a courtmartial for his actions at the battle of chancellorsville, virginia in early may of 1863. How did this grandson of one of our revolutionary war heroes get to be such a mess . The life of Brigadier General joseph revere, part of American History television every weekend on cspan three. Vincent gray they faced each other in one of the most one of the biggest elections in washington dc history. Vincent gray raised 1. 2 million, but he beat fenty. Office,after he took washingtonethe wasth post. He was offered a job during the election and investigators found this was true. This was a Shadow Campaign that was going on. You have another set of people who were in an office right next to this campaign. On, someso much going workers were actually complaining, several official workers were complaining about the others because they thought they were getting paid more. There was confusion about who was paying them. It was not until youre later that people started to put things together. Realized,vestigators the people next door, we cant find any record of them in the Campaign Finance records. How did they get paid and who was in charge . Looking at corruption in the sea city politics. This is sunday. Arnie duncan gave the keynote address at the Global Education summit, talking about competitiveness and budget cuts. This is about 25 minutes. Good morning, and welcome to the Global Education summit. I am the Senior Advisor for International Education. We are all happy to have you here. Secretary arnie duncan has spent most of his professional life working on opportunities for innercity children who will never know or appreciate everything he has done. As the chief executive officer, the united education reformers business stakeholders boosting the calipers of teachers, Building Public and private partnerships. When president obama appointed him as secretary of education, he brought that same agenda to his job in washington. With the determination to make sure that he created systemic change. Be proud of the work that you have done to increase these programs by 40 million, and encouraging the states to raise education standards. We are honored to have you here. To talk about the education issues confronting us here at home and abroad. It sets the scene for the conversations we will have over the next three days about how to reach our ambitious goal to teach every child to read. Especially in conflict and crisis countries, to make sure that we help them find security that is assured. Please welcome me in joining please join me in welcoming secretary arnie duncan. I am thrilled to be here. Everything we can do to be a good partner, we want to do that. Do goingso much we can forward. I will make some brief remarks and take any questions you may have. You foro thank all of working so hard to guarantee every child in every corner of we globe has an education live in an interdependent world, where knowledge is the most important currency. Education is more important than ever before. That makes your work at the most work that anyone can do. Nothing makes this more clear than the remarkably moving, sionate, inspiring address we realize the importance of light when we see darkness, and we recognize the importance of our voice when we are silent. When the taliban came after her and her classmates, she said we understand the importance of books when we saw the guns. She is speaking on the 16th birthday, a day extremists try to keep her from ever meeting. Called for a struggle against poverty and terrorism and she says this is the only solution. This has never mattered more than today. Across the world, the nation and the multilateral organizations are working hard to provide educations full power to unlock the potential and raise Global Standards of living. In the United States we are working hard to implement a , so everyive vision child can receive a worldclass education. Hone our Competitive Edge in the global marketplace. We are committed to the International Education agenda that is deeper and more collaborative than ever before. Todays Global Economy is not a zerosum game. Education is the new currency were nations stay competitive and grow the pie for everyone. Increasing education by a single grade level, boosting the and a global increase in payment at the fourth grade level could increase Global Economic demand by 15 or more. As you heard in that powerful a bettertatement, educated world is a more prosperous world. Assuring schooling for girls, especially, can literally mean the difference between life and death. Read can better protect her children from illness, from dying young. A child born to a literate mother who can read is 50 more likely to live past the age of five. A better educated world is a better steward of the planet. Among the strongest predictors of violence, a better educated world and a better educated world, everyone benefits. All of us here today are here to make that a reality. At an earlydren grade to get the fundamental skills that they need. 57 million primary age children are out of school and half of them are girls. A large majority of them are from areas torn by conflict. This is a time of unprecedented urgency, but i also believe a time of unprecedented opportunity. These are the opportunities i want to highlight this morning. In the digital age, we have Game Changing technology to help with personalized learning, to connect students and teachers to the best content the world has to offer. And which investments, from preschool have the biggest impact on student success. I believe we have reached an extraordinary consensus about education reform priorities, from the United Nations to the obama administration, this will improve urban learning, to build stronger workforces, and to prepare better global citizens. There are compelling signs of progress. Build on thegures Millennium Development goals. The fastest reduction in poverty in human history, with half a billion fewer living in extreme already. Debt has fallen by 30 . Since 2000. That is 3 million lives saved each year. 2011, 590 million children attended Primary School in developing countries. The gap in youth literacy rates has also narrowed, with 96 for everyoung women 100 literate young man. Celebrate these victories but we all know there is so much more we have to do. We have to accelerate that rate of progress. We are all troubled by the polarizing trends, in the economic mobility or the lack thereof. Poor. 2 billion most account for one percent of the worlds and the richest have 72 . Those odds are acceptable and unsustainable. U. S. , there are alarming polarizations of wealth to economic mobility. We struggle against learning gaps and huge opportunity gaps based on Family Income and race and geography and other factors. We are rebuilding the strength in the middle class. That you areegies all implying across all applying across the globe. The u. N. Found that i marry School Involvement slowed from 2000 and 82 2011. It is not just enrollment that matters. We need to focus on educational wallaby and attainment and completion. All the great evidence on the return on investment, there has been a troubling downturn in funding. Last year less than 1. 5 of overall humanitarian funding went to education. Unesco and save the children reported violence and destruction and intimidation chicago,as khartoum or they must be safe havens for students and teachers. Your work is helping to challenge that ignorance and violence. Know that is part of the effort and many of you are working hard to build stronger partnerships between parents and schools and communities. Parents will always be the most important teachers and they can have a tremendous impact on the School Readiness and the motivation to learn and study as well as High School Graduation rates. She has shared some of her experiences during a recent visit to the program in africa and i saw how inspired that she was to the efforts to strengthen the ability of those families to strengthen their childrens education. States, we united share that commitment to parental engagement and identifying what is actually working. We focus like never before on the impact of Early Learning and literacy andre literacy. The urban learning opportunities translate to success in school and all throughout a Young Persons life. With phenomenal civic and economic benefits. President obama has put forth an ambitious plan, to provide for high quality preschool for every fouryearold in this country. We have to stop playing catch at the same time, the field of Education Technology, with personal learning devices and open educational resources, has huge potential to transform education. Technology can increase equity as well as raise the bar for all children, engaging students in their own learning, and teachers in new and remarkable ways. Technology can help deliver her coverszed learning that differences in income and race, and other factors. Data and different instructions to tailor their approach, to each of their children. Concepts off a new of demonstrated mastery. This cannot come soon enough. It should be what students know and what they can do and that how long not how long they are in class. And parents are helped in real time to support their children, to help them where they are struggling. President obama has Just Launched a new initiative, to connect 99 of American Students to highspeed internet over the next five years. And well make the first free Digital Learning material designed to improve hosts second training, withry an improvement, where this is used and customized with these materials for the needs of their learning. An excellent report from the brookings institution, they will speak in this next session. With the challenges and the benefits of using Education Technology in the developing world. The nations need to address issues like sustainability and infrastructure, abuse and the availability of resources. Open Education Resources and other communication tools can help to expand teacher training after development, a huge opportunity as they grapple with teacher shortages. Pakistan, mobile devices can allow students to learn anytime, anywhere, and to keep in contact with teachers through breaks in schooling. We also learn in the United States it is important to start with the education challenge and determine which Technology Meets the needs for other solutions. It is tempting to make this about the new gadgets, but there are more simple and effective approaches. Such as the interactive radio instruction in southern sudan. We must ensure that technology will narrow the existing gaps as well in education opportunity. Let me conclude with this. Generations, if this is 20thcentury mississippi or 20thcentury mali, young people have risked their safety and given their lives to give the get the education that has opened their potential. She spoke to and for the worlds children. Her message was clear. We want school and education for will child, and we continue the journey to our destination of these and education. Nobody can stop us. We will speak up for our rights and bring change to our voice. All of you are helping to answer that call. I thank you for your service and your commitment, your creativity and courage. Lets Work Together in individual nations and around the world until there are no more to fall through, no more barriers to run into and no more threats to their safety as they pursue their education and their dreams. If you want peace, work for justice, it has been said. We know this cuts to the root of if we wantallenge justice and peace, we must work for education. Thank you so much, and i am happy to take your questions. [applause] is that working . Maybe you can hear me . Thank you. Im the the president of global one international. Your view onto ask the role of community in advancing education . Schools are islands in neighborhoods. You put a huge gap in what children can accomplish. When schools become community we bring in parents and business leaders, and nonprofit and social service agencies, the children get a sense of what is possible. We stretch and leverage all of the resources. To do in i tried chicago with its high poverty rate is try to have the Community Centers with a wider rate of programming. With Family Living and family counseling, three dozen healthcare clinics, so more schools can become centers of the community. The broader the area the better they can do. Debate and all of those things. Strengthen the viability of those kinds of things are when we break the community and bring the man. We have to keep building those. If you would take a moment to talk about the domestic education and the particular role in that process. I talked about the childhood education, i cannot over emphasize how this is. From thege child Disadvantaged Community starts kindergarten at five years old. We spend lots of time and energy and money and lots of resources trying to catch up. The ones who drop the cost to them and their families is staggering. We call that the opportunity gap. We can give Early Learning aportunities to kids and level Playing Field before they leave enter kindergarten. A nobel prizewinning economist found a sevenone return on investment. For every dollar we invest, we get back 7, less crime, more folks graduating and going into the world of work. His research is not just the academic benefits. It is the ninthcognitive skills. The ability to regulate, have self control, have resiliency. Littlehings might be a easier to learn around the dining table in a middleclass family. If we can break through as a country, that would be a huge deal. I was recently in minnesota, where they are doing everything right. They invested 40 million. Ofy have a waiting list 30,000 kits. Minnesota is a high performing state they have a waiting list of 30,000 kids. That is one huge thing that we need to do better. Many countries are ahead of us in providing those kinds of opportunities. Discontinue one of continuity from the cradle through to the career. The kids are ready in high school. Primary School Teachers blame early education. They are all our kids. We have to stop pointing fingers. We have to think about them from birth all the way to 25. When are we going to give students the opportunities they need to be successful . [applause] i am interested in the role of creativity in Early Learning. Are cutbacks there in the arts. The useou to talk about of technology and visual equipment as well as the role of play, which is being taken away from children at school and how that affects literacy learning. We are looking for folks who are creative, who are going to be lifelong learners. I talk about the wellrounded worldclass education. Reading and math are fundamental. Music allrama, of those things are critically important. It is tough to see those things get cut back. Either view, we education as an investment or as an expense. In tough economic times, there are folks in congress who think we should be cutting back on education at every level. I would argue that education is the best investment we can make any time, but especially in tough economic times. We need to educate ourselves back to a better economy. [applause] scores,ant better math try some music. Folksk we need a lot more across the political spectrum who go to the voting bulls and these political leaders helping booths and voting these political leaders helping to increase educational opportunities. I worry about our economic competitiveness if we dont invest. The the sequester stuff is the worst thing imaginable. Other countries are out educating us today. They are not managing their educational strategy ball sequoia by sequester. When i go to testify before congress, it is fascinating. We are at a fork in the road. Do we want to invest in Early Childhood education and k12 opportunity . Do we want to increase opportunities to go to college or do you want a less educated workforce. That is the debate we are having in this country. Your administration has been supportive of the Charter School sector in the u. S. I was wondering if you were meeting with other ministers of education is around the world. What would you say with the benefits and the rest of enabling a charter sector . Educationk to ministers from rapidly improving nations. I am a big believer in good charters. There is nothing inherently good or bad about a charter or a traditional school. Are in not care if they a charter. We have low performing schools that are a problem. As we talk to ministers around the globe, the idea of having a choice, of providing opportunities for kids that have been underserved historically the high 60 years, schools in some areas have been dropped off factories. Perpetuating poverty and social failure. Things that are working, we need to learn from and replicate them. We have to make sure we are not just replicating chargers, but we are replicating quality charters, but we are replicating quality. Thank you for having me. [applause] we will have more from the Education Summit in just a moment. We will get some of the details about the al qaeda threats and u. S. Relations with russia from a california congressman. He is a member of the Foreign Affairs committee. At 10 35 tomorrow, two town Hall Meetings. First the house side with republican representative tom cole. Then we will hear from democratic senator sheldon whitehouse. Both of those town Hall Meetings tomorrow starting at 10 35 a. M. Eastern. Young officers were surrounding my grandmother, who was 23 years old that the time. My grandfather had been trying to get to her and talked to learn because of the handsome young naval officers. They all rushed to go upstairs to do what they had to do and left her standing there. She knew her father was up there and she fell in behind him. They came running back and said, do not let miss gardner follow, her father is dead. Myn she heard that, grandmother sainted. She fell into the arms of the present my grandmother fainted. She fell into the arms of the president. Next week, and harrison to eliza johnson. First ladies this week at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. More from the usaid conference from administrator rajiv shah. He talked about education in relates to National Security and u. S. Relations abroad. This is about 25 minutes. , with theiv shah workers aroundd the world. He served as undersecretary for economic and chief scientist at the u. S. Department of agriculture. At the usda, he launched the institute of food and agriculture, which elevated the status of agricultural research. After he became the administrator, he was faced with the devastating earthquake in haiti. His legacy will include his leadership of president obama in the food initiative. He is reforming the usaid Business Model to monitor anybody with. In this audience, he is known for his willingness he is business the usaid model to monitor and evaluate. He insists that we collaborate to ensure that every child in the world has access to quality education. It is his leadership that led us to a focused strategy and to stress research, monitoring, and be done elation. I am honored to introduce a visionary leader and my boss, dr. Rajiv shah. [applause] good afternoon. How are you all . This is the end of a long day. I appreciate you having me here. I would like to thank christie vilsack. We are super4 today and excited to have her leading the charge andwe are superfortunate excited to have her leading the charge. I want to recognize the rest of fromeam and so many others our Education Group who has worked hard have worked hard to pull this together to get a room to learn up and moving and to help build more evidence basis for how we carry out our Education Mission around the world. I know you have had a chance to hear from extraordinary leaders like secretary arne duncan and others. I hope you feel inspired. The work you do is so incredibly important. Many of you are in from missions around the world. Probably more wanted to be here and could not. Ant to note that one scene one of my First Education in thenities what was south sudan with young girls and boys. Mp3enabled curriculums for teachers. It was a professionallyrun effort in a difficult environment. I want to take a moment to recognize the folks working in areas of crisis and security risk. Could you put your hand up and lets take a moment to thank you. [applause] especially at a time when we have had to have ordered departures and shut down operations this past few days. It heightens the awareness of the risk we all take in you all take the on the front lines in those environments. Thank you for your service. It is exciting for me to be able to be with you and look out on this group of educational efforts experts and policy makers. It was intimidating, the number of topics you all covered and have yet to discuss. You have spoken about the essential elements of our education efforts going forward, the importance of focusing our efforts we can deliver results where it matters the most. In fusing education with technology not because we Like Technology for its own sake, but the programs like the one in the south sudan showed that technology can better engage students and improve learning outcomes. Continually measuring our impact so we can demonstrate that the scarce taxpayer resources we are using for this work, especially in this point in time, are delivering profound impacts that are contributing to our Economic Security and Economic Prosperity in the long run. Elevatedged education, done more to engaged International Partners to reach kids who are not in school and help improve learning from others that are in. Despite all of that, what you are doing here this week is the key to success. You have come together to ask each of the what is going well, what is not working, how can we help each other out . That is the spirit of what our communities of practice and excellence should be about in every business line we take on. Several years ago, our Education Office decided to do something brave with this effort in opening it up to include members from outside of usaid so we could benefit from your expertise so we could have you see what we are seeing and appreciate the struggle we are struggling with and Work Together as a Single Community with the best ideas moving forward. This past year, well over 1000 people from 60 countries requested to attend this event. That is extraordinary when you think about it. How to do education well is made quite clear in the demand for participation in this program. The emphasis for learning in our own organization kicked off a few years ago with the strategy review process. Many of you know david, who ran that effort when he was with the program. We appreciated the significance and astounding results. We saw record numbers of new kids coming into classrooms around the world. We saw a dismally low record of performance and miserably low attendance in the conflict and crisis countries. With less than 1000 days to go until the end of the millennium goal, 57 million children are still out of school. You are here in this room because you know who those kids are. I know you know what those kids are doing when they are not in school. Whether it is in brick factories or other forms of labor, been trafficked, being they are missing out on the chance to build a future for themselves, their communities, their families. We will get think he million of those kids into schools and it will have a profound impact on the future of those societies. Even when we get kids into educational environment, it is not going to translate in its own right. I had a chance to read some of the comments prepared for this conference. I want to applaud eric for asking tough questions. Are we using the best evidence . Are we deploy our resources, which still place us in the number one spot in funding educational efforts globally . Are we using those resources to improve learning outcomes with the weather and science and evidence you have collected in your Research Papers for this conference and in this room . Those are the kinds of questions we were asking when we launched the education strategy a couple of years ago. At the time, it was the first of its kind. It set the bar high. Instead of measuring our success by the number of kids in school or the number of teachers retrained or the number of people we touch [laughter] we are actually measuring it by the number of kids who can read by the time they leave school. We are getting data about Student Learning so we can learn what is happening with these kids. Instead of working everywhere and on everything because it is incredibly important from an Adult Literacy too early reading, we are focusing on three specific goals which each of you know well. We are at the midpoint of the strategy. We should be asking how we are doing. In the past few months, we have conducted portfolio reviews that brought washington together for indepth analysis. The result of a still coming in. What is emerging is a clear picture of the barriers that stand in the way of progress and the steps we need to take and only we can take to address them. We realized one of the greatest barriers to education was not violence or widespread displacement which are political excuses for not doing more there. But rather something much more fees. , Simple School the government cannot afford to pay teachers so parents have to shoulder the burden and that keeps kids out of school. To help change this reality, we will be looking closely at new models so that primary education becomes the right, not a privilege, for every child. We are going to work in places like the drc aggressively because we cannot shy away from those places where it is difficult to operate. You have to take that on as one of the unique challenges of doing this work if you want to reach those 57 million kids and improve learning outcomes with the 100 million of the kids already in the school. In april, we joined court in brown and the International Community to announce joined and thebrown International Community to announced our program. We are taking a Partnership Approach and asking who is the best partner and who can reach kids . The highlight of my week last week i had a chance to talk with our Education Officers in south sudan by phone. Is anyone here from that call . They describe for me how this new program they are about to launch is going to reach 500,000 kids. They talked about how it is structured, the kind of infrastructure we are going to build, the support for teaching and the Community Support we are going to offer. Most importantly, the data and information that came from prior efforts that showed us the path forward. What was exciting about the call was that it highlighted when we are at our very best. We are at our best when we bring the knowledge of what is going on right to the border between sudan and south sudan together with the knowledge represented in this room about what works and what does not work. I am thrilled that you are helping each other to get this right in every one of our programs going forward. I am particularly inspired by the conviction i have that you will not shy away from sharing what is tough in this setting. By a meeting to your colleagues that not everything is working, that is by admitting to your colleagues that not everything is working, that is how we will succeed in carrying out our extraordinary mission. Since the launch of our strategy, nearly 30 missions have launched to improve early grave learning. We will use the early reading program. Second graders who received interventions like these have comprehension levels four times those of control groups. Interventions to control groups is a great advance to help everyone in this room and those who have to go to congress to talk to our colleagues explain why these efforts make a difference. We launched the grand challenge for development. We received over 450 applications. Half of our winning proposals are arrived from deducting countries. I get a thrill when i walked through technology or innovation fairs. Sometimes, what passes as technology and innovation does not seem particularly new. Pretty lowcost and all about him interaction. But if it drives the results and not being deployed at scale it counts and we will have to learn from it and make sure it gets out there. This includes an organization in the philippines that enables teachers to send performance data through text messaging. I do not know if you told arne duncan about that when he was here. In order to insure we are delivering the goals we set for ourselves, we are deploying innovative ways to monitor this work. I am it least some of the new techniques are borrow from the office of new initiatives. I had a chance to visit mogadishu. It was the first major u. S. Visit to mogadishu that was publicized in quite some time. 20 plus years they told me when i went. The thirst of them for getting kids girls in particular shows peace and stability can be to change in peoples experience. Have at the they top of their list. With peace and governance comes real benefits that will pay off overtime. Nothing is more powerful than the human aspiration to have their child be a better life than they have been living. I am excited that you will use these third party might testify about what is working and what is not working. Is anyone from that team here . I was thrilled to learn that when you did that, you had an early red flag problem. Came in because there was information about efforts that were not working. I am told that our partners were not thrilled with that system when it was all glaring red. When you create new solutions, see those reds go to yellow and then to green. That is progress. We had the ceo of the ford more come. Y that is progress. Leaders sit down and say, i can tell you a story about everything going great and i can tell you a story about what is not working. We can solve these problems fast. That is what allows us to serve in the places like somalia. It can be tough for each of you carrying forward these great moral aspirations at a time when congress does not appear to be able to get a budget passed in a traditional sense and at a time when we are looking at the budget cuts in many of all programs and activity areas. When i walked in, my friend was speaking. We had a chance to be together in yemen namath awhile ago. Yemen a while ago. He was ordered to depart from yemen. Yemen is a great example because it highlights what you are carrying forward is a different uncomplimentary approach. If you can get those programs going in yemen, in somalia, in afghanistan and other parts of the world, if we can get all these growth educated, all of these kids in school aspiring for a better future, that is a more profound and more longterm strategy for American Peace and stability than shutting down our embassies when we get red alerts. I want to thank you for the mission you take on. I want you to know we will be here to support you with your programs are red flags or yellow flags. Sometimes there is a culture in washington because you cannot tell people about red flags or yellow flags. That is not going to happen, but we can handle that because we are carrying forward a mantle of leadership that heals some extraordinary results. Let me close with a picture for you. When we arrived in tanzania with president obama, we had a 7 mile trip to the palace where there was a meeting for us. Do we have anyone from our Tanzanian Team here . Ok. On both sides of the street, sixlder to shoulder, for and half miles, were the theas people theanian people to welcome american president. I thought they were too close to the motorcade. It was an extraordinary his section. They renamed their version of pennsylvania avenue barack obama drive. The next day, we were with resident bush in the u. S. A embassy. If you are willing to show us you are doing the work and focusing on results, the politics will come together to support you. Really believe that an even in this toughest of budget environments, we can inspired to do really bold claims on behalf of these kids who do not otherwise have a shot. Thank you. Thank you for your service. [applause] i think i have time to take a few questions. I do not want to keep you. There is one in the back. Please introduce yourself and where you are from and what you are working on. Thank you for that inspiring talk. Thank you. Have been talking about education and increasing equitable access. Youyou talk about what believe both the talent and opportunities are of working with local partners . Thanks for raising that. You guys know the challenges and opportunities far better than i do. Washington,e sit in sometimes it is hard to get the money moving. Sometimes people whether this is accurate or not will run to capitol hill and say, every local partner is corrupt. Sometimes every local partner probably cant fill out all the forms we make folks fill out so we can track every penny of our expenditure. Having pored over in detail reports that are this sick from img, i thick from the can are sure you that the things call Compliance Systems assure you that the things that we call Compliance Systems are not dramatically more robust than the sense you can apply at the point of engagement with local partners. Isnt it more work for you guys, when you are doing that . Thank you. We moved to 700 25 million to more than 1200 local partners. 725 million to more than 1200 local partners. They did more work because folks see the upside. We are building institutions that can replace us over time. We are treating people with by saying, we are representatives of the American Government and American People, and we respect you enough to come to your institution and work directly with you. We are saving huge amounts of money that in places like liberia and malawi and ghana are able to expand the scope of the programs to reach more kids, which is probably the most important, immediate thing. Over time, president obama has said over and over, make the conditions so that aid is no longer needed. We have got to start practicing that. The resistance to doing this stuff is very washington centric. You guys on the field have really performed, and it has been hugely impressive to watch. Next question. Good morning. Thank you so much for the inspirational speech. [inaudible] [laughter] i love morocco. I have been there a couple of times, never in this role. Im eager to do that. I will try to make a trip out there. [laughter] morocco is a good example. Especially if countries evolve on the income scale, your capacity to work in partnership with those countries and really demand that they are putting more of their own resources into these types of priorities is critical. I understand our friend gordon brown is working on that challenge, with a number of heads of state. Politics matters. People have to see education as a political priority, and do something about it. And we can write in behind that and do extraordinary things ride in behind that and do extraordinary things. You are working in environments thee you dont always get sense that this is a top priority for our International Partners. Toope youre all working engage your ambassadors, make sure they are carrying the torch as well. This is a shared responsibility. Maybe one more. Or, we could be done. We good . Ok. Thank you very much. Keep up the good work. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] nation was engaged in a civil war 150 years ago. Our nation was are minded of its revolutionary past when Henry Wadsworth longfellow produces tales of a wayside inn. Began,these entries listen, my children, and you will hear about the Midnight Ride of paul revere. Reveresame time, the becausebeing chastised one of paul reveres grandsons, Joseph Warren revere, Brigadier General Joseph Warren revere of the army of potomac, is up for a Court Martial for his actions at the historic battle of chancellorsville, virginia in early may of 1863. This grandson of one of our revolutionary war heroes get in such a mess . The life of Union General joseph revere, tonight. Tv,f American History every weekend on cspan 3. This was part of the annual Aspen Security Forum in colorado. The Panel Includes former House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member jane harman, and the nsa former nsansel. General counsel. This is one hour, 10 minutes. The title of this panel, as you see, is counterterrorism, National Security, and the rule of law. The tension between what the law demands and what the National Defense requires is, in essence, what this panel is about. We are pleased to have one of americas premier investigative journalists. Mike joined nbc news in 2010 as the National Investigative correspondent. We all know he covered, among other things, the Boston Marathon bombing and the newtown shooting massacre. He appears regularly on nbc news. He is also the author of New York Times bestselling books hubris and also uncovering clinton. Go ahead. Thank you. And i want to thank you again for assembling great panels every year. You get newsmakers and future newsmakers to serve on these panels. Last year, i served on a panel with paula broadwell. While i do not expect any of our distinguished panelists to make news like that this year, i think they will all be in the spotlight in some form. To my left, the general counsel of the National Security agency, who has been in the hot seat of all the issues that have been front and center since the Edward Snowden disclosures. Before that, he was staff secretary for president obama. My understanding is, that gave him access to everything that went to the president s desk, which is pretty ominous, when you think about it. I first encountered him when he was a counsel for the 9 11 commission, investigating what happened there. To his left, the u. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of virginia. That has put him at the forefront of investigations on terrorism, and quite a few media leak investigations, leak investigations involving media, a subject we will get to on this panel. He served in the justice department, and was a counsel to thensenator joe biden. Jay johnson was general counsel for the Defense Department until last year. That gave him a legal overview of everything the u. S. Military and Defense Department was doing, a lot of which we will discuss here. He was a general counsel for the air force and assistant u. S. Attorney, hired in new york by rudy giuliani, back in the day. Jane harman needs no introduction to anybody here. She is the executive director of the Woodrow Wilson center. Served how many terms in congress . Nine terms in congress as Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee for many years, and then the Homeland Security committee. Anthony romero is the executive director of the aclu, and has been a consistent voice for Civil Liberties on all the issues we are going to talk about. Let us start right off with the nsa program. I know some of it was covered in the previous panel, but i want to get into, with raj, how it actually works. I am talking about the Metadata Program, which was probably the biggest disclosure by Edward Snowden, the fact that millions and millions of records of american phone calls were being collected stored. I will let people use the words they want. By the nsa, under a provision of the patriot act. Walk us through exactly how this Program Works in practice. Who has access to it . What can those records be used for . Thanks for pulling this all together. What i wanted to start out with is that i firmly believe the u. S. Government intelligence community, nsa in particular, needs to be as transparent as possible, consistent with our need to protect National Security. It is that last piece that makes it so difficult to talk about. I would like to be as informative and helpful in this discussion as possible. The reason i say that is, it is my job as general counsel to make sure our activities are lawful. I think legitimacy of nsa activities is as important as the lawfulness of those activities. Even on the prior panel, there was a conflation between the two major programs that were exposed. There were two programs that were exposed. The 702 program is about the collection of content of communications, emails, and phone calls that can only been targeted at nonu. S. Persons. That is not what we are talking about. To target the contents of the communication of the u. S. Person under fisa anywhere in the world requires a showing of probable cause. The 215 program is conducted pursuant to section 215 of the patriot act. It allows the director of the fbi to apply to obtain Business Records that may be relevant to an authorized National Security investigation. The fbi uses this provision for lots of different things. The only program used in connection with the fbi is the Business Record Metadata Program we are discussing today. What is that program about . I think it would be helpful for everyone to understand the point of the program, and why it evolved. After the 9 11 attacks, one of the major issues exposed was a scene between domestic and foreign intelligence efforts. The 9 11 commission focused on this issue. The u. S. Government, over the past decade, has made a number of efforts to address this divide. Some of them are institutional. There are programs like the telephone Metadata Program. The idea is help to connect when there is a foreign threat that may have a domestic nexus. How does it work . This program is about the book bulk collection of telephone metadata. What that means is things like numbers dialed, date and time of call, and duration of call. It does not include any subscriberidentifying information. There are no names identified. There is no locational data provided, whether gps data or location information. There is no content. As to how it is implemented, pursuant to court order, the data comes to nsa on a daily basis. It needs to be put in a segregated database. It cannot be mingled with other data at the end of the day. It has strict access and use controls. Let me walk through some of those. You talked about transparency. This is called the 215 program, because of the provision in the patriot act. You were in congress when they passed the patriot act. Did you understand, when you voted for and supported the patriot act, that it would be used for the bulk collection of everybodys home records in the United States . I understood that we needed to collect records in order to, through all the means we have discussed in prior panels in order to find those people in the United States or outside the United States, who are linked to people in the United States, who are trying to harm us after 9 11. I voted for a program that authorized people, under strict supervision, to figure out the best way to do that. I do not think, as a sitting member of congress, and someone who knows intelligence but is not a trained intelligence analyst, that i am the best person to decide the parameters of the program. Congress narrowed some of the three countries and how it