<DOC>
[110 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:41459.wais]
S. Hrg. 110-474
ON THE PATH TO GREAT EDUCATIONAL RESULTS FOR THE DISTRICT'S PUBLIC
SCHOOLS?
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HEARING
before the
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 14, 2008
__________
Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
41-459 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2008
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN WARNER, Virginia
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware TED STEVENS, Alaska
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana JOHN WARNER, Virginia
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Thomas Richards, Professional Staff Member
Jennifer A. Hemingway, Minority Staff Director
David Cole, Professional Staff Member
Jessica Nagasako, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statement:
Page
Senator Akaka................................................ 1
WITNESSES
Friday, March 14, 2008
Cornelia M. Ashby, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income
Security Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office......... 2
Michelle Rhee, Chancellor, District of Columbia Public Schools... 4
Victor Reinoso, Deputy Mayor for Education, Office of the Deputy
Mayor for Education, District of Columbia...................... 8
Deborah A. Gist, State Superintendent of Education, Office of the
State Superintendent of Education, District of Columbia........ 11
Allen Y. Lew, Executive Director, Office of Public Education
Facilities Modernization, District of Columbia Public School... 13
Jane Hannaway, Ph.D., Director, Education Policy Center, Urban
Institute...................................................... 31
John W. Hill, Chief Executive Officer, Federal City Council...... 33
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Ashby, Cornelia M.:
Testimony.................................................... 2
Prepared statement........................................... 41
Gist, Deborah A.:
Testimony.................................................... 11
Prepared statement........................................... 82
Hannaway, Jane, Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 31
Prepared statement........................................... 95
Hill, John W.:
Testimony.................................................... 33
Prepared statement........................................... 100
Lew, Allen Y.:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 88
Reinoso, Victor:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 73
Rhee, Michelle:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 66
APPENDIX
Robert Vinson Brannum, Chairman, Education Committee, DC
Federation of Civic Associations, Inc., prepared statement..... 107
Hon. Paul Strauss, U.S. Senator, District of Columbia (Shadow),
prepared statement............................................. 110
Mary Spencer, Committee Chair for DC ACORN School Modernization
Committee (ASMOC), prepared statement.......................... 114
Gina Arlotto, Co-founder of Save Our School, prepared statement.. 115
Background....................................................... 117
Post-Hearing Questions for the Record Submitted from:
Ms. Rhee..................................................... 124
Mr. Reinoso.................................................. 128
Ms. Gist..................................................... 131
ON THE PATH TO GREAT EDUCATIONAL
RESULTS FOR THE DISTRICT'S
PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
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FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 2008
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management, the Federal Workforce,
and the District of Columbia,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
Room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K.
Akaka, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. This hearing will come to order.
Good morning and welcome to all of you. I look upon this as
a very important hearing, and thank you for joining us today
for the second in a series of hearings on the District of
Columbia Public School system reforms. I know you all have been
working diligently and hard, and I want to commend all of you
for the improvements thus far. I look forward to hearing more
about the progress you have made and your further intentions.
As you may know, before being elected to Congress, I was a
teacher and a principal. I was in the school system in Hawaii.
I know firsthand the challenges facing any educational system,
the care it takes to bring about reforms, the needed investment
in clear strategic plans, and the critical importance of
providing quality education to underserved populations.
You have made many tough decisions already and taken
noteworthy steps, but expectations are high. A number of
accountability measures have been put into place including
weekly meetings at all levels of DC Government, which hold
senior level staff and officials accountable for their efforts.
Given how critical this issue is for DC children, I asked
the Government Accountability Office to review the progress of
the reforms and make recommendations for improvements. The
short-term study, which we will hear the results of today,
confirms significant improvements in the system and fundamental
changes, such as management restructuring, reviewing teacher
and employee standards, development of strategic plans, and
addressing crumbling facilities.
To guide these reforms and build upon these efforts, one of
GAO's recommendations is that a system-wide strategic plan
should be developed. I agree with this finding. For all major
transformational reform efforts, it is important that there be
a strategy for the future.
The strategic plan should be a transparent, living document
focused on the students with a clear vision for all DC agencies
to understand their roles and their responsibilities.
We are looking at a fast-moving train. Every day new
changes occur in the school system, testing the hope and
expectations of parents, teachers, the community, and, most
importantly, the children and the students.
I hope today we can gain a better understanding of the
progress made and gain a greater understanding of future plans,
and so I look forward to all of our witnesses this morning.
Our first panel is Cornelia Ashby, who is the Director of
Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues, Government
Accountability Office; Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the DC
Public Schools; Victor Reinoso, Deputy Mayor for Education,
District of Columbia; Deborah Gist, DC State Superintendent of
Education; and Allen Lew, Executive Director of the Office of
Public Education Facilities Modernization.
Our Committee rules require that all witnesses testify
under oath. Therefore, I ask each of you to stand and please
raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony
you are about to give the Subcommittee is the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Ms. Ashby. I do.
Ms. Rhee. I do.
Mr. Reinoso. I do.
Ms. Gist. I do.
Mr. Lew. I do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Let it be noted in the record
that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Welcome again. Before we begin, I want you all to know that
although your oral statement is limited to 5 minutes, your full
statements will be included in the record.
So, Ms. Ashby, would you please proceed with your
statement?
TESTIMONY OF CORNELIA M. ASHBY,\1\ DIRECTOR, EDUCATION,
WORKFORCE, AND INCOME SECURITY ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Ashby. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to be here this
morning to present information on the District's progress in
reforming its public school system. Early reform efforts have
focused largely on broad critical management issues and other
activities that provide the foundation for long-term
improvement. In addition to developing and implementing
transitional plans to establish the new governance structure
required by the 2007 Reform Act, early reform efforts have
included human capital, data, school consolidation, facilities,
Federal grants management, and some performance and strategic
planning initiatives, as well as setting academic priorities.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Ashby appears in the Appendix on
page 41.
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With respect to human capital, new personnel rules and new
systems for evaluating the performance of central office
employees and employees of the State Superintendent's Office
were developed. According to DC Public Schools officials, as of
January, all staff had received performance evaluations based
on District Government-wide competencies. Officials at the
State Superintendent's Office told us that individual
performance plans had been developed for all staff, and
performance evaluations based on those plans will begin later
this month.
Both the State Superintendent's Office and DCPS are working
to improve their data systems to track and monitor the
performance of students, teachers, and schools. The
Superintendent's Office is building a longitudinal database.
The database is expected to be fully operational by 2012.
DCPS is consolidating its data systems, eliminating
duplicate information, and verifying data accuracy. DCPS
officials told us they expect the new student data management
system to be operational by February 2009. In addition, DCPS is
moving from a paper-based to an electronic personnel data
system.
Steps have also been taken to consolidate schools and set
academic priorities. This month, DCPS finalized its school
consolidation plan, which identifies over 20 schools for
closure in an effort to provide more resources to the remaining
schools.
In the area of academic achievement, DCPS has set academic
priorities for the current school year and is in the process of
establishing longer-term priorities DCPS is currently working
on a 5-year academic plan.
To address the backlog of work orders and ongoing
facilities needs, the new Facilities Office made repairs to
over 70 schools last summer and in early fall. It also assessed
the condition of heating and air conditioning systems in all
District schools. According to the Facilities Director, repairs
were made to school heating systems, and all schools had heat
by October 15. In addition, he told us all schools with central
air conditioning received upgrades, and about 670 new air
conditioning units were installed. Last fall, the Facilities
Office also began making improvements to the remaining schools.
The Facilities Office is revising the DCPS 2006 Master
Facilities Plan. According to District officials, the revised
plan, which is to be completed by the end of May, will align
with the chancellor's academic priorities and school
consolidation efforts.
The State superintendent has begun to address long-term
grant management and No Child Left Behind Act compliance
deficiencies identified by the U.S. Department of Education.
For example, to meet the No Child Left Behind State level
requirements, the State superintendent is establishing a
process for providing technical assistance to underperforming
schools. The State superintendent has told us that her office
has started to develop a strategic plan that will include
measurable goals and objectives and expects to complete the
plan this summer.
The mayor and education officials have also developed a
performance-based process designed to establish accountability
for these school reform efforts. As you mentioned, Mr.
Chairman, the process includes holding weekly meetings to track
progress and accomplishments across education offices, as well
as requiring these offices to develop and follow annual
performance plans. The DC Department of Education has taken
some steps to coordinate and integrate the various efforts of
the District education offices. However, it has not developed a
District-wide strategic education plan.
While developing a long-term strategic plan takes time, it
is useful for entities undergoing transformation, such as the
DC Public School system. A strategic plan and the process of
developing one helps organizations look across the goals of
multiple offices and determine whether they are aligned and
connected or working at cross purposes. By articulating an
overall mission or vision, a strategic plan helps organizations
set priorities, implementation strategies, and timelines to
measure the progress of multiple offices. A long-term strategic
plan is also an important communication tool, articulating a
consistent set of goals and marking progress for employees and
key stakeholders. Given that leadership changes, a strategic
plan would provide a road map for future District leaders. For
these reasons, we recommend, as you also mentioned, Mr.
Chairman, the development of a District-wide education
strategic plan.
Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared statement. I would
be happy to answer any questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Ms. Ashby. Ms. Rhee.
TESTIMONY OF MICHELLE RHEE,\1\ CHANCELLOR, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Ms. Rhee. Good afternoon, Chairman Akaka. When I last
testified before you, I said that I would rebuild the public
school system in Washington, DC. I described plans to overhaul
flawed data and accountability systems, create a culture of
individual accountability for student achievement, build strong
leadership and high-quality teaching in our schools, reform
special education, and address multiple other areas to increase
student achievement. As my evaluation of the system has
deepened over the last 8 months, I have been shocked by the
profound level of dysfunction under which DCPS has been
operating. I met high school seniors who want to go to college
next year but who had just learned about prepositions. I heard
from teachers who had not been paid for the work they had done
3 years ago. And I met elementary school students who sent me a
``wish list'' for their school. They asked if they could have a
music teacher, a Spanish teacher, a librarian, and other basic
things for which no children should have to lobby their
chancellor for.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Rhee appears in the Appendix on
page 66.
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These are not just anecdotes. What saddens me most is what
the performance data says about what this system is doing to
kids. According to our DC-CAS data, 50 of our schools have
proficiency rates lower than 20 percent in either reading or
math. This means that four out of five kids in those schools do
not meet even the most basic level of proficiency. We are
talking about almost 14,000 children.
Residents of the District have rightly demanded radical
change, and we are responding swiftly. In this transitional
year, we have begun to remove the obstacles that block student
achievement. We are solving the problems that need to be
solved, and I look forward to discussing this work with you
today. However, this system needs more than solving problems
one at a time. This year we are laying the foundations for my
long-term strategy, building our priorities and goals for the
next 5 years. On these foundations we will build the system to
give our children the skills they need and the choices in life
that they deserve.
I am going to talk a little bit about some of the things
that we have done so far.
First, this year, after receiving multiple reports of
problems with our central office, we have swiftly and
aggressively moved to solve them. From former employees who
were still receiving benefits and paychecks that they could not
explain, to teachers who had not been paid and parents who
could not get an employee to return a phone call, there were so
many issues to confront that I set up a constituent services
team to help parents and school staff navigate the central
office. I learned that many staff members do not have job
descriptions and that they had never received a performance
evaluation. We responded. I communicated the mayor's higher
customer service standards to all employees and lobbied for
personnel legislation that would allow us to increase the
efficiency of our central office as a whole and to create a
culture of accountability. We are reorganizing the central
office as we speak so that people's skills and performance are
best suited to their positions and office. We created job
descriptions for all employees and conducted our first round of
performance evaluations. We have previously non-responsive
employees who, after just one performance evaluation, are now
working harder at their jobs. In the past 4 months, our
customer satisfaction rate with the central office response has
jumped from 41 percent to 59 percent, and I am confident that
will continue to improve.
Reforming DCPS requires that we have the best principals
leading our schools. Previous DCPS recruiting has been minimal,
but through a new principal recruitment campaign, we are
interviewing and identifying quality school leaders. We have
already received close to 500 applications, and we expect this
number to grow as more prospective candidates begin considering
their options for next year.
Recruitment, however, is only half the task. To keep strong
employees, leaders must recognize and reward good work. In the
Nation's capital it is time for us to back our words about
respecting successful educators with the investment that will
keep them in our schools. We started this year by utilizing
Federal funds to give what we call TEAM Awards to schools that
showed dramatic gains in student achievement, and my long-term
plans aim to increase performance awards to teachers and
schools.
In the past, DCPS has not supported teachers by providing
them with the training they needed to drive instruction
forward, and in a massive effort this year, we are turning
around professional development. Before, there was no
consistency in the quality of instruction across the District,
and parents were rightfully frustrated by this disparity. Now,
we are teaching our teachers how to use the best practices for
reading and math instruction and making instruction consistent
across the system.
Also, we are showing our teachers how to use test data to
drive instruction and abolishing the ``drill and kill'' style
of teaching often associated with standardized tests. For
example, the reading portion of the DC-CAS measures students'
ability to read for meaning, a skill that this District as a
whole has failed to provide. We are training teachers to use
``constructed response'' questions to teach children how to
show reading comprehension through fully developed written
responses. This is not ``test prep.'' It is good teaching, and
it is what gives children the skills that they will need as
adults.
We are also providing a monthly professional development
calendar full of options across the District. These options are
aligned to the specific needs of teachers and students as
identified through testing data, surveys, and school
observations. Not only will this help the District to track
professional development for each teacher, it will support our
teachers in honing their craft. Overall, our work in
professional development this year increases our ability to
retain the teachers we need, when too often in this field,
isolation and a lack of support lead to preventable burnout.
Since I have arrived, I have received an education in just
how severe our problems with data management are. An initial
assessment revealed that we have 27 disconnected data systems
in the DC Public Schools. An update in one location did not
automate an update in other areas where similar information was
stored. This affected even the most basic operations. For
example, in September when I attempted to send an e-mail to all
teachers, my in-box was filled with returns from defunct e-mail
accounts, and I was advised that I should back up the mailing
with a paper letter sent to individual schools. Now, with
continued outreach to schools and new connected data systems,
this longstanding communication problem is being corrected.
Through a collaborative effort with Human Resources, we have
updated our teacher e-mail list from 45 percent accuracy to
about 75 percent. Also this school year we worked with the
city's chief technology officer to install 5,900 PCs in our
schools so that every single DCPS classroom teacher has a
working computer. They will use these new computers to view
student data, take attendance, conduct research, take advantage
of professional development opportunities, and, finally, to
receive my e-mails.
Streamlining our data systems is a massive undertaking that
will occur over the next few years, but it is one of my highest
priorities. In every area of DCPS, my long-term objective is to
use data as every good organization does: To improve
performance. My chief data and accountability officer has been
successful in streamlining these systems in other districts,
and I am confident that our plans for the District's data
systems will result in significant progress in our offices and
classrooms.
Many schools had significant needs that require immediate
attention this year. First, some of our schools are without
psychologists, guidance counselors, school nurses, art or music
teachers. Teachers are forced to attempt to provide the
services that they are not equipped to provide, especially when
I needed them to focus on instruction. Our schools with low
enrollment numbers are particularly hard to staff. Schools were
paying to maintain unused space when we need that money to
staff the school and provide strong programs. In November, we
introduced a plan to right-size the school system and bring
strong new academic initiatives and a full staffing model to
our schools over time. We are working through the remainder of
the school year and summer to prepare schools for upcoming
transitions due to school closures and new programs.
We also have a number of schools that are not meeting
Academic Yearly Progress under the No Child Left Behind Act,
and we are carefully assessing the options available under the
law to make the right decisions for each school. We will use
these assessments to create plans for each school, not only to
correct problems but to align their programs with our longer-
term plans for success.
I know I am running over. Do you want me to continue?
Senator Akaka. Yes.
Ms. Rhee. OK. Special education in this District has been a
real and deep hardship for many students and families. I have
not only been shocked by the mistakes that have led to the loss
of millions of dollars that could have been used to serve
instruction, but also, more importantly, I have been saddened
by the damage that DCPS has done by over-identifying students
who should not have been classified and by failing to support
the children who do need services.
We have been aggressive about identifying the root of these
problems and correcting them. To start, we will be working with
the State superintendent of education to pilot mental health
programs in middle schools; to introduce the comprehensive
staffing model through the right-sizing plan next year; and to
reform our process for identifying students for special needs
services by accurately diagnosing learning needs. Our long-term
strategies to raise student achievement levels include eight
new school-wide applications model schools next year, which
have shown tremendous success in urban districts across the
country to ensure high achievement for both disabled and
nondisabled students. This system currently has a reputation
for being the least inclusive in the country when it comes to
our special education students, and our focus now is how to
become an integrated, inclusive district where we are not
segregating these students.
Historically, this system has not done well bringing
parents into students' education. Our long-term plans will
include the initiatives we need to engage parents in our work
in schools. Many parents simply do not know what they can
expect, demand, or do to support their children through each
stage of the learning process. We are now building the
foundations to communicate clearly with parents about their
children's progress and about important processes such as
college applications. We are holding parent information
sessions, opening Parent Resource Centers, conducting focus
groups with parents, and increasing our commitment to
translating and interpreting information for linguistically and
culturally diverse parents.
During this first transition year, I have identified the
problems that have been blocking student achievement for years.
We are solving these problems. Whether by right-sizing the
system, speeding a slow bureaucracy, or improving our data
systems, we are building the foundation for a system that
works.
After this year we will move into the proactive long-term
implementation strategy that will move us beyond correcting
current problems to creating model programs. I want a portfolio
of quality schools in every ward across this District that
provides quality choices to all students and parents. I want a
District that fosters a college-going culture in every ward,
allowing our students to be as competitive for college as any
students in the Nation. Clearly, we are far from seeing the
results that I want today. But as I approach the closing months
of this school year of transition, I remain determined and am
very confident that we are going to see those changes happen.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much for your statement, Ms.
Rhee. Mr. Reinoso.
TESTIMONY OF VICTOR REINOSO,\1\ DEPUTY MAYOR FOR EDUCATION,
OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY MAYOR FOR EDUCATION, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Mr. Reinoso. Good morning, Senator. I appear before you
today to report on the progress made by the District of
Columbia in implementing the mayor's public education reform
initiatives and on the strategies we are developing to continue
that momentum moving forward. First, however, I have to pause
to say how incredibly proud I am of the team that the mayor has
put together to lead the agencies where the work is happening
and of the job that each of them has done thus far to respond
to the mayor's charge that we not just reform, but really
remake, the District of Columbia Public Schools, and that we do
this as quickly as humanly possible. As you will hear in the
testimony of each of them, they have made great strides in
addressing critical problems within their agencies--in some
cases more progress than had been seen in many years before
this team took charge--and at the same time, they are
developing the long-term strategic plans that will guide us
towards continued, systemic improvement in the future.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Reinoso appears in the Appendix
on page 73.
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The District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment
Act of 2007 enabled the mayor to embark on a sweeping array of
initiatives and reforms, some of which have already begun to
fundamentally change our approach to public education. My
office was established to oversee all of those efforts and to
ensure that the entire District Government--including both our
education and our non-education agencies--moves forward
coherently and in alignment towards our shared goal: Ensuring
the success of every student. I have also been charged by the
mayor with marshalling all of the District's resources--public,
private, and in the community--to improve the educational
processes and outcomes for all the District's students in order
to prepare them for successful futures. Thus, while each of the
witnesses who joins me here will describe his or her own
strategic plan to move us toward this goal within the scope of
their agency's mission and capabilities, I will discuss the
role of my office in coordinating these plans and, as
importantly, ensuring that the human and other resources are
made available to support their execution.
To accomplish this critical task, I have organized my
office around four broad activities: Coordination of a
District-wide educational strategy; coordination and direction
of high-quality services and programs that reach across city
agencies and educational institutions to improve child and
youth outcomes; development of robust partnerships with
community-based organizations and the private sector that
provide the District's education system with critical new
resources; and leadership and support to the Office of the
State Superintendent, the Office of Public Education Facilities
Modernization, and the Ombudsman Office, all of which report
through me to the mayor. We are moving successfully forward on
several fronts, which I will highlight briefly here.
When we set out to improve our public education system, the
mayor made a foundation decision to attack the problem
comprehensively. The Administration views education as a
continuum from birth into adulthood: Learning is always taking
place and access to quality educational opportunities must
exist at every level. Also, it is not enough to transform what
happens in the classroom; to succeed, we have to meet all of
our students' needs, including the needs that students bring
from outside the classroom. So as a government, the District
must bring to bear all of the resources of its public and
private sectors--in a coordinated manner--to support children
and learning in order to create an environment in which they
can succeed.
My office is well positioned not only to think
strategically about the direction of our reform efforts, but
also to address specific challenges and tackle special projects
that support implementation of the plans of each of these
agencies. We are able to take on work that will enable the
Chancellor and State superintendent to be more effective in
their efforts. For example, my staff has played a leadership
role in planning around how to align our education-related
infrastructure and resources with outcome-driven priorities--
including the rapid closure of key service gaps. This work is
continuous and correlates directly with the top priorities of
the mayor.
Most recently, my office has been leading the planning and
coordination around the school facilities consolidation effort.
In this role, we have provided capacity to the chancellor and
her team around analyzing data, creating strategies, engaging
the community, and, ultimately, developing recommendations for
the reorganization plan. This joint effort led to a proposal
that will enable the chancellor to drive resources down to the
classroom and provide higher quality academic services to
students across the city.
We approach the reform agenda from a big-picture
perspective. We can identify gaps in academic and support
services and work with agencies to close those gaps. One
example of the work which is detailed in my written testimony
is the support we are providing to DCPS around implementation
of an alternative high school model. In addition, the mayor's
education initiative is being pursued across numerous fronts,
and my office is again uniquely positioned to guide those
efforts without being involved in the day-to-day management and
operation of the education agencies. This is allowing us to
aggressively pursue particular high-priority initiatives,
restructure and reorganize services, and manage agency
performance while keeping an eye on the big picture.
The State superintendent will comment on some of her key
priorities, including special education and addressing our
high-risk designation for Federal grants. But we continue to
support her in a number of other efforts as well: The
comprehensive student warehouse, etc. I will not steal her
thunder.
Mr. Lew's shop has a more narrowly defined but no less
daunting task: To repair, maintain, renovate, modernize, and
construct as many of our school facilities as quickly,
efficiently, and effectively as possible, and he will expound
on those efforts.
But a second critically important function of my office is
to lead and coordinate the activities of the Interagency
Collaboration and Services Integration Commission, more
affectionately known as ICSIC, a panel created by the mayor's
reform legislation and comprised of the agency heads from over
20 agencies that touch the lives of children and families.
ICSIC has a unique ability to identify new ways that we, as a
government, can increase the chances of success for our
students. Some of the key highlights of the work that has
happened there is that we have begun now to develop a school
preparedness assessment, which will be piloted this spring in
100 kindergarten classrooms in April and May, with a broader
rollout in the fall. We have also improved the tracking of
child health indicators. Both of these are examples of how my
office sits uniquely positioned not as a day-to-day operating
agency, but as one that looks strategically across the
government to provide support to the education agencies, and to
integrate and align their work and the work of other agencies
so that we are moving forward the full potential of children
inside and outside the classroom. We have laid the groundwork
for progress on a number of goals, and I expect similar
accomplishments moving forward.
Finally, as I said, my office is active in the development
of school partnerships: Meeting with organizations seeking to
support the mayor's reform efforts, tracking down and
developing new partnership relationships, reviewing existing
partnerships to better understand coverage and gaps and to
determine their effectiveness in moving us towards our
strategic goals. Since October, we have had dozens of meetings
with organizations and have begun to lay the groundwork for, I
think, some powerful new partnerships, both at the city-wide
level but also at the local school level. I believe the success
of these efforts is evidence that the Administration has
communicated effectively with external stakeholders about our
strategic approach to improving education in the District and
shows that there are many people in the private and nonprofit
sectors who are ready to help, so long as they feel that their
efforts are part of a larger plan to move forward.
Again, I thank you for the opportunity to share with you
the progress that the District is making, and I look forward to
your questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Reinoso. Ms. Gist.
TESTIMONY OF DEBORAH A. GIST,\1\ STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF
EDUCATION OFFICE OF THE STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION,
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Ms. Gist. Good morning, Senator Akaka, Committee staff and
guests, and thank you for having us here. I really appreciate
the opportunity to be here to discuss the progress that we have
made in the Office of the State Superintendent of Education
since we were here to brief you last summer, which is actually
before the State functions were moved into our agency. So a lot
has happened during that time.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Gist appears in the Appendix on
page 82.
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I am going to talk to you about our strategic vision and I
am also going to update you on two of the education reform
efforts that we have been working on.
The Education Reform Act that was enacted last summer and
the transition plan that Mayor Fenty approved identified State-
level education functions that were within three different
agencies that were transferred into the Office of the State
Superintendent of Education on October 1, which was actually
just about 5 months ago. And while extracting these State
functions from these existing agencies was very complex, I am
pleased to be able to tell you today that the transition
occurred successfully. We met our goals. It was for the most
part completely within our time frame. And the existing
functions, including early childhood, for example, are set to
transfer, in the near future. We expect the transfer to occur
successfully.
As a result of these transfers of responsibilities, we have
been able to focus on establishing core foundational components
that will allow us to be successful in carrying out our mission
and providing the appropriate level of support and oversight to
the local education agencies within the District of Columbia.
The first of these foundational components that we are
reforming, as has been mentioned, is the special education
system. Our Federal grants management system is another. And as
you know, the U.S. Department of Education has designated us as
a high-risk grantee. And I am pleased to let you know that we
have made quite a bit of progress, and I will go over just a
few of those reforms that we have made on the Federal grants
management briefly.
For example, we are ensuring that we have adequate
oversight over the use of Federal funds through monitoring of
our local education agencies within Washington, DC, which
includes DCPS as well as public charter schools. We are
developing and refining our financial monitoring systems to
ensure fiscal compliance. We are increasing our grants
management accountability through the development of evaluation
protocols for our LEAs. We are ensuring extensive collaboration
with our local education agencies around different reform
efforts in order to provide the maximum leveraging of our
Federal dollars. And we are ensuring efficient fund allocation
and distribution systems so that the Federal funds are
allocated and distributed in a more expedited manner, which has
been a failure of our system in the past, and also to improve
our documentation.
We are focused on developing a foundation, as has also been
talked about, the importance of data, and this has also been a
failure of our system in the past as both have access to high-
quality data but also to use that data effectively. The Office
of the State Superintendent of Education is taking the lead on
the development of a State-wide or a District-wide longitudinal
education data warehouse that will link together the different
data systems that all of our partners within the city are
working on. It will include data from the public charter
schools, from the DC Public School system, and will span from
childhood through higher education and even include adult
education.
Thus far, we have created an interim data system that is
based on a unique student identifier, which is obviously a key
foundational element to any strong data system, and we are
currently updating that on a monthly basis, bringing together
data that we receive from the LEAs within the District.
We have enhanced the interim student tracking system
recently to include richer and more advanced data, including
information on the student's grade level, where they are
enrolled, their exit dates, and, where applicable, their
special education status or their English language learner
status.
In addition, we have mapped all of this information to
existing student achievement data out of the DC-CAS assessment
so that we can not only get a picture of mobility, but so that
we can also take a look at what that mobility might mean in
terms of student achievement. This interim system will serve as
a key foundational component as we move forward in developing
that comprehensive data warehouse.
The final foundational component that is central to our
reform strategy is the development of our strategic plan. Our
mission at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education
is for all District residents to receive an excellent education
for success in the 21st Century. The framework of the strategic
plan that we are currently developing is for all students to be
served and supported, that all children will be ready for
school, that all students will have access to excellent
schools, and, finally, that all residents will be prepared for
success in college or in the 21st Century workplace. These
goals include functions that we are already responsible for,
such as the child nutrition programs, early childhood
functions, and responsibilities around student achievement in
the District.
So we have a long road ahead of us as we continue on these
reform efforts, but I really do believe that there is no
greater civil rights challenge that we have right now in our
country, and certainly in our city, than ensuring that our
children have access and receive a high-quality education at
every level of their experience in our systems. And I take that
responsibility very seriously, as do the members of our team
here, as do the people on our staff. I am confident that
providing the proper foundations of reform through efforts like
our Federal grants system and the data warehouse--these are
tools and things that we need to be operating effectively so
that the instruction, the parts that Chancellor Rhee and the
teachers that are actually interacting with our students every
day so that they can be successful.
We will ultimately be judged at the end of the day for
whether or not our student achievement increases, and we are
fully committed to seeing those results.
I appreciate this opportunity to be here with you this
morning, and I look forward to your questions and our
conversation. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Ms. Gist. Mr. Lew.
TESTIMONY OF ALLEN Y. LEW,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF
PUBLIC EDUCATION FACILITIES MODERNIZATION, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Mr. Lew. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you today. For the record,
my name is Allen Lew. I am the Executive Director of the Office
of Public Education Facilities Modernization. Our office was
established by the Public Education Reform Amendment Act of
2007. It is responsible for the maintenance and repair of
existing DC Public Schools, as well as rehabilitation and
construction of schools and facilities and the development of a
revised Master Plan for the system.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Lew appears in the Appendix on
page 88.
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In the past several months, we have been engaged in a
number of initiatives aimed at addressing quality-of-life
issues necessary to support a classroom and school environment
that is conducive to learning. These initiatives, including
athletic field renovations, a Summer Blitz program, targeted
roof repair programs, and fire and health code abatement, as
well as a system-wide heating system maintenance program--
concentrated on the most glaring deficiencies affecting the
school facilities when the mayor took over the system. I am
pleased to report that we have successfully implemented each of
these urgent-need projects.
At the same time, I am proud to say that we also have been
able to undertake significant management reforms since I last
appeared before this Subcommittee, while also preparing for
major construction initiatives this spring and summer.
In terms of organizational reforms, we set up an office--
literally from scratch--to manage the summer blitz and targeted
repair programs and the athletic field renovations that I just
mentioned. We have drafted and published new procurement
regulations. We have drafted new personnel regulations. We have
competitively procured a program management team that provides
roughly 22 FTEs to augment our school construction and
facilities maintenance and staff, we have assumed
responsibility for school maintenance functions. We have
engaged a management consultant to develop state-of-the-art
procurement, human resources, and information management
systems, and we have begun the process of transitioning former
DCPS OFM personnel into our office.
On the school modernization side, we have worked to change
the former culture of project management at the school system
and in some cases, construction management teams for certain
projects have been terminated. For instance, at the Savoy
School, the contractor, the builder, was terminated for the
construction phase.
All of our renovation and new construction project budgets
are being reviewed, and they are being ``right-sized'' to more
accurately reflect what we expect to be actual costs. In the
past, the cost estimates in the budgets were based to be simply
square footage and had no relationship to real needs or to the
conditions of the schools. We are correcting that now.
We currently have approximately 20 major construction
projects that are in various stages of design, preconstruction,
and construction that are moving forward expeditiously. As we
move forward with these projects, we are reassessing the
minimum quality standards for school buildings. We have found
that some of the existing standards do not reflect the need for
durability, maintenance, and life cycle of finishes, for
example, of a school facility, and that this ultimately could
affect the long-term cost and short-term labor requirements to
maintain these new and renovated schools. One advantage of
OPEFM being responsible for maintenance as well as construction
is that we are considering what it takes to maintain buildings,
not just to build the buildings early in our planning and
design process.
On the topic of maintenance, through the various repair
programs we initiated this past summer and fall, we
substantially reduced the backlog of work orders at about 70
schools. We are currently in the process of clearing the
remaining work orders throughout the system. We also are
initiating a stabilization program, where the 60 or 70 schools
that were not really participants in the programs this past
summer are going to be receiving upgrades and repairs. As part
of this, we are establishing a triage system so that when new
repair orders come in, they will be addressed more quickly and
efficiently. Emergency repairs will be addressed right away.
Routine maintenance type repairs will be integrated into
possibly a larger effort when the classrooms are not being
disrupted by our work crews.
We have also initiated an air conditioning program. We have
discovered that many of the classrooms actually did not have
air conditioning. It was not a question of repairing the air
conditioners. There was just absolutely no air conditioning. So
we are in the process right now of getting all of the central
AC systems running properly, as well as ensuring that air
conditioning units in the classrooms are installed where
necessary. One of the main hurdles right now relates to the
fact that the schools have inadequate electrical capacity in
many instances. So we have to actually upgrade the electrical
systems before even installing the air conditioners.
Our goal is to get the new classroom air conditioning up
and running by late spring. In some cases, we are going to have
to rely on some temporary systems. We did that with the heating
program a few months ago. About seven or eight schools required
temporary boilers that were brought in to provide heat until
the permanent system was repaired. And we are going to be doing
the same thing with the air conditioning systems in some of the
schools this spring. There are about 10 or 12 that will require
temporary chillers, and we are going to have to provide some
temporary electrical upgrades that would allow us to power up
the systems.
On the larger modernization initiative, we are working with
the deputy mayor of education and the chancellor to refine
school/grade configurations across the system, prioritize
facility delivery, and identify systemic efficiencies that will
allow us to move more students into new and modernized school
buildings faster. In addition to the data used to develop the
educational specifications for the chancellor's school
consolidation plan, much of the data developed in the 2006
Master Facilities Plan are still relevant to our modernization
efforts. We also found that the facility assessments--the
information that was prepared during the past Administration as
part of the master plan process was extremely helpful to us in
our effort to deal with the heating and the electrical problems
in the system as we move forward with the stabilization
efforts. Right now we also are going through a major effort to
reassess the construction formula that was implemented as part
of their master plan by our predecessors to determine whether
to build new schools or restore or expand existing schools and
the logic behind the decisions that were made in the past.
Having analyzed that formula, we are working now to find a
balance that will result in a more effective and efficient
combination of rehabilitation and new construction for the
revised Facilities Master Plan. Ultimately, we think this will
allow us to modernize quicker and address the long-term needs
sooner, and as well as possibly reducing the capital
expenditures over the course of 10 or 15 years.
I am excited to be working with the mayor, deputy mayor,
and the chancellor, as well as the State superintendent, to
implement these reforms. If there are any questions, I am more
than pleased to take them. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Lew.
Mr. Reinoso, under the requirements of the No Child Left
Behind Act, when a school is failing, parents, teachers, the
community, and the administrators come together and develop a
strategic plan to improve that one school. When a system of
schools is failing, don't you think a similar plan should be
put together that addresses reforms for the entire education
system?
Mr. Reinoso. You are saying should there be a comprehensive
plan for the education system?
Senator Akaka. Yes.
Mr. Reinoso. I think the answer to that is yes, and I think
the question is where are we looking for that plan. If you look
at the State level, there is a State plan--which in DC is
another way of saying city-wide plan--that is being developed
around accountability and around the requirements of the No
Child Left Behind Act, by the State superintendent. If you look
at the local school level, in addition to work that is being
done by the charter schools, our largest local education
agency, led by Chancellor Rhee, is developing its own
comprehensive plan to address both underperforming schools, to
meet the requirements of NCLB, but also to provide a compelling
and comprehensive public education option to all of the
residents of the District of Columbia.
So I think, again, the answer is yes, there should be a
plan, and I would argue that there is a plan. The Chancellor
has a comprehensive plan for DCPS that she is developing over 5
years where people will be able to see the metrics, the
benchmarks, and the specific focus areas year after year, and
as the Superintendent mentioned, she is working on a 5-year
plan where, again, there will be laid out clear, transparent
metrics and goals for year after year after year. And then my
office will ensure that they have the resources necessary to
execute their plans, and also that there is the necessary
accountability.
As they lay out their metrics, we will be trying to stay
ahead of the public in terms of holding them accountable
because the public will then hold the mayor accountable for
whether or not they met their goals.
Senator Akaka. Well, without question, the testimony and
statements given this morning by this team demonstrates a
strategy for reforms. But can you tell me how you are
communicating that plan to the education community? And what
are you doing to incorporate constructive feedback? You touched
on that, but can you be more specific?
Mr. Reinoso. Sure. The chancellor is developing her plan,
and then I think once there is a firmed-up document, she will
be engaged in a fairly broad effort to communicate her
priorities to the community. With your permission, if you want
to ask for the specifics of the engagement strategy that she
intends to pursue, by all means do so. The superintendent will
also be conveying her plan, and there has already been, I
think, community involvement to some extent in both
conversations. And so throughout this time, throughout these 15
months, and even prior to that, during the campaign, all of us
and the mayor have collected a tremendous amount of information
of what the community needs and expectations are for the school
system, and we are incorporating that in these drafts, which
will then go out to the public in a very transparent way, at
which point we will get additional feedback.
With Mr. Lew's plan, likewise, we are working on developing
a new Master Facilities Plan and there will be a community
engagement process as part of that. And so at the high level of
the plans, there is community engagement, and then in the
execution, there is also community engagement. Just as an
example, there was a tremendous amount of engagement around the
school consolidation proposals the chancellor put forward. Nest
week, we are beginning a series of community meetings around
the next step in this process--the reuse of those school
facilities--so there will also be opportunities for folks to
provide comment as we move forward on that strand of work. And,
similarly, the chancellor has held meetings around her
restructuring proposals. There will be community engagement
around the principal selection effort that she is engaging on.
And Mr. Lew has met with a number of communities around
individual specific facilities projects.
So, again, I think you can tease these opportunities for
engagement out at various levels, but there is engagement in
the process. And in terms of communicating the big-picture
priorities, the mayor first at the 100-day point in his
Administration communicated a set of priorities, and then at
the beginning of this year he also communicated an expanded set
of priorities around education that highlighted aspects of both
the State superintendent's efforts and the chancellor's
efforts. So I think folks have multiple ways of knowing what we
are working on and then commenting on individual pieces of it
as they evolve in their implementation.
Senator Akaka. Well, I believe transparency--and this is
what I am talking about--is so important, especially for the
people you are serving so they understand what it is you are
trying to do. And my purpose in having this hearing this
morning and the one that we had previously was really to bring
not only to the DC community but also the congressional
community information about what you are doing and how you are
doing it. And this is very important to gain support, and for
me now, I have extended it to not only DC and Congress, but the
rest of the country----
Mr. Reinoso. That is right.
Senator Akaka [continuing]. Is looking at DC and what DC is
doing to reform the system. So it is very important that we
have a process for transparency here.
Let me ask the chancellor, the superintendent, and Mr. Lew,
the question that I asked Mr. Reinoso: How are you
communicating your plans to those affected by the reforms? And
what are you doing to incorporate constructive feedback? I am
glad to hear from some of you the word ``partnership'' and
trying to work other groups in as well. But how are you
communicating your plans, chancellor?
Ms. Rhee. Sure. If you look at some of the major reforms
that we are putting in place right now around, for example,
right-sizing the District, so school closures and
consolidations, the school restructurings, the principal
hirings, in each of those circumstances we have very specific
plans about how we are going to engage the community more
broadly in that. An example of that is around the school
closings. In November, we came out with what our tentative
recommendations were for right-sizing the District as well as
the creation of new programs. We then embarked on about 10
weeks of community meetings and every night went out, talked to
the different communities. And it was interesting to me because
throughout that process, people often would come to those
meetings and say, ``Well, you have already made up your mind.
We do not really believe that you are listening to us. And so
we think that this is sort of a farce.''
And I would say to them, ``Well, if I had already decided
which schools would be closed, I would have had the mayor sign
that executive order the following day, and I would have saved
myself several months of getting yelled at every single night.
My focus here is to really listen to what people have to say.''
And at the end of that process, we did make a significant
number of modifications to our original plan. And it was
interesting for me to sort of then circle back with the people
who we had engaged in conversations with and to really hear
people--a lot of people say, ``You know what? We didn't really
think that you were listening, but now when we see what you
have finally recommended to the mayor, we know that you were.''
I think this is hard because some people who had a lot
things to say and maybe we did not make the decision that they
would have liked, they said, ``Well, you weren't listening.''
But for me, it is about--I cannot as a leader do everything
that everybody wants me to do. My job as a leader is to make
sure that I am hearing all of those voices, taking into
consideration all those things, but in the end making the
decisions that I think are going to enable us to move this
District forward in the most effective way.
I do anticipate that we are going to have a lot of
community involvement in the school restructurings as well. We
have 27 schools right now that are in restructuring status.
According to NCLB, all of those 27 schools will require a
significant intervention before the next school year begins. We
will have to be implementing those. So we have already begun
that process. We have met individually with each principal,
with each staff, with each parent group, what we call our Local
School Restructuring Teams, LSRTs, and then more broadly with
the community. We have done that already to explain NCLB and
the mandates, etc., and then we will be engaging in further
processes over the next few weeks as we are deciding finally
which options we are choosing for which schools.
Senator Akaka. Superintendent Gist.
Ms. Gist. Yes, we actually started our engagement efforts
last summer when we were preparing for our transition, and the
first document that we needed to get prepared was that
transition plan that I mentioned in my testimony. And we
engaged the public very extensively in the development of that
plan and multiple drafts of that plan, which culminated in a
large public event where we got extensive feedback on that
final draft prior to presenting it to the mayor. And we have
used that plan, which outlined our five policy priorities, we
have used that plan as well as a number of other plans that are
existing in the city. And I think that is also a really
important point, that this team is not the first team that has
come together to develop some plans for the District of
Columbia. There are a number of plans in particular that we
have used to inform our work right now, and one of those is the
Master Education Plan that was developed with extensive
community engagement. And so I think it is important to use
what has been done before.
In addition, Mayor Fenty walked throughout this entire city
over many months, listening to the public, and used that
experience and what he heard from the public to develop his
initial education framework when he was first inaugurated a
little over a year ago. And we have used those goals and
priorities in the development of our plan as well.
We currently have a framework, and I talked about the four
main goals of that framework in my testimony. And we are using
that framework that is actually up on our website right now. We
are coordinating, listening to see what feedback people are
giving us about that, and we will have a walk-around document
for our plan at the end of this month, which we will begin to
use to engage the public.
In addition to that, our office has the unique opportunity
of having the State Board of Education, which includes
appointed but also publicly elected members, and so we have the
opportunity to take advantage of the public engagement through
the responsibilities at that State Board of Education in their
public meetings as well as in their meetings within the parts
of the city that they represent.
We also have a number of other groups--the State Advisory
Panel on Special Education, for example--that can help to
advise us with specific parts of our plan. And so those are
some of the things that we are doing to engage the public in
our planning processes.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. Mr. Lew.
Mr. Lew. Yes, we have been meeting with different groups at
various different levels, sometimes on particular school
projects, and other times on larger issues. We have also been
meeting with the business sector and the relevant trade groups.
We have also had meetings with contractors and workers. And we
also set up a website where much of the information that we
share with the Council or even the information we also would
share with Congress, we would have on the website so people can
access it and see for themselves.
So we really do believe in public input. I think I have
made it very clear that if we are not building schools that are
responsive to the community and to the schools and to the
families, then why are we doing this? There really isn't any
reason to go and just rebuild schools for the sake of
rebuilding schools.
So it is important that we are responsive to the needs, and
I believe the transparency helps alleviate a lot of the
anxieties. When many of us--Victor, Michelle, and I, and I
think Deborah Gist, when we go to meetings, at least a few
months ago, it is almost like a hanging trial or something. We
walk in and before we can say the first word, some of the
people are angry already. And I believe we are helping arrest
that. The anger and the frustration is mostly caused by years
and years of disappointments and broken promises. And I think
the team that has been assembled by the mayor is very
responsive to the needs of the city and its children. And I
believe in a very short time we have actually demonstrated some
measurable progress.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you. That particular question of
transparency was about informing the people you are working
with and also the feedback is listening to how they think about
what you are doing.
Ms. Ashby, what is your reaction to Mr. Reinoso's response
to the question about strategic plans?
Ms. Ashby. Well, everything that has been said by Mr.
Reinoso and the other panelists here certainly is true. They
each are working on their own plans, or they are working on
revising plans that pre-existed before they took over various
aspects of the school system.
However, what we are talking about when we say a long-term
District-wide education strategic plan, we are talking about
something different. We are talking about--I think the word
``comprehensive'' was used earlier. Certainly comprehensive,
but something that covers education in the District as an
entity, as a whole. And none of these efforts by themselves do
that.
In fact, one of the things that the reform effort did was
to separate the local education agency, Ms. Rhee's DCPS, from
the State level, which a good deal of that responds to
criticisms and concerns from the U.S. Department of Education
in terms of handling Federal grants. But in separating the
functions, we now have a need to integrate them because they
are part of a whole. And in a number of States, States have
strategic plans for education. The State of Hawaii is one that
has a very comprehensive plan that would include all the
elements that experts say one should include in the strategic
plan.
And it is interesting because one of the reasons for doing
that is to provide a road map, not only for people involved in
the system currently trying to bring about change and improve
the system, but a road map for people outside of the system--
stakeholders, parents, teachers, students--well, students and
teachers are inside the system. But those who are outside the
system, the Congress, DC Council, for them to ultimately know
where things are going.
Now, we are not saying that we would have expected in 6
months for this team to have put together such a plan. But we
are concerned that maybe they do not have an intention of ever
putting together one. The things they are doing in terms of
looking at the particular areas and discussing things and
talking among themselves and what Mr. Reinoso is doing is all
great, very valuable. It is what would be needed to develop a
District-wide education strategic plan. But also part of that
is to bring in stakeholders outside of the immediate team, not
just to comment on decisions made or not just to hear about
plans, but to be at the ground level helping to develop those
plans. And that is one of the advantages of having a strategic
plan.
One could even argue that before you would want to finalize
a DCPS plan or a State-level plan, you would want to have your
overarching plan and that those plans would be sub-plans that
would buy into the goals and objectives and time frames and so
forth.
So there is no recipe here for what needs to go in the plan
particularly. There are certain things that need to be covered
in terms of goals, objectives, time frames, but it is something
that is missing. And as I said, we believe that what has been
done has really been valuable and everyone seems to be on the
right path, but we are concerned that maybe that path is not
going to lead to an overarching plan.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you for that, because from what
I have been reading, it appears that GAO has been, I will use
the word, ``insisting'' on a long-term strategic plan. And I
look upon what the team is doing as an immediate or short-term
move towards improving the system and developing a long-term
strategic plan.
So let me ask the chancellor, would you care to respond to
that answer?
Ms. Rhee. I would. I would say that part of the problem in
public education today is that we have a whole lot of plans and
not enough execution. And I would say that--who would be the
audience for this plan? If we created the 100-, 200-page plan,
in the end who would end up reading this plan and where would
it go? Because when I walked into office in June, I came into
an office that had binders and binders of strategic plans that
consultants came in and literally none of these things had been
executed. I would argue that what needs to happen in the
District of Columbia today to improve public education is that
we are taking a much more sort of active approach, that instead
of taking the time of incredibly valuable people and staff to
create a plan that will sit on a shelf somewhere, that we
engage in what we are doing right now. This team meets together
at least once a week, and we talk through very specific issues
at the school level, even to the extent of the student level.
For example, the other week we found that there was one
elementary school student in one of our schools who had missed
all of January, unexcused absence. We immediately got on the
phone. The deputy mayor's office was activating CFSA, a number
of other agencies, and together we actually found the child. We
had MPD go out with us to the home, talk to the parents, came
up with a plan.
This is the kind of action that is necessary to make sure
that no child falls through the cracks and that we are actually
doing the right thing. And I would say that our energy and our
time has to be spent doing real work as opposed to creating the
plans because I think that if you look broadly, there are lots
of strategic plans out there, and I don't think that is what is
needed in the District today.
I certainly think that one of the things that we could do
is once the Master Facilities Plan, the State superintendent's
5-year plan, and my plan are all put together, that we could
have some kind of a document that sort of outlines how all
these things fit together. But I think to engage in a 5-year
planning process overall for the District separately is
probably not, in my opinion, the best use of time.
Senator Akaka. Ms. Rhee, let me ask you a question about
the school consolidation plan.
Ms. Rhee. Yes. Are you going to yell at me, too?
Senator Akaka. For those losing their schools, what are you
doing to address the concerns of parents and students about the
school closings in their neighborhoods? Can you respond to
that?
Ms. Rhee. Sure. The first thing that we did was we engaged
in a very significant communication effort where we held
multiple meetings for each school that was proposed to be
closed to get feedback and the idea of what concerns and issues
existed in the community. We heard those concerns and then made
modifications based on that. Now that we have made the final
decisions about which schools will be closed, we are engaging
in a process where we will create a transition plan for each
and every school separately. That plan will be created with the
staff and the school community to make sure that issues of
safety, transportation, staffing, etc., will all be addressed
within those plans.
I am very happy to say that we, in working through our
budget for the 2008-09 school year, are already seeing the
benefits of the right-sizing. Two, what we are going to be able
to do to the schools, we will have many more resources
available to the schools. We will be able in the schools that
are impacted, with the students who are impacted by the
closings, those are the schools that will have the
comprehensive staffing model in place, which includes
additional academic supports like literacy coaches and numerary
coaches. We will have wellness support such as social workers,
guidance counselors, and psychologists at those schools, and
enrichment supports, so music, arts, and PE teachers. And I
think that in collaboration with Allen Lew's office and the
facility upgrades that we will see in those receiving schools,
that every family who is impacted by the school closings will
see that they are in a school that is much better resources and
staffed for the fall.
Senator Akaka. Of all of that you have said in your
statement as well as your responses, what are the top program
initiatives for next year? And how do you see those aligning
with the AYP, average yearly progress, requirements under No
Child Left Behind?
Ms. Rhee. Absolutely. So I would say the first initiative
that we have that we believe will have a significant impact on
that is the comprehensive staffing every single school across
the District should have in terms of resources because right
now across the District that is very inconsistent, the level of
staffing that schools have. So we are going to be implementing
this model, the staffing model, eventually across the District,
but initially within this first year at the schools that are
the receiving schools for these students.
Because the comprehensive staffing model has things like
the literacy coach, the numerary coach, and a number of other
academic supports in it, we truly believe that what this will
do is allow the schools to have the additional resources
necessary to make the improvements so that they can meet AYP
moving forward.
Senator Akaka. Ms. Gist, would you want to respond to the
question about strategic plans, also?
Ms. Gist. Yes, I definitely would. Thank you, Senator. I
actually agree with Ms. Ashby about the importance of thinking
long term about where are we going with these reforms efforts.
And I know our team does. I definitely also agree with
Chancellor Rhee that at the end of the day, what really matters
are the results that we get. And I think that I want to
emphasize that the plan that the Office of the State
Superintendent is putting together is a District-wide plan.
Hawaii is actually a very good example because you have State
responsibilities in Hawaii that you have in one large school
district. And the Office of the State Superintendent's plan,
which, again, is being developed using all the plans that have
been developed over the past, as well as current community
engagement, includes early childhood, it includes pre-K through
12, which includes DCPS as well as the charter schools. It also
includes adult education and to some extent higher education,
and our college access responsibilities.
So I do think that a plan is necessary, but I think that
the plan that we are developing is one that does tie these
responsibilities together.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Reinoso, I am impressed by the work that
you are doing with the Interagency Collaboration and Services
Integration Commission. As you know, H.R. 2080 amended the DC
Charter to lay out clear accountability mechanisms for the DC
Department of Education. As part of the ICSIC, other agencies
such as the Child and Family Services Administration also work
to help improve the educational success of students.
Since these agencies are not covered by H.R. 2080, how are
they being held accountable?
Mr. Reinoso. Thank you for that question, Senator. The work
of the Interagency Commission has been structured around six
goals: That children are ready for school, that children and
youth succeed in school, that children and youth are healthy
and practice healthy behaviors, that they engage in meaningful
activities, that they live in healthy, stable, and supportive
families, and that they make a successful transition to
adulthood.
We have taken each of those goals and identified key
indicators for the city's performance in meeting those goals,
and each month the commission gets together to discuss our
performance around one goal. And so we have cycled through all
six goals once, and at each point we have identified gaps in
our performance and laid out short-term as well as longer-term
interagency initiatives that we think are critical to improving
the city's performance against the indicators for the
respective goals. And added to that basic process is that in
some cases a situation requires immediate intervention, in
which case we have scheduled separate or follow-up Cap Stats to
review performance and initiatives around a specific agency's
efforts to address that situation. In other cases, we have
identified initiatives that are critical but not as time
sensitive that we will not revisit until we come back to the
goal its connected to.
So for example, for goal one, when we talked about making
sure children are ready for school, one of the things that was
evident from the onset was that we did not have any
comprehensive mechanism for assessing whether children were
ready for school. And so we then embarked on a process that
included a number of agencies, including the Department of
Health, the State Superintendent's Office, and the Department
of Human Services, to try to determine how we could best
address that. And again, as I mentioned before, we are now
ready to pilot a school preparedness assessment later in the
spring.
In other areas where there are crises, for example, the
terrible situation we had with the Banita Jacks case, the
mother who now is accused of murdering her four children, the
ICSIC got together around that to do a sort of step-by-step
review, reviewing all of the places where this family
interacted with an agency to identify where there were missteps
or where there could have been other efforts to support the
family and to avoid them falling through the cracks. And we
have since developed a number of initiatives that reflect
reform opportunities that were made plain by that case. And
that is also one of the mechanisms by which we are holding the
agencies accountable through ICSIC.
Finally, I think that one of the somewhat intangible but I
think critical benefits that has come out of the commission is
that there was a real distance in the past between these
agencies and the education agencies. And I would say even more
than distance, there was sometimes antagonism between these
agencies. And now as a result of this process, the agencies are
volunteering ideas of how they could provide support to the
chancellor or to the State superintendent, and likewise, the
education agencies are providing ideas to the other youth- and
family-serving agencies about ways that they might help with
something that one of the agencies is undertaking.
And so, again, I think as those working relationships
continue to improve, as we continue to hold agencies
accountable through the monthly commission meetings and the
affiliated meetings, we are going to see a lot more activity
and a lot more innovation in the District in terms of
supporting the whole child and the family. And while those
kinds of supports are not part of the interventions in the No
Child Left Behind Act, I think that we will see that they will
have a significant positive effect on our academic performance
as a city.
Senator Akaka. Ms. Ashby, do you have a response?
Ms. Ashby. I actually wanted to move back to strategic
planning, if that is OK, briefly.
Senator Akaka. That is fine.
Ms. Ashby. I wanted to make two points. First of all, as I
said earlier, we are in no way trying to say anything negative
about the actions that have taken place. Of course, a plan that
is not implemented is no good, and we know that developing a
plan for the sake of developing a plan and putting it on a
bookshelf is useless. So we agree with Ms. Rhee that, of
course, a plan has to be implemented and there has to be
activity. And there has been a lot of action and activity, and
we applaud it.
The second point has to do with whether or not the State
superintendent's strategic plan is the type of plan we
envision, and in discussions with Mr. Reinoso, we have been led
to believe that it is something else. But if that is the case,
because, as you know, you have asked us to take a longer-term
look at what is going on with the reform, and over the next
several months, if it unfolds that the plan is the type of plan
that we envision in our recommendation, we certainly will be
able to tell you that in the future.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you.
Chancellor Rhee, I would like a response to what she said.
I know that GAO has been moving towards a comprehensive long-
term strategic plan. From what we have heard from you, you have
been dealing with today's challenges to try to fix the system
so that you will be ready to set a solid base so you can begin
to build on it. And what we are asking about is, are you moving
to those long-term strategic plans also. So if you would
respond to that at this point, and then I have another one on
human capital, but respond to that.
Ms. Rhee. Sure. And I think that what you will see is that
within the next few months, and certainly before next school
year begins, you will have a comprehensive 5-year strategic
plan from the District, and ours will actually be a little bit
different because we are using as our base the Master Education
Plan that was in place and has been developed over a
significant amount of time by the community. And so our
strategic plan is really sort of the implementation plan around
that Master Education Plan. But it is a long-term plan. The
State superintendent is also planning on creating a 5-year
plan, and then the Master Facility Plan that Mr. Lew is
creating is actually longer than 5 years.
So I think that what you will be seeing over the next few
months is absolutely that longer-term thinking. I think that
what we want to communicate about this is that I do not think
in any jurisdiction outside of a State plan and District plans
that you have another plan then layered on top of that. I just
do not know what the purpose of that would be or what
information would be included in that plan that would not be
articulated in the plans that we are going to create. But I do
think that one thing that we can do is to sit down with GAO to
lay out what will be sort of the substance of each of our
plans, and I am very confident that what folks will find is
that we are taking a very long-term view to overall what is
happening in education in the city.
Senator Akaka. Does anyone else on the team want to make
any comments on that? Mr. Lew.
Mr. Lew. Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to echo what
Chancellor Rhee said. We have been putting out fires for the
last 6 to 9 months. I kind of draw an analogy between someone
gets hit by a car: Do you call the emergency EMS or do you sit
down and discuss with the injured person whether it should be a
Blue Cross Blue Shield plan or should it be Care First or
something? And I think we are now getting to the point where we
are above water, and we can focus on the need for long-term
planning. And I think much of this is coming together.
Certainly as a group, I think, we are going to continue to be
interested in implementation, though, because we know the
failures of the past. Many of us have been given reams and
reams of loose-leafs of plans, plans and more plans. And we
found that true when we go through these plans. Many of the
plans have made sound assumptions. So, even when my office was
asked to revise the Master Plan for School Facilities, it was
not really a wholesale revision. Much of the information that
was gathered previously was rational and sound. And we are
adapting much of it, and we are updating it. However, some of
the plans that were submitted in the past were rejected by the
Council, or rejected by the chief financial officer because
they were not affordable. So we are addressing cost constraints
which is a major, significant issue. We're asking ourselves:
How do you present a plan that is not affordable? How do you
present a plan that does not coincide with the needs of the
system?
The chancellor has asked whether we can implement the
Facilities Plan sooner than later, and so we are trying to
address the concerns of the children, but also the realities.
What can the District afford? So I believe that in the not too
distant future, in a few months, we will be able to produce
some plans that will reflect on not only the political
realities but also the financial capacities of the District of
Columbia.
Senator Akaka. Chancellor Rhee, we deal with human capital
issues on this Subcommittee all the time, and that is a huge
challenge for us in our country. And we know how hard it is to
attract and retain talented employees.
As you restructure the personnel at the central office,
what performance benchmarks and incentives are being put into
place?
Ms. Rhee. So this is a topic that is very near and dear to
me. I spent 10 years prior to coming into this position as the
CEO of the New Teacher Project, which was an organization that
was solely dedicated to improving the human capital in urban
school districts across the country.
I am a firm believer that we can have great new sparkly
buildings, we can have all the most wonderful curricula out
there; but unless we have great people working in our school
system, it will all be for naught. So, in many ways, our
significant focus is on ensuring that our human capital needs
are being met.
I feel a tremendous amount of confidence around this right
now on multiple levels. First, obviously, the personnel
legislation that City Council passed will allow us to begin
tackling this issue at the central office and will allow us to
ensure that we have a system of accountability and a culture of
accountability at the central office first. Already what we
have seen is that through the month of January, we completed
performance evaluations on every central office employee that
we have. That had not happened for the prior 5 years. And we
put in place individual benchmarks for a number of our
departments. We have department-level scorecards, and we have
an organizing function that is similar to the mayor's CAP Stat
program that we call ``School Stat.'' And so we are looking on
a weekly basis department by department at whether or not
departments are on track to meeting their goals. We are happy
to provide more information along those lines.
We started something very important, in December I believe,
in what we are calling the TEAM Awards. We identified criteria
where we said that we wanted to identify schools that had seen
the most significant student achievement gains last year. Those
were schools that would have had more than 20 percentage points
gains in reading and math separately. There were three District
schools that fell under this criteria. We used a grant that we
had gotten from the Federal Government, from the U.S.
Department of Education, to give significant awards to these
teachers and the school staff. We actually gave $8,000 to each
teacher in the building, $4,000 to every ancillary teacher,
like counselors, librarians, etc. And we also gave $2,000 to
every custodian and clerical worker.
We thought this was incredibly important for multiple
reasons, but I will add that though the Federal Government
funds did not allow us to give the awards to the non-
instructional staff, we actually found the money to do that
because when you have this kind of wholesale reform going on in
a school, it is because every adult is engaged in the process.
We got tremendous feedback from the unions, from the rank-
and-file teachers, from all folks, about this program. People
came to us and asked us whether we would continue it on for
next year. They asked us if we could expand the program to
include more schools. So we are working diligently with our
union leadership right now to make sure that this program can
grow and that we can see it next year and that we can
ultimately get to the level where we are awarding teachers
based on the classroom level achievements as well.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Ms. Gist, to continue along the discussion of teacher
quality, you mentioned the OSSE is developing a teacher quality
strategy to bring in high-quality teachers. The chancellor also
testified that DCPS is working on hiring qualified teachers.
Can you explain how OSSE and DCPS are working together on this?
Ms. Gist. Yes, definitely. Our responsibility when it comes
to teacher quality is to set the right policy conditions for
all of our LEAs, but it particularly affects DCPS's ability to
be able to recruit and retain the highest-quality teachers. And
so it is not our responsibility to make those selections or to
directly get involved with that effort but, rather, to support
and to provide the right conditions so that DCPS can be
successful.
And so, for example, one of the things that we are working
on right now, in addition to our highly qualified teacher
definition, our teacher certification requirements right now,
on the highly qualified teacher definition, the definition that
we use in the District of Columbia is so much stronger than the
requirements that are in No Child Left Behind that it actually
prevents our schools from being able to oftentimes bring on
people that are genuinely highly qualified; but because of the
way that our regulation is written, it means that on paper they
are not highly qualified, which oftentimes can result even in
the school district not being able to fill a position, meaning
that rather than having someone who is genuinely highly
qualified, a classroom may end up with a permanent substitute
for that year. And I think you would agree with me that was
certainly not the intention of the highly qualified provision
within No Child Left Behind.
On teacher certification, we do not have any specific
proposals in place right now, but what we are doing is working
with our State Board of Education, DCPS, and many policymakers
and other partners across the country but really certainly
within our community, to think about what do our teacher
certification requirements need to have in order to do two
things: One, to make sure that we have a pool of qualified
people that is broad enough for our schools to be able to
choose among in a way that allows them to be very selective,
but not limiting that pool so that their selectivity means that
they do not come out with the quantity of teachers that they
need because we are somehow overly restrictive on the front
end.
But then the second thing is also to ensure that we are
focusing at the end of the day on teacher effectiveness. So
frequently we talk about teacher quality, meaning requirements
on paper or certain items that are checked on a form, when
really what we need are effective teachers who can help our
children to be successful.
Senator Akaka. Well, the question I asked before and I will
ask you, since you are talking about recruiting, what is the
biggest challenge to attracting and retaining high-quality
teachers and staff that you face?
Ms. Gist. Well, I would actually defer that question to the
chancellor with your approval, since that recruitment piece
fits into her role.
Senator Akaka. Chancellor Rhee.
Ms. Rhee. What research across the country has shown is
that one of the things that school districts can do to ensure
that the most qualified people are matriculating into the
District is early hiring. If you look at the teacher candidate
pool that exists, the highest quality candidates are looking
for jobs early, and they want to know what they are doing for
the following year early.
So if a district is waiting until August or September to
fill their vacancies, they are going to undoubtedly be left
with people who do not have other options, and typically those
are not the most highly qualified candidates.
So what we as a district are trying to do is ensure that we
are setting up a process so that we can hire our teachers early
when the best quality teachers are still available and in the
pool. That is part of the reason why we moved as expeditiously
as we did towards the school consolidation process, because we
knew that if we waited until summer to have that happen, then
all of the movement of the incumbent teachers would not happen
until after that. Then we would not be able to place new
teachers.
If you look, interestingly enough, people who are
interested in teaching in urban districts, they are not
necessarily in it for--I mean, they know what they are getting
into. And so what we want to do is make sure that they are
being hired early. We also want to create the right conditions
and the culture.
I think we are in a very fortunate position right now as a
city and as DCPS, in that we have gotten a tremendous amount of
national attention on the efforts that we have going on. So we
have been inundated with applications for all kinds of
positions. As I said in my testimony, we have had over 500
applications for principal positions, and they are still
rolling in every day. We will end up hiring, I think, a maximum
of 50 principals, probably fewer. So we are talking about at
the very least an application to vacancy ratio of about 10:1,
which is a position that most districts are not in. It will
allow us to be incredibly selective about who is coming in, and
that is exactly the position that we want to be in.
Senator Akaka. Let me mention and suggest something here.
Ms. Rhee. Sure.
Senator Akaka. It is close to my heart, and I have found it
to be very important. And you used the word, and it is what
brought it to mind. You used the word ``culture.'' In
education, whoever teaches in that particular school, that
district, or that States should be aware of the culture of that
place because through that culture you can probably reach the
child faster and better and with good understanding and
relationship than if they did not.
Ms. Rhee. Absolutely.
Senator Akaka. And I remember when I was in elementary
school in Hawaii when we had books that talked about snow, I
used to wonder, ``Why are we reading these books?'' But that is
the kind of books they had in those days. But it was out of our
culture.
So that word you use is very important in the selection of
those that you are looking for.
Ms. Rhee. That is absolutely important. I think one of the
mistakes that public education, particularly urban public
education, has made over the last couple of decades is assuming
that teachers or educators are interchangeable widgets and that
you can move one from one school to the other school and it
does not really matter, when, in fact, it matters a tremendous
amount.
What we need to do is make sure that as we are hiring
people into schools, that they are a good fit for that
particular school and for the culture, because we have schools
across this District that have very different cultures, very
different environments. And there are some educators that would
work extraordinarily well in some of them, but not particularly
well in others. So what we want to do is make sure we have a
much more robust selection process in place where, if you do
this early, if you can hire early, you can do this, where
people are going out to the schools, they are doing sample
teaching lessons actually at the schools. That is the level
that we want to get to so that people are visiting the actual
schools that they might be teaching or working in so that they
can determine whether or not that is the right fit for them.
And we can do a tremendous amount from the District side of
educating people about the culture that they are going to enter
into.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you very much for that.
My final question will be to Ms. Ashby, but before that,
let me ask a question of Mr. Lew. When you were last before the
Subcommittee, the Summer Blitz program to improve school
infrastructure targeted 70 schools at that time. Can you give
us a status update of the number of work orders closed and the
number of outstanding work orders there are?
Mr. Lew. Yes. Approximately, at the time when we began this
effort, there was about 11,000 or so outstanding work orders.
And we learned when we went through this process that there
were probably as many work orders that were unaccounted for,
never submitted to the school system to execute because of the
way work orders are handled. Many of them were never responded
to for years. So teachers and principals and vice principals
started basically not responding--not submitting work orders.
We learned that oftentimes, when you go through buildings,
when they said there were 20 lights that did not work, when you
go through the buildings after years have gone by, there is 10
times or double the amount of problems that existed.
So we eliminated about 10,000 work orders, cleared about
10,000, but during that same period we gained about another
7,000. We added another 7,000 to the roster.
So it is an ongoing process. We think that our effort in
the next few months is to clear this away, to get it to the
point where it is zero. And then at that point I think we will
establish a new culture in terms of responding to work orders
and treating it in a totally different manner so that we will
then be in a position where we will have dozens and dozens of
trade contractors already on board, retained, so when a problem
comes up with plumbing or electrical, these contractors are
already on board with us, and they will be assigned that school
year to address those problems; whereas, in the past, I think
the school system had to then go out and do a procurement and
then they had to find the money, and it was just an impossible
bureaucratic nightmare.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much.
Ms. Ashby, you and I have heard the team and where they are
presently, what they have done, what they have been trying to
do, what they intend to do, their expectations, directly from
the team. I want to praised and commend the mayor and all of
you, the mayor in particular for his deep commitment, because
what you have done would not have happened without the
commitment of the mayor as well as the council and others who
have to make these decisions. And you have carried out many
things that had to be reformed, and you are still in the
process of reforming.
So, Ms. Ashby, the first GAO person who has come forth with
a report that I requested on the DC Public School system and
your recommendations as to what you think needs to be done, and
based on your short-term study, do you think the progress of
the initial management reforms made by the mayor's education
team have established the appropriate foundation to meet their
intended goals?
Ms. Ashby. I do, Mr. Chairman. As I said earlier, I applaud
their efforts. A lot has been done in a short period of time.
We were in a situation, a crisis situation in the District of
Columbia Public Schools, and they have tackled some of the
critical management issues and other issues, done things that
needed to be done and long have been needed to have been done.
So I think they have done an outstanding job thus far.
Of course, the real test is what happens with the children
and their achievement levels, and that is long term. Things are
not going to turn around overnight. We hope to see incremental
progress, which I am encouraged that we will. But that is the
true test. And I think also that in order to be successful, you
are operating in a political environment, particularly in the
District of Columbia because of the Federal role as well as the
local culture, as we have talked about. And not to beat a dead
horse, as they say, but to the extent that plans are
transparent early rather than later, and to the extent that the
people affected by the plans and the people who can put up road
blocks can be brought into the process early at the ground
level to help shape those plans, I think this team is going to
be more successful.
So I look forward to what is going to happen. I am a
resident of the District of Columbia. I am a parent in the
District of Columbia. And I am excited about what is going on.
Senator Akaka. Well, Ms. Ashby, let me tell you, your
remarks are heart-warming and encouraging as well, and we want
to give this team all the help we can to bring about your
expectations. And it is true, as GAO is pressing for a long-
term strategic plan, it is like a goal that we are all working
for. And, of course, simply, it is a better educated child.
Let me revert back to Hawaii. In Hawaii, I have the term
``hanai keiki,'' and in the culture of Hawaii, there were no
homeless because families took in children who did not have
parents. They call it ``the hanai system.'' And I am so glad to
see that our country is coming about into this hanai system
that has been used for indigenous people, centuries ago, years
ago. But it is something that we need to restore, and so hanai
keiki is to take care of the children, and this is what you are
doing. And it is really great, and I want to encourage you to
continue to do what you are doing and to keep us informed as to
what you are doing. And I want to wish all of you well, and
thank you so much for coming and responding and being a part of
the help that this Subcommittee needs.
I should tell you we have a second panel that will follow
you, but for now thank you so much for coming and contributing
to this.
We have two that will be witnesses in our second panel:
Jane Hannaway is the Director of the Education Policy Center of
the Urban Institute; and John Hill is the Chief Executive
Officer of the Federal City Council. I welcome both of you to
this hearing. I am glad you were here to hear the statements
and the responses of our first panel.
As you know, our Subcommittee requires that all witnesses
testify under oath; therefore, I ask you to stand and take the
oath. Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give the
Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you, God?
Ms. Hannaway. I do.
Mr. Hill. I do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Let it be noted for the record
that our witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Again, I welcome our second panel. Before we begin, I want
you to know that although your oral statement is limited to 5
minutes, your full written statement will be included in the
record.
So, Dr. Hannaway, please proceed with your statement.
TESTIMONY OF JANE HANNAWAY, PH.D.,\1\ DIRECTOR, EDUCATION
POLICY CENTER, URBAN INSTITUTE
Ms. Hannaway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to
comment on school reform in the District of Columbia. I am
happy to share my thoughts, not only as a researcher who has
been analyzing education reforms across the country for almost
three decades, but also as a resident of the District of
Columbia. I should make clear that the views I am expressing
here are my own and should not be attributed to the Urban
Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Hannaway appears in the Appendix
on page 95.
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I agree with something you said earlier: Mayor Fenty should
be applauded for his willingness to take responsibility for the
schools and to provide a direct line of accountability.
But success in schools will take more than governance
changes. Reforms, including accountability close to the
classroom, I think are necessary for better student learning.
I work to stress two areas in my comments. The first is
teacher quality and the second is data systems--both topics
that came up with the earlier panel. I see these two areas as
closely related in basic and practical ways, as I will explain.
I lead a national research center at the Urban Institute
called CALDER. CALDER is a federally funded research center. It
stands for National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal
Data in Education Research--a mouthful. We use administrative
data such as the type that Superintendent Gist was discussing
this morning. We use administrative data in a number of States,
including North Carolina, Florida, Texas, and New York, where
we have data at the individual student level, performance on
individual students over a number of years, and are able to
link students with their individual teachers. So it is a
tremendously large and tremendously rich database that gives us
insight into schools that we have never had before.
The findings emerging on teacher effectiveness are indeed
stunning. While I think parents, principals, and other teachers
have all known that teachers are important, it is the variation
across teachers in effectiveness that has been stunning. And we
are finding this across States, so this is not a one-State
finding. I think this is something pretty basic.
The most effective teachers, just to give you some idea,
those in the top 15 percentile, are getting about a year and a
half gain per student on tested performance. Those in the
bottom 15 percentile are getting about a half a year gain. Now,
you can imagine how this cumulates over time and the
consequences for a child of having one of these excellent
teachers for a number of years in a row, and the consequences
of having one of these poor teachers for a number of years in a
row. One study, one of our studies, has shown that if
disadvantaged students had these excellent teachers for 5 years
in a row, we could essentially close the achievement gap. So
these are very important findings.
The difficult tasks, therefore, for the District of
Columbia policymakers and education administrators are: One,
how to get more high-performing teachers in the classroom
(especially in classrooms serving disadvantaged students);
second, how to hold teachers and schools accountable for
student performance; and, third, and importantly, how to do it
fairly.
Now, the answers, I argue, are heavily dependent on good
data systems. A big problem in education right now is that the
standard measures of teacher quality that are built into our
current hiring practices and pay schedules--such as
certification status, years of experience--except for the first
couple years--and master's degrees--unless it is in the subject
area that you are teaching--do not distinguish more and less
effective teachers.
Many efforts are underway. I think some of them were talked
about here as plans in the District of Columbia. There are also
a number of efforts underway across the country in various
school districts and States to try to rethink how we identify,
select, train, assign, and reward teachers.
Implementing teacher effectiveness reforms, however, cannot
be implemented on a wish and a prayer or on a hunch. It is not
fair to school professionals and, most importantly, it is not
fair to students. Reforms that promote teacher effectiveness
should be undertaken, but they should be guided by sound data
systems so that good judgments can be made.
The important effort underway that Deborah Gist talked
about this morning, the superintendent, is a $25 million
investment by OSSE, by the Office of the State Superintendent,
to develop a longitudinal administrative data system here in
the District that would track students over time, that would
link students with their teachers. I have been serving on the
panel reviewing proposals to develop this system. We have just
finished our initial review, and I am very hopeful about the
quality of the data system that will develop. Administrative
data systems cannot tell you everything, but they can tell you
a lot.
Let me go to six specific recommendations that I might
make, and this is all based on research findings.
First, the District should be open to teacher candidates
coming with non-traditional teacher training backgrounds, such
as the New Teacher Project that Chancellor Rhee led and
founded, and Teach for America, as well as talented individuals
in areas of shortage, such as math and science.
Second, to provide an intensive orientation and support
structure, including feedback on the performance that teachers
are getting from their students, for all teachers, regardless
of background, for at least 2 years. We know that in those
first 2 years, teachers become more effective. It tends to
level off after that, but those first few years in the
classroom are very rich times for learning, and we should have
support for teachers at that point.
We should develop school, principal, and teacher
performance incentive programs based on student learning gains,
and I would stress gains.
We should develop differentiated pay schedules to attract
the best teachers to the most challenging schools and talented
individuals in shortage areas. Right now across this country,
what we see is that there is a flow. When school districts hire
teachers, they tend to be assigned more often than not to the
most challenging schools, and they tend to leave. And when they
leave, they go to the less challenging schools, leaving the
toughest schools with continuing churning of new teachers. If
we pay teachers more to be in these tougher assignments, we may
be able to retain more there.
Another recommendation I would make is move the tenure
decision out to 5 years. In the District right now, I believe
it is 2 years. I think with this new performance information
coming online, we should make tenure decisions at a later
period where we have more information about teacher
effectiveness.
This may sound self-serving, but I do believe we should
encourage the involvement of objective professional research
analysts to use these databases and to compare findings with
other jurisdictions. To ensure their best use, the data should
also--and this is important--be protected from an overly
conservative interpretation of FERPA, which has retarded
effective research in some States.
So, in summary, when it comes to K-12 education, the
research is showing it is largely about teachers, teachers,
teachers. The recommendations I offered need much detail before
they can be implemented, but I think the important thing right
now is a commitment to improve teacher performance and to let
decisions be guided by objective information about what works.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Dr. Hannaway.
Mr. Hill, your statement, please.
TESTIMONY OF JOHN W. HILL,\1\ CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, FEDERAL
CITY COUNCIL
Mr. Hill. Good afternoon, Chairman Akaka. I am John Hill,
the Chief Executive Officer of the Federal City Council. The
Federal City Council is a nonprofit organization comprised of
about 250 business and civic leaders in the District of
Columbia and focused on creating strong partnerships between
the business community and the District for the benefit of
District residents. I thank you for the opportunity to testify
today regarding the performance of the DC Public Schools.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hill appears in the Appendix on
page 100.
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The Federal City Council was created over 50 years as a way
for the business community to be a partner in the civic
progress of the District of Columbia. Since then, we have
embraced a number of complex and challenging projects aimed at
revitalizing downtown, providing affordable housing, improving
public safety, and strengthening neighborhoods. Over time, it
has become clear that the District's future success depends on
the health and the well-being of its public education system.
For this reason, public education reform has been a top
priority of ours for many years.
Twenty years ago, we attempted to provide a catalyst for
change through the formation of the Committee on Public
Education. This was done at the request of the DC Board of
Education, the superintendent, and in partnership with the DC
Council and the mayor. What we saw then mirrors what we see
now. COPE brought together civic leaders, business leaders,
educational institutions, and national experts to recommend a
path forward for education reform. The resulting
recommendations spanned many areas ranging from modernizing
facilities, reducing administrative overhead, streamlining the
central office, upgrading principal and teacher quality,
providing teacher training and merit pay, strengthening
reading, writing, math, and science programs; expanding the use
of technology, and supporting at-risk children as early as age
3.
At the time, COPE helped to establish a broad base of
support for school reform, but due to the dire financial
conditions of the District that developed in the early 1990s,
the school system never followed through. Since then, our
members have remained interested in education reform, although
some of the momentum had shifted in the late 1990s toward the
development of what is now a strong charter school presence in
the District of Columbia.
Last year, we once again became very optimistic about
public education reform when Mayor Adrian Fenty made education
his top priority. We are strong supporters of his effort to
gain responsibility for education, and we helped raise funds
for this initiative. We are encouraged by the window of
opportunity that has opened for the District to produce real
and lasting school reform.
Since the mayor gained control over education, he and his
leadership team have moved quickly to try to improve the
system. Victor Reinoso, Deborah Gist, Allen Lew, and Chancellor
Rhee have all brought a sense of urgency and action to the work
before them.
Over the past year, we have seen bold moves to hold
employees accountable, streamline central administration, and
close underutilized schools. Problems of accountability, red
tape, and poor management of resources have always plagued the
system, but it took the mayor and his leadership team to decide
and to execute a course of action. We applaud these efforts and
feel that there is a strong momentum to help make the difficult
decisions necessary to advance the interests of the school
children. Based on the above, we really judge the first phase
of this reform effort a success.
It is too early to judge the ultimate success of school
reform because there is a long road ahead. We have heard
criticism that has been aimed at the mayor and his leadership
team for not communicating a grand vision or a comprehensive
strategic plan for school reform. Our view is that you cannot
develop a reasonable and sustainable plan without completing
some of this fundamental work that is currently underway,
including accurate accounting for every public dollar that is
currently spent by the school system, assessing the platforms
that support personnel, procurement, financial management, and
technology that is needed to support this long-term reform;
evaluating the quality of our workforce and developing ways to
encourage excellence, support improvement, and eliminate
incompetency; promoting and recruiting the managerial and
educational talent that is needed to ensure the capacity for
reform; and fixing school facilities so that our students do
not have to really strive to learn in environments of neglect,
decay, and filth.
These are not visionary or strategic planning elements.
These are basic functional needs of any organization, and these
elements become the nuts and bolts of reform. In the past, the
District has been known for its tendency to plan and plan. What
we need today is to execute on all of the planning work that
has been done to date and to focus on building up the essential
infrastructure for reform that is necessary for long-term
success.
These basic steps we have seen will stir controversy
amongst those who are benefiting from the broken system that we
have today, but these steps must be taken. The Federal City
Council is focused on the long term. We, too, are interested in
understanding what the classroom of the future will look like
in the District of Columbia. We want to hear more about arts
and athletic programs. However, we are under no illusion about
the hard work that must be done before we can have a fruitful
conversation about that future.
Today, difficult decisions are going to be required to
overcome decades of neglect. Additional resources may be needed
to overhaul the system's broken infrastructure, and there will
be more opposition from the forces of the status quo as we move
ahead.
Over the next year, we look forward to the chancellor
finally operating with the full complement of motivated and
talented staff, which will enable her to keep focus on the
classroom without compromising the administrative work that
needs to be done.
We look forward to the development of a budget that begins
with the needs of students and builds up from there. We will
look forward to the improvements in basic education and
business systems and the processes that underlie what happens
in the school system.
Finally, we look forward to a new focus on principal and
teacher accountability that promotes and rewards those who
perform well and removes from our classrooms those who are not
serving our students well.
On behalf of the Federal City Council, I am here to let you
know that our organization supports the reform efforts that are
underway, that we expect these first years to be among the most
difficult, and that we are prepared--and we know that you are
as well--to fortify these reform efforts to be partners in
helping improve education for the District's children because
they deserve no less. Thank you for the opportunity to testify
today.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Hill.
To both of you, as you have heard, GAO's central
recommendation is for the development of a long-term systemwide
strategic plan. Based on your perspective, what do you think
about GAO's recommendation? And what do you think about Deputy
Mayor Reinoso's response? Dr. Hannaway.
Ms. Hannaway. I think strategic plans, long-term strategic
plans, are clearly a good thing. The problem is when they
become inflexible. And I think part of the discussion among the
individuals on the earlier panel had to do with what is short
term and what is long term and how can this organization, this
District, organize itself so that it really becomes a learning
organization itself. If we knew what the best plan was, if we
knew how to put all the pieces in place right now, we should
just do it. I do not think anyone would claim that we know what
all the pieces are and how all the pieces will work together.
So what we have to ensure, I think, is that we have a
system where there is objective information, feedback, where
there is a system in which all the players are working
together, and where there is a system that is flexible and
adaptable and can learn as new problems arise and as successes
unfold.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Mr. Hill.
Mr. Hill. Yes, I would definitely agree with Dr. Hannaway's
comments. I would also say that I spent 10 years of my
professional career with GAO, and part of that was actually
reviewing the District of Columbia finances just before the
creation of the Control Board. And I do understand GAO's
recommendation, and I certainly agree and understand the
importance of strategic planning.
I believe that strategic plans work best when they are
developed and also put in cultures of action and cultures of
reform. The current culture within the District of Columbia,
and certainly within the DC Public School system when this
mayor took over, was not a culture of action, and it certainly
was not a culture of reform. It was a culture of stagnation, it
was a culture of fingerpointing, and not a culture of
accountability.
I think when you have that in place initially, it is very
difficult, if not impossible, to develop a strategic plan that
can be acted upon, because the people who would help to develop
that and to ultimately implement that are not in place to
really understand the importance of action.
And so I agree that it is a matter of timing. I agree with
the actions that are being taken now to change that culture,
and that once that culture is changed and on the road to
improvement, then would be the appropriate time to really work
on a strategic plan that could be acted upon and implemented.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Dr. Hannaway, one of the recommendations in your testimony
is for DCPS to take teachers with non-traditional backgrounds,
but teachers with non-traditional backgrounds might not have
the required certifications. How do you propose DCPS ensure
that non-traditional teachers meet OSSE's rigorous quality
standards?
Ms. Hannaway. Well, as I understand it from part of the
testimony this morning, some of what the certification
standards are are being re-thought in OSSE. This is something
that school districts across the country are struggling with.
What we know is that certification, as it is now defined in
most places, is not associated with effective teaching. So the
question is how we go about selecting teachers.
We have just completed some research on Teach for America
that shows very promising results for Teach for America. These
are individuals coming in without traditional teacher training
programs; however, they do get certified in order to comply
with No Child Left Behind. The hoops that you have to go
through to do that are not necessarily the hoops that lead them
to be more effective. I think this is a wide open area. I think
the District should experiment with identifying talented
people, follow their performance carefully, build in support
systems in case someone has made a wrong bet.
One thing that is striking in education, Mr. Chairman, is
that there is very little hierarchy, so a teacher who is a
first-year teacher in a school district is treated the same way
that a 30-year veteran is treated. Each goes to their own
classroom and closes the door. That does not make a lot of
sense.
So you can imagine if the district were to experiment with
teachers coming in in different routes that there may be
mechanisms--and it is one of the reasons I put in the
recommendation that all teachers, regardless of their
background, should be receiving ongoing support, ongoing
monitoring by more experienced and talented and shown-to-be-
effective teachers, and they should be getting and their
principals should be getting information back on their
effectiveness.
How to switch to a new system is not yet clear, and a
number of school districts are experimenting with this. But
what we know right now is that the certification requirements
for the most part that are required are not qualifications that
appear to be associated with teachers being more or less
effectiveness.
So I do not have the solution. I have a better handle on
the problem, and I think the solution will come from some
experimentation.
Senator Akaka. Well, Dr. Hannaway, what recommendations
would you have for the OSSE in developing standards for high-
quality teachers?
Ms. Hannaway. I would start by differentiating the teaching
labor force. Right now, as I said, it is one standard. You are
either certified or not certified. And as soon as you get
certified, you are pretty much on your own and assumed to be
effective. And we know that is not the case.
So one can imagine having a differentiated teaching
workforce whereby for the first year, maybe for the first 2
years, you do not have a classroom by yourself, that you are
under closer supervision, that you get certification partly on
the job on the basis of your performance as opposed to on
checklists of qualifications that are achieved prior to your
being in the classroom.
So I would put down the line some of these decisions rather
than trying to lock them in on the basis of what we know is
imperfect information at the start.
Senator Akaka. Thank you.
Mr. Hill, in your testimony you recommend that a
partnership between the community and the District Government
must exist in order for the school system reform to be
successful. How do you envision this partnership taking shape?
And who do you see as the key players on the community side of
the partnership?
Mr. Hill. I do think that the partnership is taking place.
I believe some of the key players are certainly the people who
are really benefiting and using the education system. Our
view--and it was certainly borne out through the work that was
done through the COPE report--is that the issue of education is
really one that needs to involve parents, that needs to involve
students, that also needs to involve community leaders at all
levels, as well as the business community.
Our role in the partnership is to help to provide business
expertise to solve business-level problems within the school
system. We do not pretend to be educators because, for the most
part, we are not, and we realize that is a specialized area.
However, supporting the school system and supporting the
educational process is an important part of the reform that
needs to take place. And so our members who really sit on top
of multinational companies, as well as large companies within
the District of Columbia, volunteer time and effort in helping
to pull together strategies as well as resources so that the
school system can meet the needs of the students.
During my time at ``In2Books''--I was CEO of a nonprofit
that was working with the District on improving literacy and
teacher training around literacy, and one of the things that we
found in terms of teacher training was that some of the
teachers that really came out of educational programs in major
universities were not really aware of some of the latest
research that had been done on how children learn to read and
the brain research about how students are stimulated in terms
of reading. We believe that the ability to read was one of the
fundamental predictors of a child's success in later years in
school.
And so in addition to bringing people in with alternative
backgrounds into the teaching pool, I think there also needs to
be a look at what is happening in education programs that are
getting teachers ready around the country to make sure they
reflect some of the latest thinking and latest research around
how students learn to read.
Senator Akaka. Dr. Hannaway, under the No Child Left Behind
Act, schools are not given--and this is what is so important,
and I know you know this is important. Schools are not given
much flexibility in the measurements required to assess school
accountability and teacher effectiveness. In dealing with
underserved populations who may need non-traditional styles of
teaching, do you see these requirements as an impediment to
measuring teacher effectiveness?
Ms. Hannaway. I think you are asking two questions. Just
let me make sure I understand. One was about the way schools
are evaluated with No Child Left Behind, and the other how they
qualify the teachers. I think there has been some flexibility
now at the department. Not making adequate yearly progress was
based on proficiency levels. It was not based on gains. In one
study I did, I compared the Florida accountability system,
which was based on gains that schools were making, that
individual students were making, and the No Child Left Behind
assigning of not making adequate progress. And I cannot
remember the exact numbers, but it was two diametrically
different systems, where a very large fraction of the schools
in Florida that were--and I can get you the paper on this,
Senator, if you are interested--graded as A by the State
system, which was rewarding schools for making a difference,
for making gains, were not making adequate yearly progress
according to the Federal designation.
So a real issue with No Child Left Behind is how schools
are designated as making adequate progress or not making
adequate yearly progress, and it makes a big difference how
that is done. When you actually look at gains of individual
students, you can see a very different picture than when you
just look at proficiency levels.
Let me give you an example. You can imagine a school in the
District of Columbia where students on average had increased
their reading levels by, say, a grade and a half, which is very
large to get that grade and a half. But, still, only 60 percent
or 40 percent of the students were hitting the proficiency
target that had been specified. These are artificial targets
because it is assumed that all children will meet full
proficiency by 2012. So they are artificial targets.
So rather than rewarding the school where we are seeing
real gains in student reading, we are saying you are not making
adequate progress because you haven't hit this proficiency
mark, which I would argue is somewhat arbitrarily defined.
But I think that is becoming clearer and clearer to
policymakers, and I think there are some shifts going on now in
the Department of Education allowing States to use gain models
as opposed to levels.
When you look at highly qualified teachers, the highly
qualified teacher provisions are basically the State provisions
for certification, and those we know are not the factors that
seem to distinguish highly effective and ineffective teachers.
That does not mean that we have to throw everything out, but I
think we have to get a lot closer picture of what it is that
makes a difference. I think we may have to be a lot tougher in
terms of who gets certified. I would do it partly on the basis
of actual performance that we are able to see. And I think we
probably have to be a lot tougher in terms of who actually gets
tenure. And that may result in some changes in the whole pay
schedule associated with teachers and teaching.
Senator Akaka. Well, I really appreciate your deep
understanding out of your research of these matters and also,
Mr. Hill, on your relationships of supportive partnerships to
the education program, and this will be helpful to the
Subcommittee.
I want to thank you for coming and being with us today and
for your dedication and your commitment to reforming DC's
public schools and its education system. There has been
significant progress made and, indeed, some great results. So I
am pleased to hear about the strategic plans being developed
and used by DCPS, OSSE, and the Facilities Office in this
transformational year. I think the entire system will do well
to have a long-term strategic plan for the reforms; however,
they need a base to put that on, and I think they are quickly
shaping that base. I hope the reforms bring more than
management changes. They need to improve the way the children
of the Nation's capital are educated. And so I thank you again
for your contribution in this respect.
The hearing record will remain open for one week for any
additional statements or questions that Members may have. This
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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