Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20150122

Dollars are well spent. From the standpoint about the concerns of the services provided, we think when you allow states to weaken the standards, and we have seen again, how states have used waivers to, in effect, create a day facto weakening of standards standards. We are deeply concerned. Well, i understand the need for flexzblety. But if the only principle here is that the states can do whatever they want, then they should raise their entaxes to pay for it. Throwing billions of federal dollars at the states with no accountability for the states of how they spend taxpayer money is not what we were sent here to do. So, thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator warren. And i did welcome senator collins to the committee, which i should. Were delighted to have her back. She and senator cassidy are the only two members of the kmiet tee this year. Senator roberts. Number one, weve flipped the seating arrangement here. The lights are a little brighter, the heat is a little warmer. You can see what the majority used to enjoy. At any rate, i thought id make that observation. Steven, how do you pronounce your name . Thats what i figured. Thank you for your statements on behalf of teachers. Thank you for your viewpoint. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on testing and accountability. I want to let everybody know the witnesses, and thank you all for coming. This is working draft. This isnt set in stone. And so thats why we have you here. Its the republican view or democratic view and it is a bipartisan view and it is a working draft. I think that should be emphasized. Theyre only granted to states that are implementing preferred education process. They will handle that issue with the courts. They have before and im sure theyll do it again. That was braukt up by mr. Henderson. At any rate, on principle evaluations, it has been a kovrp rehencive state approach to design a robust evaluation system. But the department of education i believe, is going beyond the statute, initially, and conditioned waivers for state adoption of policies. Back in august of last year, kansas agreed that the department of educations primtive requirements, they were informed that their esea flexibility was fully approved and they will no longer be labeled highrisk status. I think thats a pattern weve seen nationwide. And its clear to me that the administration has tried to query states to implement something called common core. I introduced the local level to prohiblt the federal governments role in that. I aappreciable dwrat the chairmans draft. I just want to i dont think washington has been what is best for the students that they serve. And my Main Objective for renewing and improving sea is to make common sense changes to simplify the law and make it for plexble for states without sacrificing any acountability. The question i have is what is the most effective paired back vergsz of acountability that still ensures education for all. I definitely see the role of assessments, you will owe norksz at a larger level. But reviewing that at the state level, i do feel that the role is to ensure that states are using tax dollars appropriately for Public Education. It hasnt happened in our state. Our city has not been held acountable to those federal tax dollars. But what i do feel is that there needs to be a balance, a communication. And if you were to ask me what my vision is its to create alongside educators, alongside district administrators. A system of communication that involves much more comprehensive assessments and ways of communicating besides a single metric that can be very flawed. So i just wanted to point that out. We need better and more diverse assessments that are used primarily to help schools and teachers adopt and plan. We need to remove high stakes from those assessments. We then need to limit acountability through the use of grade span. I appreciate that. Thank you, mr. Chair mesne. In my view thats why this discussion is so important. It was to create a system of askountblety that disaggregated data and showed us, you know how kwids were perform inging its demonstrated a huge achievement gap. If e in my mind if you want to cure this problem of pov e poverty in our country the way to do that is by making sure people can read when theyre in the first grade. Thats the most posht e important thing that we can do there was an comment point earlier in no child left behind asked and annalsed the wrong question. Which was how did this years fourth graders do compared to last years fourth graders. Not only is that the wrong question, if youre a fourth grader becoming a fifrlt grader then e then there was high stakes accountableility tied to that that meant that states and local School Districts and schools were responding to the wrong question. The field has moved well beyond that. I wonder whether you could describe to the committee how youve used student growth measures to drive change in the school district. How does it inform the districts policies with respected to choice i think we would benefit from understanding that. If you get hit, the important distinction between growth and status. So thank you. That is the fundmental question. Just look at the percentage of kids that are proficient. So where we have moved is looking at growth. Just how much progress does a student make from one year to the next. And, again thats equally important for highachieving students. You just measure status, i. E. ,are they proficient . Are they at grade level . Youre ignoring kids above and below. You want to see their growth. You want to see how much theyre learning. Thats why the annual nature of assessments are so important. So we do look, first and foremost, at growth. For example, we used to have schools where the students were relatively high status, but their growth was low. And they coasted. They said look, were doing great. Congratulate us. But kids werent really doing well. When they begin to measure growth and disaggregate growths based on students with disabilities that have shown a real light on how kids are actually doing. Again, the important thing was not just to shine the light. What are we going to chak to see more growth. Parents of data want to see how much theyre going to grow. The first thing they should look at is the business schools. They have in mind of teaching in the classrooms. This wonderfully rich and deep teaching around critical thinking. But its also important, again, for parents to see the ropes. Were very transparent about that and thats published. Particularly, when youre in a district where parents do have choice where you have Charter Schools and district one schools, its extraordinarily important that the community and parents get information about how much kids are growing. Again, if you have a system that just says expert and kids are proofficial e efficient you set up a set of a mr hazard, a disinsent ef to take kids who are low performing. You equally have that obligation. Therefore, particularly at an era of choice and accountability. As, for example, at charters, we have to make decisions about which charters to authorize. Which charters to close. Weve closed more lowperforming charters than the rest of the state has combined. And thats really helped us to encourage our growth as a district is, again, related to focus on the growth that schools are made from yeartoyear and make sure that parents have that information about their kids and their schools. Im out of time. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, senator burr. Thank you all for being here. Ive got to admit senator warren stimulated something in my mind. I agree federal tax money should be held acountable. If we said to a state, okay, were not going to take your tax money for edge kax, were going to let you keep it. You figure it out. You fund education. The first question i thought of was how many states would take us up on that . Federal government gets out of my way . I get to decide how its done . How would they do it different lid than if they do it today. We put the burden on them. I throw that out to you. Heres my question, extremely syrup. Its the most simplified question. My kids now are adults, never tested well. Its probably genetic, but they didnt test well. So my question is this. Is it more important that we know what students know . Or is it more important that we know students are learning . Dr. West . So its much more important to focus on the School System to e to find out what students have an impact on. What students know is going to be influenced by family jeanette e nettics and outside of the schools control. When were thinking about accountability, it should be for student learning. Ets a canun d rum. I dont see how you could go one way or the other. You need to know both. You node e need to know in the end do you only reward a student for what they know . Or do you reward a student for if theyre learning . I mean i go back to no child left behind. And it hnt rolled out exactly like i envisioned when i worked closely with the bush administration. Average yearly progress. Thats not necessarily what you know, thats what youre learning. I think this got hijacked somewhere to where everything is about what they know. Thats what the annual test is. I think we emphasized how much students grow. Thats to a standard. Thats pretty important that our kids graduate from High School Ready for college or for a career. That is a standard. Thats important to help our students. Are we graduating kids where theyre prepared to succeed in college and in todays knowledgeintensive economy. Its an important, philosophical question. But it assumes that students basically begin on an even playing field. And part of the concern i have about the way in which the question is framed, is that students who are poor students of color students with disability students who are not proficient in english are not given the resources that they need and only through these assessments are we able to demonstrate the its under state institutional law or whether they have failed to make the kind of progress that would allow them to continue doing what theyre doing without interventions of the kind that the law now would require. I mean, part of the problem we have is that when states are given the kind of deference and latitude that they have, you see a weakening of standards and there is no way of reaching those problems because the state has no incentive other than the say yes, the Business Community in the state wants to have a stronger graduating pool. But leaders of the state are not held acountable by the failure to meet those standards unless the federal government steps in. And i think the waivers reinforces that. Thank you. I want to start by saying yes, i know many students who are brilliant but are poor test takers. And they go onto become bring yant people. And go onto do amazing things. The tests alone does not define their value, nor their contributions to society. So i want to emphasize the fact that these tests again, they narrowly measure they are narrow measures. I can test my students on basic skills and tell you, qualify that information such as multiple case facts. When it comes to the kind of knowledge that were talking about, that is not easily kwaubt e quantity if i believe because its limitless. There has to be a better way to assess students, to share information that goes beyond the realm of standardized assessments. For my job, its students learning. I think schools should be acountable for students learning. But i think students need to be held acountable for what they know and can do which is exactly the model we used in consortium. Students at the end of high school need to demonstrate mastery on four different performance tasks. We could do a lot better job of helping students prepare for those and truly learning if we got rid of this notion of a kid that enters in ninth grade needs to be done four years later. Thank you. Thank you e thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator burr. Senator franken and then isaac southern. I want to thank the chairman and Ranking Member for this great group of witnesses and where were getting. I think your questions hit on this proficiency versus growth. And its a great topic because a sixth grade teacher who brings a kid from a third grade level of reading to a fifth grade level of reading is a hero under the proficiency measure, theyre a goat. In minnesota, they had a race to the middle. They would focus on the kid just above and just below to get that per zen tang above proficiency and the kid up on the top would be ignored. And, mr. Lazar, you hit on this. And the kid at the bottom would be ignored. Thats why growth is so important. To me, to do growth, youve got to measure every year. I also think you should do it in realtime. The question is what kind of assessments are you making . The assessments that measure these fine, little discreet skills, thats what youre going to teach to. So that informs or that creates a curriculum that is focusing on the wroeng thing. So if we can create assessmenteds that measure what we want, then we are getting somewhere. When i talk to employers in minnesota, they want people who can do critical thinking. They want people who can work in teams. We have to hold schools accountable. Mr. Bosburg, i want you to run with it and anyone else run with what i just said. Thank you, senator. And i think you put it very very well. About how important it is to care about growth for all kids. And not just kids on a cusp of a particular line. The thing i like about the law was called no child left behind. Thats the thing i liked the most about it. I think one of the things were very much looking forward to is the new generation of assessments. It is a much more sophisticated set of assessment. It is much more around complex thinking, problemsolving. Its not about mem raization. If youre someone whos teaching mem e mem raization, your kids arent going to do well. Its about the kinds of skills that we do care about for our universities and for our economy. At the same time i think sometimes, again, we try and create too much. This one vessel of this onceayear assessment told everything. It can want i any you want a good assessment. And, at the same time, to welcome multiple measures. The performancebassed assessments that mr. Lazar talked about to be able to judge, you know, as ms. Lee said, no one assessment is going to be able to judge everything. So i think it is absolutely, again, this isnt an either or. To be able to have common, statewide measures, sophisticated measures, of student progress in literacy or math is, i any, essential. So you can see bhou e how kids are doing from district to district. You can see where are the best schools in the state working with english language lerners. If measurement from school to school or district to district you cant capture best practices. You cant understand where the most progress is being made. I think those should be short. Id like to keep it to no more than four hours a year. Then then welcome other more performance based assessment. If the state gets to that level, what the state looks at as well. Anybody else want to weigh . On your kind of performance, dont you agree that if youre going to hold schools accountable, you have to have something that you can objectively look at but can you design a computer adaptive test, you design something that gets more at the thing you want to measure . You can. It takes more time and its more expensive. I did some work on doing prototype tasks. Its a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of time and a lot of expertise to design those. I think if we were going to identify a role for the federal government in education its put funds and resources behind tests development and assessment development. Do range of them an make them available for schools to choose. The type of work we do in my school we have wonderful teachers who are committed to doing it and we have arranged time in our program to be able to do that. It was the prose initiative in new york city. What we do isnt something that all schools can start doing tomorrow. If schools could choose the ones that fit their needs were in good shape. Thank you. Senator iaascs. Thank you. Thank you for having what is a very important hearing. Listen to michael ben nitnett talk a minute ago, i happened to wrote no child left behind. Everybody gone onto bigger and better things. Thats night when the congress finished meeting and ted kennedy and i were in the basement of the capitol and we signed off, we almost said in unison, if this works were going to be in trouble in six years because it will impossible for schools to maintain ayp because it will be larder and harder and harder to do. Assessment was very important. Focusing on the individual was more important. No child left behind did that fp now child flew under the radar scream. We did something we always had and aver rajjed them out. Were doing x. That wasnt anything good for little johnny who couldnt read. I hate that reference but i guess ill use it. We need little johnny involved as well too. I have a question for miss lee or probably a bit of statement. I didnt get to hear your testimony, and i apologize. In the last attempt, we almost got there on reauthorization. It fell apart. I fought very hard to allow for alternative assessment to take a standard test and make a special needs students take it you have connective disabilities and cognitive disabilities, its impossible to have a one size fits all assessment. I felt the teacher and the parent and the child aep should decide. I agree. Everybody make note of this answer. I started teaching first year of nclb. Ive seen first hand in what is called the high school for students at risk. Special education district in new york city. What i found was that youre right. No assessment fits all, include including all students. What i would have to do in my assessments is diversify. What i know about my students i assess them. Sit alongsidealongside. Get to know them and who they are. Their abilities. Set high standards and work with the parent and the team. It was not just me but related service providers. You have experts and specialists coming in and we Work Together add team to develop assessments to determine students where they with and where we wanted and to set goals for them. That work has continued. I feel as though again to echo steve that states or federal government does have a role in ensuring that this is made possible. One thing i learn is if youre testing is never aligned with your curriculum, youre never going to get good data. To align a test we required with a curriculum that was national would blow up in our face. We did random sample to try to assess the integrity of whatever assessment they were using. I think one of the things the federal government can do is to help the schools that is give them the excuse that were making them do it but make sure the curriculum and alignment of testing are in line. If you do that then you find out what the student is learning. A lot of people are saying thats teaching to the test. Thats what education is about. If you teach and you test what the student is taught, then you get a true measure of how much they achieved. I think mainstream seszment means that students are more likely to have access to mainstream curriculum. One of the principles that the communities representing students with disabilityies have said is for students with the most severe disorders. One of the concerns is you see that students are misclassified as having emotional disturbance disabilities or being disabled and those labels apply to students of color. They are then taken out of mainstream curriculum, given inconsistent with the requirement of the law access to less rigorous forms of academic accomplishment and the results have been disasterous if more of those communities. I think theres a real concern. Certainly among students representing persons with disabilities that they not be taken out needlessly from mainstream curriculum. That doesnt have anything to do with the kind of assessments that states develop. I completely agree. There should be a more sophisticated form of assessment to complement and provide the insights that these wonderful teachers have asked for. Thats not inconsistent with a requirement of an annual assessment thats used to fully get diagnostic assessments of how communities are doing that might otherwise be left behind. Thank you, senator. We have senator murphy and some random republican wonders into the room. There should be fulltime for all of you to have full five minutes. We will be close to the noon hour when we want to concludes the hearing. Senator baldwin. Thank you. Very grateful to you for getting us off to a bipartisan dialogue. Im hopeful that we can find a thoughtful path forward to fixing this law for all students, parents, teachers administrators, policy makers. We need this information also. Great panel. Thank you to the witnesses. A well designed standardized test is one important tool among many that can help all of the stake holders i just listed inside how well individual students are doing as well as how our nations schools are serving all of our nations children. As such we should know if the tests given, those required by federal law as well as those that are required by state and local districts are of high quality and aligned to states learning standards. We should have a clear idea of how much classroom time is spent on preparing for and taking the standardized test as opposed to instruction. In preparation for this very debate i introduced the smart act along with representatives susan in the house of representatives and senator murray and others here in the senate. It will goes fo states every year. It will allow states and districts to audit their assessment systems and reduce unnecessary and duplicate state and local tests. From our nations Largest Teachers Union and other education reform groups. Id like to turn to our panelist for their perspectives as well. Particularly id like to ask both dr. West because youve referenced the importance of the sort of audits of understanding whats truly happening across the country. Can you talk about how such audits could take place at the state and local levels. I have not reviewed your legislative in detail. Its critical that state and local education officials have a good idea of the role that testing is playing the amount of testing and the quality of those tests as they try to understand how driktss are trying to improve student learning. Did you testify that was lacking at this point . Absolutely. Theres often a lot of confusion at the School Building level about whats being assessed for what purpose. Theres a will the of frustrations among teachers about lack of alignment between a given assessment program. Lack of alignment and the schedule of the curriculum specially, the district scope and sequence theyre required to teach. If those arent lined up youre getting useless information. There are huge potential gains for betting a better handle on this. We dont know the optimal amount. My understanding of whats going on in New Hampshire they may be testing more often using Higher Quality assessments over the course of the year. That might look bad in some audit or the premise is were testing too much and need to get that down. I think its important that states and districts be very transparent. What is required and our state we have a committee thats doing just that and make recommendations to legislature to reduce some of the state mandated testing that has nothing to do with no child left behind. We as a district published what we do and what we dont do. Our teachers assess our kids in some way. That could be check for understanding or an exit ticket. That could be daily or weekly. Boy theres nothing that i would dread more than our teachers in some compliance exercise having to classify and record every single thing that could be classified as an assessment or test of student progress. Thank you. Ill focus on a particular question for mr. Henderson. I wanted to commend him and others. We have talked about them in the broader context. This is a hearing about no child left behind in elementary and secondary education. Some of the numbers just by way of background, some of the numbers on child with poverty are really bone chilling. Theres a report from about a year ago and im sure theyll update it this january or soon from the oecd. The organization from Economic Cooperation and development. They rank the top 20 countries on a whole range of areas. One of them is in Child Poverty. Were of the top 20 in the world we are fifth from the worst. Our Child Poverty rate this is a 2010 number. 21. 2 of children in the United States of america live in poverty. We are just a little better than spain and italy and were not too far off from mexico and turkey by way of example. If you update it the number in 2012 is higher. It goes to 23 . It puts up ahead of chile. By that ranking were fourth from the worst, not fifth. What we have not done for our kids is national failure. After world war ii we had the g. I. Bill that was a good idea. We also x for europe, a marshal plan. We never ever had anything even approaching marshal plan for our kids. Thats the predicate. I think that is kind the background. You mentioned concern for the assessment we undertake. One piece of data and i want to have you the remaining time walk through your reasons is that weve got about six Million Students in the country with disabilities educated in public schools. Most of whom spend their day learning along side other students. According to the National Center for education statistics, 90 of students with disabilities do not have cognitive disabilities that would limit them. Youre talking about children with disabilities in the much more severe category. Thank you for your question. Students in poverty and disabilities will face. They are making policy decisions. Let me say but states dont require that. You also recognize will there may be cap on ensuring that only the students with the most severe cognitive disabilities are classifies as such, schools now will use various methods to allow more students to be classified as having a disabout disabilityies of avoiding the rigorous adherence to standards we would like. What we have found obviously those living in poverty would have a huge problem. Im drawing this from a council on parent attorneys and advocates of representing persons with disabilities and from organizations representing persons with disabilities within the leadership conference. They have somehow been exempted from the more rigorous mainstream standard that would be required under existing law. That for us is a huge problem. When you add that states because of budgets are choosing not to invest in Public Education and quite frankly thats what happened in pennsylvania over the last several years creating huge problems. Particularly for kids with disabilities disabilities. Our view is that states will choose to really make cuts where the voices of the Advocacy Community are perhaps the weakest. Unfortunately, that sometimes applies to our students with disabilities. They are often in poverty themselves and they lack the kind of strong Advocacy Network aside from the organizations that ive identified here that can really represent their interest. One last point were over time. The new American Foundation looked at 16 states conclude. Thank you. I appreciate it. 4400 schools that have been previously established for purposes of intervention were largely ignored. Under those states once the waivers have been given. Thats the reality that we face. Thank you. Thank you mr. Henderson. Senator white house. Thank you. I experienced with the Education Universe that there are really two worlds. One is the world of contractors and consultants and academics and experts and plenty of officials at the federal state and local level. What im hearing from my principals and teachers world is that the footprint of that first world have become way too big in their lives to the point where its prohibiting their ability to do the job they were entrusted to do. I went through the tests a week ago. For mathematics and something they call english language arts. Off to a pretty bad start if thats what you have to call it. To me its pretty clear that these tests are designed to test the school and not the student. When it first started up in rhode island the timing of the reporting of the results that the contractor assumed was such that the teacher in the coming year wouldnt have the information. Clearly, the next years teacher was not the focus of this effort. The school has to go through huge heroic efforts to try to get them interested and prepared for a test they know theyre not going to be personally graded on or responsible for the outcome of. Then kids have scheduling problems. They cant all get them in at once. They dont have the electronic band width for a class to take the test at once. Its not one test. Its three tests. You cant teach the other kids while the kids are in the test. We have got to solve this problem. Its an efficiency problem and being smart about gathering information. Im really concerned about this. Im saying this at this point to invite conversation with my colleagues as we go forward. The super structure of education supervision im not sure passes the test of being worth the expense and the trouble. Its very discouraging to teachers in rhode island. They hear about the race to the top money that comes into the state and the state gets big grant and everybody does a press kmps. Its like the rain falling over the desert where the rain comes pouring out of the clouds but by the time youre at the desert floor not a rain drop falls. Its all been absorbed in between. Ive never had a teacher say to me the race to the top gave me just what i need in terms of books or a white board or something i can use the teach the kids. I think we have to be very careful about distinguishing the importance of the purpose of some of this oversight and not allow the importance of that purpose to have the oversight to be conducted in such an inefficient waistful clumsy way that the people who we really trust, the people in the classroom are looking back and saying stop, help. I cant deal with this. Youre inhibiting my ability to teach. I think that damage in the classroom falls just as hard on the communities that have difficulty getting their fair share of education as it does anywhere else. I think we really need to grapple with that in this committee. Ive basically used all my time with that set of remarks. That was less in the matter of a question than an invitation to my colleagues to continue this discussion. You know what i think is important as we go forward. You have two seconds no you dont. One, zero, gone. Thank you senator whitehouse. I think we need to have lots of discussions about this. Not all these discussions im discovering fall down in predictable ways. That was helpful. Thank you. Thank you very much for convening. A really well balanced an thoughtful hearing. I got the chance to read here. I came to congress as a vocal opponent and critic add no child left behind for a lot of the reasons that senator whitehouse enunciated but also become i come from family of educators. My mother was a wonderful elementary schoolteacher and english as a second language. She walked away from teaching before she thought she was going to because she spent a lot more time or bur rock si and a lot let time on teaching. One of the first meetings i had when i got here is with the childrens defense fund. They came in because they heard i had been a real active critic of no child left behind. They wanted to present this for me as to what was happening in other parts of the country. To explain to me there were places in pressures to provide a full compliment of education. Technical education. They had critiques of what i did. Their point is its important for us not to abandon the gains that weve made with respect to children with learning disabilities who maybe in some places not been getting a fair shot before. I wanted to build on the questions that senator casey raised. Maybe ill direct it to my friend dr. West. We were college classmates. Im pleased hes here today. Senator casey referenced some data suggesting the enormity of students with disability and in special Education Programs do have the ability to take these tests and the fear is that if you give School Districts the ability to move broad swaths of children learning disabilities out from under the test you lose the pressure to provide the education and its also you as a caution measure generally lose the ability for parents. Statewide testing down there. I love to hear what the data is about the majority severe cognitive disabilities take the test and what that might mean for accountability moving forward. As senator casey mentioned the vast majority of students with disabilities do not have intellectual disabilities. The second point i would make is there has to be some cap on the number of students who are allowed to take those alternative assessments. Im not sure the 1 cap that was in the legislation is exactly the right number. One thing we know from the study is how schools respond to them more generally is that that some schools will find way to game the system. That might reclassify students as being eligible for special education if that exempts them from the accountable pool of students in order to avoid being sanctioned. There needs to be some mechanism in accountability policy toll account for that dynamic. One of the concerns there also needs to be if theres a cap some degree of flexibility to allow for natural variation in at a given school or a given district that might actually be appropriately excluded from the standard assessment. I think those policies have been a bit more rigid than they actually should be but there needs to be some mechanism. Im not the one to tell you the details of how to do it. Thank you. About half a percentage of kids dont have the ability to take those tests. There are going to be variations. Thank you. Theres tremendous interest on our side of the aisle in fixing the no child left behind law to make sure we really do make sure that every child no matter where they live or who their parents are or how much money they have have the opportunity of the American Dream and thats the equalizer that i think is so important for our country and will allow all of yourng people to be able to grow up aunds have a job and support all of us and be competitive in a global marketplace. Its a huge goal. I think theres tremendous interest here. We want to work with you on a bipartisan basis to move forward on this bill. I really want to thank everybody who participated. Thank you. This is a good beginning. Ive learned a lot from the witnesses. I like the exceptional variety. We had our points of view. I thank the staff for their work on komcoming up with that. The senators had thoughtful comments and for those who came and couldnt get in the hearing room, well do our best to have a larger hearing room for our next hearing which will be next tuesday at 10 00 a. M. It will be about fixing no child left behind, supporting teachers and school leaders. We look forward to that. Id like to invite the witnesses. If theres something you wanted to say and if you could let us hear, especially within the next ten days, we would welcome it. We have written to state and local districts trying to identify it but if you have an idea about that, we would appreciate it. Do high stakes discourage multiple assessments . I would like you to look that the question. One of the dangers is when ever the federal goth does that it likes to put it its sticky fingers on what to do. Your comments on that are from anybody would be helpful. Im interested the taking advantage of that opportunity and particularly because none of the witnesses had chance to comment on what i said. Could you let me know by what time you would like our additional questions in, so that our folks have whats my deadline . Whats convenient for you . End of the week. That will be great. Well work with you. I think the sooner we get the questions out the sooner well get good answers. Ill work with senator murray. May be we have round Table Discussions rather than hearings where we can sit around and have conversations about particularly points and not be limited to five minutes of questions. There are different ways to go about this. If you let us know within a week or sooner, that would be a big help. Well go to work on that. This friday. Usually we say at the close of business friday. Im just learning. If you can do it by the close of business friday, that will be helpful. The hearing record will be open for ten days. We thank you for being here today. Any other outbursts or comments anyone wants to make . Thank you to the witnesses. Thank you very much for coming. The hearings adjourned. Congressman steve israel talks about his role as the chair of the House Democrats new policy and communications committee. Republican Tom Mcclintock for tax reform. Tuition Free Community college and mandatory sick leave benefits. Washington journal is live each morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Thursday the u. S. House is expected to take up a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks. At noon eastern members of Congress Join prolife advocates at the annual march for life rally. This years rally marked the 42nd anniversary of the supreme courts rowe versus wade decision legalizing abortion. You can see this at noon eastern here on cspan3. Here are some of the our featured programs for this weekend on the cspan networks. Sunday night at 11 00 princeton historian examines the initiatives of lyndon johnson. Lectures in history. University of california David Professor on the role of the British Royal air force and allied strategy during world war ii. Sunday evening at 6 00, american artifacts. Find our complete schedule at cspan cspan. Org and let us know what you think about the programs youre watching. Call us at 2026263400 or email us. Join the cspan conversation, like us on Facebook Follow us on twitter. This is 1 50. Welcome to todays hearing. In front of you are packets containing the written testimony for todays witnesses. I recognize myself in Opening Statement and rieszanking member as well. The hearing will provide an overview of how the research, development and flight test enable the integration into the u. S. System. Im going to use the term drone since that is how most people refer to them. The term Unmanned Aircraft system is a more complete and accurate term. Uas are complex systems made up not only of the aircraft but also the ground air and communications infrastructure. Drones come in a variety of shapes and sizes. In the past ten years the public has become familiar with military drones. Less discussed are civilian and nonmilitary drones that have the ability to transform or everyday lives. Commercial drones have to potential to carry out a wide range of tasks across a broad range of sectors, including agriculture, weather, energy and Disaster Relief. The teal group predicts america will spend over 11 billion on uas research, development, testing, evaluation and procurement over the next decade. Total Worldwide Spending is projected to be 91 billion. In 2013, the association for unmanned vehicles estimated in the next ten years over 100,000 u. S. Jobs could be created. The report also notes that continued delays in integrating drones in the National Air Space system could cost the u. S. More than 10 billion per year or 27 million per day in potential earnings from investment in Drones Research and development. In june 2014 the department of Transportation Office of Inspector General released an audit report that criticized the faa for being slow to integrate drones into the National Air Space system. The faa and nasa are working together to ensure safe and successful integration of drones in the National Air Space system. Some of the research being done seek to ensure that drones have the technologies necessary to avoid midair collisions and the ability to be controlled from a value location. Drones can greatly benefit our society. Farmer consist use small drones to monitor their crops. Emergency responders should move quickly to access disaster areas to search for survives. Energy companies would examine power lines or pipe lines to assess damage or prevent leaks. The testing and high school and universities might lead to Technology Breakthroughs as well as inspire students to enter s. T. E. M. Fields. The public is not yet allowed to use drones to do many of these things. Many other countries have developed a Regulatory Framework supportive of drone use. Our goal today is to better understand the research under way to overcome these barriers. Were particularly interested in hearing how government funded and private sector uas research and development informs or should inform the integration. Uas intermentation integration of uas into the National Air Space system. That concludes my Opening Statement. But i want to mention before recognizing the Ranking Member that were going to have a demonstration in a minute that to my knowledge will be the first such demonstration in this Committee Room. We had to get permission to fly a drone in the Committee Room as well. The rules are still pretty strict. I appreciate the wide spread interest in the particular subject. Hardly a week goes by where the subject of drones is not covered in some National Publication or on the front of the local newspaper or leads the news. This is a timely subject for lots and lots of reasons. Without objection i have a letter i would like to put into the record from the National Association of realtors supporting what were doing here today and supporting the integration as well. With that ill recognize the Ranking Member, the gentleman woman from washington for her comments. Thank you very much. I join you in welcoming our distinguished panel of witnesses and i look forward to your testimony. I want to state that Ranking Member johnson is currently detained at another committee and will join us shortly as well as some of ore other members are currently in other committees. Lack of other members does not indicate a lack of interest in the issue certainly. In the meantime i want to start by thanking chairman smith for calling this hearing on unmanned air draft Systems Research and development. Because of the work in my home state of oregon its close to washington, mr. Chairman, but its im sorry. One state off. My home state of oregon, im particularly interested many hearing how we can provide universities with the flexibility they need for performing uas test in a safe and Cost Effective manner and private Sector Developers with the regulatory certainty necessary to support the growing industry. We, oregon, were a participate in the pan u. S. Test range led by the university of alaska fair banks and we have three test sites in oregon. The potential benefits of this technology to agriculture, environmental research, Natural Resource management and i want to add that the chairman acknowledged some of those emergency Disaster Relief efforts is multiplied by expanding the workforce focused on the development of new products, which is creating, of course, new Job Opportunities throughout not only oregon but in other testing areas as well. So i do look forward to hearing how we in congress and across the federal government can help safely and responsibly support the development of this exciting industry with so many potential. I thank you, mr. Chairman, and i yield back the balance of my time. Thank you. And ill now introduce our witnesses today. Our first witness is dr. Ed wagner. The Research Director of nasas integrated Systems Research Programs Office seeking to integrate next gen opportunities. In this capacity hes worked for nasa since 1982. We welcome you. Our second witness today is mr. Jim williams. Mr. Williams is manager of faas uas integration office. As much she is responsible for coordinating faas efforts to integrate uas into the National Air Space system through rule making and research and development. Mr. Williams has served as the director of faas Engineering Services and as the director of the air Traffic Control communications service. He received his bachelors keg in aerospace engineering. Our third witness is j. John lauber. He was he has previously served as airbuss Senior Vice President of product safety. Also served as a member of the transportation board. Todays fourth witness is brian wynn. Mr. Wynn formally served as the president of the electric drive transportation association, ceo of the association for automatic identification and mobility and held a leadership role at the Transportation Society of america. Mr. Wynn received a bachelor degree from the university of scranton, a masters degree from at Johns Hopkins university and was a full bright scholar. Testifying fifth today will be mr. Colin grin, chief revenue officer of north americas largest personal drone company. Hes the cofounder and former ceo of dji north america and has been featured on 60 minutes, fox and in tech crunch. Before working here, mr. Grin founded a company that specialized in producing marketing materials for luxury home builders. He received his bachelors degree from university of texas at austin. Our final witness is dr. John hansman, the professor of aeronautics at m. I. T. Where he leads the humans and Automation Division and serves as director of the mit interNational Center for air transportation. Dr. Hansman is a fellow and has received several awards including the 1987 excellence in aviation award, the 1990 osts diploma for technical contributions and the 1986 award for best paper. He received his ph. D. From mit. We thank the witnesses again for being here today and dr. Wagner well begin with you. Chairman smith, Ranking Member and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on Nasas Aeronautics Research program and the challenges associated with uass and autonomy. We define our vision and approach for supporting the near term integration of uas into the National Air Space system. This new Term Research builds the foundation. Uas hold great promise for the transformation of our Aviation System. Wear witnessing the dawn of a new era, ushering in flight vehicles that run manualable today, opening up the commercial markets much the way that jet engines did 60 years ago. Nasa is performing research to the faa and other stakeholder to help them define the requirements, the regulations and standards for safe routine mass access. There are significant barriers and challenges associated with this. This requires these complex systems to be comprehensively evaluated, to verify and validate that theyre operating as designed. Thus allowing the faa to establish operations and equipment standards. The majority of nasas new Term Research work towards safe uas integration is focused in three areas. Were helping to determine performance requirements for a certifiable system to ensure safe separation of uas with all vehicles operating in the nas. Were developing secure, robust, reliable Communication Systems and protocols as well as addresses the design of Ground Control stations and displays to maximize pilot effectiveness and safety. To transfer our Research Findings nasa has built effective relationships with key customers, department of defense, department of Homeland Security, and as well as industry and academia. And this partnerships that a so is playing a key role supporting critical activities from the executive level to our subject matter experts. For midterm applications were researching technologies to facilitate safe operation of uas at altitudes that are not actively controlled today, for example, low altitude operation of small Unmanned Aircraft. Initial investigations into this trade space have drawn interest among a broad range of traditional and nontraditional companies and shows promise of opening up entirely new markets. In order to safely enable wide spread civilian operations at lower altitude within nasa is developing air Traffic Management light system. You can think of this as much like todays surface Traffic Management where vehicles operate under a rule based system of roads, lanes, signs and traffic lights. Nasa will deliver technology and demonstrate high pay off, integrated applications that advance safety efficiency an flexibility of the nas and increase competitiveness of the Civil Aviation industry. It enables a transformative Aviation System. Nasa is partnering with other agencies and industry to achieve routine, uas access into our National Air Space system. Our par ner our partnerships are built on close and continuous collaboration for the specific needs of the challenges. Nasa aeronautics will continue to advance research for technologies that will ensure these systems. Chairman smith members of the committee this concludes my prepared statement. Ill be pleased to answer any questions at this time. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss Unmanned Aircraft systems commonly referred to as uas. The federal aviation add mgs has successfully sbre grated new technology into the National Air Space system for more than 50 years while maintaining the safest Aviation System in the world. Research and development is absolutely critical to the safe, efficient and timely sbre grags of new Technology Like uas. The department of defense commerce, Homeland Security and nasa have allowed us to advance research and development in the area of Unmanned Aircraft. The faa is developing standards for command and control radios to detect and avoid systems. The faa and nasa are working closely together to develop a technical standard for uas de detect and avoid systems to remain clear of other aircraft. Together with nasa and our Industry Partners be faa is developing standards for command and control radios. These provide the link between the pilot and aircraft. Its essential that they be secure and reliable. Nasa and our Industry Partners are building radios to validate the standard. The faa is actively supporting the research and Development Efforts undertaken by other Government Entities in the area of Unmanned Aircraft. Since 2012 the faa has participated in the joint effort for air space integration and the army. The purpose of the test is to evaluate standardized procedures to effectively conduct manned and uas operations in the airport environment. The faa provided engineers and Laboratory Assets at the william j. Technical center to support dods. Were also supporting this effort by evaluating the joint test results for potential a applicability. We look forward to advance uas research and development. The Faa Technical Center is the nations premier system lob laboratory. It has a Specialized Laboratory to research and development. The uas lab has a variety of test assets including the ability to link faa or Traffic Control systems with high fidelity Unmanned Aircraft simulators roprovided by our Industry Partners. The Technical Center is playing an Important Role in Data Collection from the six uas test sites. A significant portion of the analysis is being performed at the Technical Center. This team will ensure the data transferred and determine whether additional Data Collection will facilitate meeting the faas research objectives. We continue to work with the test sites to obtain the most valuable information possible to help the faa integrate into the nas. We are grateful for the support congress has provided. Our goal is to create a costsharing relationship between academia industry and government that will focus on Research Areas of primary interest to the faa and uas community. The center of excellence will perform research through analysis, development and prototyping activities. We will announce the Award Recipient this year. We remain committed to the same Uas Technology into the National Air Space. We look forward to continuing to work with our partners, to continue making steady progress. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony for today. I like forward to answering your questions. Thank you, mr. Williams. Thank you, chairman smith and members of the committee. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss with you today the work with the National Research committee on autonomy research. Our final report was issued last summer after 18 months of effort. Was done at the we. Developing a National Agenda for research and development, that would support the introduction of what we callat aton omous elements with recognize that several keys state the context for our study and first and foremost is safety. Only if they represerve or enhance this further level of safety or reliability. Secondly, we had to recognize that the diversity of aircraft ground systems and personnel that comprise our Civil Aviation system because so called legacy aircraft and systems will continue to operate for the foreseeable future. Its clear that civil airspace must safely and efficiently accommodate everything from piper coughs designed in therotary and fixed wing vehicles whos design and application will continual evolving. Todays of aationAviation System sets the complex for tomorrow and is the future of system thats enable operation with extended periods of time without human supervision or intervention to provide the functional equivalent of a see and avoid capability which is a cornerstone of avoidance in our national system. Which is one example of what we mean when we talk of increasingly Autonomous Systems which will evolve to do more of the functions presently done by human pilots, controllers and other personnel. Our report identified eight technical barriers including Cyber Security and weve also identified four barriers associated with regulation and certification which include issues such as air space access. And findlyally we note that barriers related to public policy, law, regulation and very importantly social concerns about privacy and safety of Autonomous Systems. Our recommended Research Agenda consists of eight broad tasks of which we consider the first four to be the most urgent and most difficult. These include fundamental issues about how to characterize the behavior of systems that change dynamically over time. Modeling in simulation will be a fund. Al importance to the development and deployment of these systems and finally we discuss a wide range of Research Issues involving validation verification and certification. The remaining four Research Areas include issues having to do with the safe use of open source hardware and software and reexamination and redefinition of the role of humans in the operation of these systems. We note in our report that this Research Program is best carried out by multiple government academic and industrial entities and will require affective coordination at all levels. Civil aviation is on the threshold of profound changes because of rapid evolution of increasingly Autonomous Systems as often happens with rapidly evolving Technology Early adaptors times get up in the excitement of the moment, the greatly exaggerating the promise of things to come and greatly under estimating things in costs, money and in some cases unintended consequences and complications. While theres little doubt that over the long run the potential benefits of increasingly Autonomous Systems in Civil Aviation will be indeed be great. There should be equally little doubt that getting there while maintaining the safety and efficiency of u. S. Civil air aviation will be no easy matter. We believe that the barriers and research pregram that weve identified is the vital next step. That concludes my testimony. Id be happy to respond to questions. Thank you mr. Lauber. Mr. Wynn. Chairman smith Ranking Members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to address the importance of uas research and development. Im speaking on behalf of the association for unmanned Vehicle Systems international, the Worlds Largest Nonprofit Organization devoted exclusively to advancing the Unmanned Systems and Robotics Community and has been the voice of Unmanned Systems for more than 40 years and we have over 75 members including 600 corporate members. Allowing us to execute dangerous tasks efficiently whether its assisting First Responders or helping people spray their craps, uas are cage of saving time, money and most importantly lives. However the benefits of this technology do not stop there. It has the incredible potential to create jobs and stimulate the u. S. Economy as well. In 2013 avusi released a study that within ten years it would create more than 100,000 new jobs and Economic Impact of 82 billion. The benefits i just outlined can be recognized immediately once we put the necessary rules in place to enable commercial operations. We understand that a notice of proposed rule making sfr small uas and federal aviation is expected any day. Establishing rules will also eliminate the current approach of regulating by exemption whereby the faa issues skejsexemption by a case by case basis. While were here today to discuss the Critical Role of uas research and development, the fact is we dont dmeedneed a lot of Additional Research to create low altitude line of site operations. We look forward to working with the faa to get this done as expeditiously as possible. As we look beyond the initial phase of uas integration, we will need Robust Research to further expand access to the air space and address some of the challenges that exist to flying beyond line of sight. Areas requiring more research include sense and avoid, command and control and autonomous operations. The advancelet of Uas Technology needs to be a collaborative effort between industry and government while the industry is investing millions in research and the federal government has various Research Projects under way we can all do this better and in a more coordinates fashion calling for a National Leadership initiative that places uas entereggation in the air space system and all relevant r and d at the top of our countrys priority list. Importantly, the benefits of this research extend well beyond uas. It will make the entire National Air Space system safer for all aircraft manned and unmanned. A deeper National Commitment to uas r and d has three main government partners need a plan that coordinates all research. While the faa designated test sites went operational in 2014, too many questions about the collection, sharing and analysis of test data remain unanswered. Second, the federal government needs more resource sos to coordinate uas research. The faa was given 14. 9 million to support its uas research this year which is up from previous years. However, given the scope of the Research Needed to advance uas intereggation, we feel this figure is insufficient. Third, the government must have a transparent intellectual transportation provide protections. Companies on the cutting edge wont participate in faa or other Governmental Research activities if their intellectual property isnt safe guarded. The faa has taken significant steps to advance uas intereggation but must work remains to be done. Members stand to b collaborate with the appropriate agencies to accelerate the efforts that will allow for the safe integration of uas into the interNational Air Space system. Thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to questions. Thank you. Let me say to members. Weve had a series of votes called. Were going to try to finish our witness testimony before we go to vote and then we will resume the meeting immediately after the last vote so well go now to mr. Guan who i think has the most fun job of the whole day and youre recognized for your testimony. Thank you very much chairman smith and Ranking Member bonamici. Thank you committee here for having me. Its an honor to come speak to you about something that im very passionate about. I think what id like to do is just talk to you about, kind of the sailtale mate that were in today between no one going to disagree to the benefits that uas can provide to the economic, the efficiencies in business, the job creation, the revenue that can come into our country and then at the same time nobody is going to argue with the fact that we must be extremely thoughtful, considerate and careful in integrating these systems into the National Airspace because obviously the faa has a second to none Safety Record and theres no question that we must maintain that. So i guess for me today like to just talk a little bit about you know, where can we start . What can we do now that allows us to bridge that gap between the chicken and the egg . So we have the faa test sites which are great. But at the same time its a little bit of testing in a bubble. To ask research and Development Companies to rapidly iterate their technology and have to every couple of months figure out a time where they can get into a test site. Travel with their entire engineering team. Did they accidental leave the spectrum analyzer at the lab now someone has to fly home to get that. It doesnt allow for very rapid innovation which is obviously not going to let us keep up with the other countries in this world that are anbsolutely reaping the awards and benefits of this technology. Additionally, we must testing it in test sites is not necessarily going to give us the necessary data and logged flight hours to figure out what the hurdles are. What the road blkblocks are to safety intereggrating these systems. In the meantime and youll here here this is something that i want to talk about today when it comes to very small systems. Which weighs just over a pound. Its actually an incredibly advanced edd uav or drone. So what i think question start somewhere and instead of having to regulate and integrate 20, 30, and 40 pound systems or 50 pound systems into our National Airspace all at one time. What i would at least bring to discussion is the possibility of taking very small lightweight systems as many other countries in the world have done. Theres somewhat of a precedence around sub2 kilogram systems. They have the least chance of causing any harm. And so all right. We all saw a drone fly. Fantastic. Incredible. I was hoping youd fightly it over the whole room well, you said no haircuts. I said no haircuts earlier but you could have done. We could have arranged that so so the point that i want to make today is that if we start somewhere as many other countries have with the smallest, lightest weight systems. Were basically using a proportional and risk based system for regulation so that by integrating today or as soon as possible for commercial use small sub2 kill oegramogram systems i think has something that could potentially brinldge our gap while were figuring out how do we integrate the next heavier class. Great we learned a lot from these little tiny ones. While were learning a lot from the little tiny ones, were capturing the vast majority of the economic benefit of commercial uavs that can do power line inspection that can have geofences set up and that can return to their location and land themself. They log every perameter of the flight in real time. These small systems could be saving wild fire Fire Fighters lives or people saving the lives of people flying over power lines to take pictures of power lines. They could be used for a myriad of situations where they can save human lives. Thats all i wanted to say today is that maybe hewe can start somewhere, use that for Data Collection and also satisfy some of that economic benefit that all of those other countries that are experiencing right now. Thank you. Good suggestions. Dr. Hensman. Thanks for the opportunity to be here today. Its sort of hard to follow the demo but as you can see uavs are one of the most exciting areas in particularly aeronautics today. The same technologies that we used to enable these cell phones, the miniaturization of processing coupled with algorithms coupled with high power, you can see the stability of High Performance in very small packages. Today back in my office at mit i have two teams of students building new uav concepts so its a real exciting area. The thing to remember about uav interegg iegsation intereggation that theres a huge spectrum of sizes ranging from a few grams up to a thousands of pounds. We have the small uas operating at low altitudes within line of sight of the operator. We actually know how to do that today. Weve been doing it for years. We really need to get that going and get that enables. Thats what youve heard from some of this. Theres other categories. You have High Altitude uavs. Sort of the ones the military would want to operate. We sort of know how to do that. We have developed operating rules. They are normally operating above where most of the manned airplanes are. The two more challenging areas are small auv as that are being operated beyond the site of the operator so you dont have the visual feedback. Youre going to rely more on algorithms and rely more on the technology. And the toughest area is actually uavs whos mission require that they operate in the same air space that manned airplanes need to operate. Frankly, we dont have good what we call concepts of operations for either the small uas beyond line of site or the larger uas operating in that air space. Theres been so much focus on the small uas that we really havent done the research to enable the concepts of the operation. In unique consents of operation in order to guide the research to develop the standards, to work out the rules, to figure out the human factors. For example if we have uavs operating as ifr aircraft system today, how does the aircraft controller think about that uav. How do they communicate with them . Do they call the operator up on a land line . Is there some relay . What happens when theres a loss of communication . How do they think about it . Its actually a tough thing for the faa because there are a lot of policy issues. For example, who do you give priority to . Do you give priority to the manned airplane or uav airplane. We normally say give it to the manned airplane but what if the uav is on a live saving mission so theres a lot of critical questions here. Most of my comments were for my prepared remarks but i think the take away stlais that we really need to develop and were really behind the 8 ball. We really havent been working the harder problems of the fully integrated uas in some of the issues beyond line of site. I would note that i am encouraged by for example, the work that nasa has started on utm concept beyond line of site so they are starting to attack some of those problems so thank you for the opportunity. Mr. Henson, thank you for those comments. The committee is going to stand in recess till after these votes. When we return, we will go immediately to our questions. Sorry for the inconvenience. I hope were back within 30 minutes if you all to take a break until then. Thanks. The Science Committee will re reconvene. We will now begin our questioning and i will recognize myself for that purpose. Dr. Waggoner mr. Williams let me direct my questions to all of you. What is a realistic deadline for integrating the drones into the National Air Space system. I mentioned in my Opening Statement that it appears that the deadline has slipped but what can drone users and even the American People the wider audience, what is realistic deadline for that integration . Dr. Waggoner and then mr. Williams. So chairman i would answer that right now we do have a level of integration. So for public aircraft, they are flying everyday. Nasa does research but were also users. We have Unmanned Aircraft. So for civil applications, were working very closely with the faa and rtch 220 a to verify and validate these Key Technology barriers, sense and avoid, the radio communications, the displays for the Ground Control stations to allow the faa to determine these minimum Operational Performance standards. Mr. Williams when would i expect the faa to propose some rules . Well, the faa is working closely with our Administration Partners if the rule making process. Were doing everything we can to get that small unmanned uncraft role out but our main focus is to get it right. When do you might think you might get that out . I cant at this point give you a firm deadline. Do you have a goal in mind . Youve got a lot of people across the United States waiting and do you have any kind of a working deadline or working goal . Our goals are to get it out adds quickly as as quickly as we can as long as we get it right. Would it likely to be this year or next year . I cant speculate. Our own personal hope is that we get it out as soon as possible. But its got to go through the regulatory process that has been put in place by congress and were working our way through that. Okay. I am going to press you one more time. Youre slipping off my question here. How long does a regulatory process normally take in a situation like this . Well, youve got to understand this is a very complex rule making. Never mind. I can tell i am not going to get the answer i was hoping for but well take your word for expediting the process as much as we can. Dr. Lauber, you mentioned this in your testimony a while ago but what technologies need to be priorityized before the nas integration . What are the well i refer to what we believe is probability the highest and i think a couple of the other witnesses also mentioned the need for technology that provides the equivalent of see and avoid. The sense and avoid technology that needs to be in place for full integration of a wide range of these vehicles into the Aviation System. That would be the highest priority. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Wynn and mr. Gwen we have the government on one side as part of the process an we have the private sector as part of the process as well. What are the contributions of the private sector to the integration . My brief mr. Chairman is that the industry is going to bring the lions share of the Technology Solutions as it should. Companies like 3d robotics at the end of the day, they are constructing the devices, they are developing the software not just directly in the industry the micro processor speeds are getting faster et cetera,et. So this was really the spirit of my testimony was industry should really be doing the lion share of this. We should be proving the concepts to the satisfaction of the regulators in this r and d process. Thank you. Anything to add . Not to give a specific example, i course these companies are integrating and innovating these advanced technologies such as sense and avoid and geofencing and return to Home Technology but to give a specific example of what 3d robotics is doing is if i fly my drone today outside, you can log into drone share. Com and watch my entire flight automatically so if i choose any of our Members Around the world choose to make their profile public, every single time you fly that log file is uploaded automagically from your smart device into the cloud to drone share. Com and were able to now collect 10s if not hundreds of thousands of hours of data on what are the fringe cases right . Thats what we have to figure out . What are the fringe cases when you actually start integrating hundreds of thousands of these systems into air space. You mentioned the drone we saw a while ago in the drone was a fairly sophisticated device. What did it cost . What is its range or use . Thats more of a hobby drone. Its called the b bop. Its incredibly advanced in that it has a full High Definition camera. You can either fly it with a smart device or with a long change controller. Its got optical flow sensors to look at the ground and maintain positioning and alcellrometers and a full computer thats a flight system onboard and its 499. Whats the range. Depending on if youre using a smart phone youre restricted to wifi range but if you use the controller you can get up to a kilometer of range with Something Like that. Okay. Thank you. You mentioned tour eded during your testimony what your students are working on in the classroom. I just wondered if we can expect any kind of breakthroughs you might give some examples of what they are working on as well. Youve obviously seen it from a hands on approach. I will give you a couple of quick examples. One vehicle that our students protocops is a small uav that can do a one hour Surveillance System that is launched out of a military airplane. Gets shot out at 300 gs. This is a concept that nobody in the airforce thought would work. The students actually demonstrated it. Its now a Development Program where the vehicles they developed are being launched out of f 16s right now at ed edwards, amazing. I hope thats not classified information. Thats intriguing. Well, thank you all for your answers. Now i will recognize the gentlemen woman mr. Oregon for her questions. Thank you very much mr. Chairman. Thank you to our very Accomplished Panel of witnesses. As you heard in the opening remarks, oregon does have three test sites through the pan pacific uas test range led by the university of alaska fairbanks fairbanks. Weve talked a lot about the benefits of the technology. One of the concerns that ive heard from constituteents that ive heard in the industry that theres still problem of advancing the testing of their products especially true for Small Companies that dont have a small revenue stream and the test ranges and i think mr. Gwin said this about providing a space where the development can take place may be prohibitively expensive for Small Companies and there may be other logistical barriers. Can you expand on how the faa could work to best address these concerns and then i want to allow time for a couple of other questions. Sure so really quickly, right now, theres not really a set understanding of how you even schedule a time to go to the range. Theres no way to log into a system and say when is the next available day. Its not a matter of them being too busy. Quite frankly theres not a whole lot of Companies Using these test ranges. Its more a matter of what is the process . Theres a lot of bureaucracy surrounding getting even the approval to go to a test range and test fly for a few days so you dont know if thats going to be 30 days or two months. Then im going to ask mr. Women yam williams about that too. First i want to ask mr. Wynn the question. Thanks for your Association Work and what youve been doing. I want to echo the comments made by the chairman and some of the my colleagues about the concerns about the rulemaking. Maybe made a comment about the notice of proposed rule making is expected. Were encouraged about hearing that news. I actually sent a letter to secretary fox concerned about the timeline. Of course we want this to be done right. We dont want to jeopardize safety. Were concerned not only about Work Force Development and those challenges of recruiting people into it this industry if we dont have thatfor certainty but new noticed particular challenges because of the lack of certainty of atracktracting capital to the industry. Absolutely, maam. Thank you for the question. If im investing money in a project like this, i want to know what the go Market Strategy is, i want to know what the return on investment is. If i dont know when i can fly and when i can pursue some of the commercial opportunities that are out there its a big burrier. So theres i think the fact that theres money flowing in. Theres tremendous product being developed. This is a great Investment Opportunity and a great opportunity and a job creator which is something we need to be paying attention to. So while we want to get this right, and we want to do it once, for the various levels and were on a certain trajectory here, we think there are opportunities immediately that require very regulation some of the countries abroad have demonstrated this. Thank you. I know he talked about that. You heard him talk about some of the possible ways of moving forward. Of course its not a one size fits all because of the various sizes and capabilities and ranges. But i wanted to ask you first about the testing sites. Some companies have suggested maybe performing initial tests where their safety can be demonstrates and performing additional tests to home can that outline potential changes and can you taub about potential changes that could allow for more flexibility especially for the Small Developers and then i also wanted you to respond to the concern about the Small Companies having access and being able to test. So first, the Small Companies have access to our experimental awareness approval process which goes back to the manned aircraft process. Its the same regulations that are applied. Were in the process to make it more friendly for unmanned operators to get through the process. Opt on the test side front, we have set up a program to enable them with all the test sites to have the opportunity to issue experimental certifies on behalf of the f aaa thereby stream lining the process so we think thats a significant benefit that the test sites can offer to the industry. Were constantly looking at ways to stream line our processes and work to enable these new companies to test their aircraft in a safe by the rules way. Thank you. I see my time has expired. I will submit my section 333 exemption question for the record. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thanks. The gentleman from oklahoma, mr. Lucas is recognized. Thank you mr. Chairman. I would direct my question to dr. Waggoner and mr. Gwnyy and mr. Hanson. In recent years, agriculture has been one of the bright spots in our economy. Can you talk about the benefits that these might provide to growers and consumers. I have a little. What we saw High School Students this year who had the challenge of developing an Unmanned Aircraft to surveille a large farm of corn. These kids, incredible kids from all over the country came up with a number of different solutions. But they showed that there were Viable Solutions that were affordable usable for the farmer for precision agriculture where they could precisely locate where there were issues either with fertilizer or pesticide where they needed to be applied and could precisely do that. So we saw that as an opportunity that shows that its theres a market out there for that work. That was thats part of what is behind our more midterm work on this uas Traffic Management. So allowing a farmer or a commercial operation to go into a farm and do that kind of surveillance operations at low altitudes very safely and in a way that would be very cost affective. Ad adpplications are already ongoing in other parts the world. In japan for example where you have very small rice patties were seeing applications there. Its considered one of the number one applications. Theres Significant Interest on the part of agricultural departments to use these vehicles. If they are they are frustrate bid the rule like everybody else. Its difficult for them to get exemptions to go do experiments. Its one of the big opportunity spaces. If i can maybe provide maybe a specific example of a way that even one of these very small lightweight systems can provide real benefit to the farmer. So we had one of the top private vineyards in napa valley contact us and say weve been hearing about these drones. What can we do with them. Everybody talks about the high tech expect imagery and water damage and pesticide. If you take it to a simple level. Most of these farmers have never done a high yard resolution pictures of their vineyards which we did and allowed him to see a High Resolution image of the crop and for the generations of the vineyard and he looked over and said wow see how this is actually more darker green than this whole area because you cant see that when youre walking the rows the yin yardvineyard. You cant see the minute differences when youre up close. That means we need to harvest these grapes two to three weeks