>> throughout the month of april we will feature the top honors at this year c-span studentcam competition. nearly 1500 middle and high school students submitted documentaries on the theme, washington d.c. through my lens. watch the winning videos every morning on c-span at six 50:00 a.m. eastern before "washington journal" and during the program, meet the students who created them. stream of the winning videos anytime on line at studentcam.org. >> now discussion of education issues affecting minorities including how to measure student achievement. this is part of the conference on race in america hosted by the aspen institute. from the new gm in washington d.c. this is a little less than an hour and a half. [inaudible conversations] >> well this morning we have looked at the issues of personal responsibility versus institutional racism and other aspects of their racial issues in the context of home and family, and in politics. now this afternoon we are going to look at institutional places such as schools, homes and prisons, and for this panel, and this afternoon we have a new moderator, someone who is the afternoon moderator -- excuse me, that dayside moderator from 10:00 a.m. to noon on the msnbc. before msnbc he was anchor at cnn headline news and cnn worldwide. he has covered the presidential election of 2008 at cnn. he has a degree from michigan university and pursuing graduate studies in international security at stanford for 25 years. he has been involved in community service and africa, asia and the united states particularly working with homeless and affordable housing, nonprofit. please welcome richard lui. [applause] >> thanks for having me. i was watching the entire first half for my hotel room and i just couldn't leave because it was so engaging so what it rate discussion, to discussions we have this morning. i hope that after we get past our food, as i may have you all stand up and do a couple of jumping jacks and we can keep on moving but it sounds and looks like everybody still has a lot of energy. what an esteemed panel we have today to talk about some fantastic issues, things that are very important to our country. this is the third panel you have seen in your documents there. we will be looking at some of the institutional factors. charlie started by talking about that this morning. he was talking about the institutional issues that we need to deal with as well as personal responsibility. so during this segment we are going to talk about specifically some of the institutional factors and i would like to introduce of course our esteemed panel. we have russlyn ali tribe at the assistant secretary for civil rights at the u.s. department of education. thank you for being here. we have reverend al sharpton, president of the national action network. thank you for being here. we also have janet marguia. thank you for being here. first mistake. i'm really good at this, guys. president and ceo of la raza. i apologize. dr. julianne malveaux. you have that aura. everybody thinks you are from bennett college. >> that is a good thing. we want everybody to be from bennett college feel which is where women. you too can be bennett ties to feel like. lactose be all right. she is ready with us. okay, what we are going to try to do is focus on solutions during this discussion and please feel free as we are going through this to pipe in as you feel as is best for you and what i have done very briefly as i have laid out some potential solutions to the problem that has been outlined earlier today. these are some solutions that have been out in space, some that you are familiar with and i want to get your ideas as to what you think of it. first thing i want to talk about is education. that was our first topic. we will do education and then we will do business and then we will talk about schools to prison pipeline, that issue that we are so very familiar with. so the first solution i would like to discuss is the one that i put up there and i'm hoping you can see it, is the issue of unions and districts working together. we talk about how education at this moment is certainly in the middle of the debate. at nbc we have spent a good amount of time trying to understand some of those realities and some of the issues related to that. what i may start to my left first first and if you talk about the issue about how collaboration can work the twain unions as well as districts and how to refocus some of the discussion. >> there has to be a collaboration between all of the adults responsible for transforming the way our schools work. if we don't, we will not meet our goals is an nation. the achievement gap is -- low-income students across the country. the kinds of collaborations we are seeing already in place. for example secretary arne duncan and 150 districts where there superintendents, school board presidents and their union president came together to talk about how to replicate those principals from very progressive contracts that drive student achievement across the country. it is about taking the positive success we have seen clear unions and administrators and parents and community and policymakers are coming together to do what is right for kids and helping to replicate those and support leaders everywhere trying to do the same thing. >> reverend al are unions a problem? >> i i don't think unions are a problem. we wanted to see accountability and of late i have seen some very serious moves in terms of unions on how to deal with that. the president of the american federation of teachers did a tour, and she has even made some very progressive recommendations on how you deal with tenure and where there must be accountability you can't have a situation set up where teachers are not judged on their performance. there is no accountability. the nea spoke about it last week. so i think unions are beginning to adjust to a climate that some of us have tried to advocate, say when you do with policy. i have worked with la raza on this around the country. we have been able to see it shift i think to some of the unions that were inflexible three years ago to now saying themselves there must be accountability but it must not be where we have an anti-teacher or a demonizing the teacher. i think sometimes people have used accountability as a goal to demonization of teachers and union busting. i don't think that is the solution neither. >> so we see the examples, have only janet? >> i think so and i would agree that those common elements that we all aspire to and i think that is true for the teachers as well as many of us who are advocates for the highest quality in education is accountability and i think as long as we are all committed to effective teachers in the classroom and making sure that we have ways to hold them accountable, and to engage, all the stakeholders and making sure we are making that happen, i don't believe that it has to be about unions per se. i think we can really tap into everybody's aspirations to have high standards. i do believe that we do need to have common standards in which we can have more uniformity. >> national standards? >> yes, because i think if you have different measures and different states for different topics, it creates a very very confusing matrix for folks who want to be engaged to know-how and so for us, i think it is having a set of common standards where i know secretary duncan has been committed and a lot of other folks so we can have a quality. and the last thing i would add is within the standards of accountability for us in the latino community and i know for children of color, students of color, it has to be having teachers who have high expectations for those students oftentimes we find that the biggest terrier isn't so much that teachers aren't qualified, because within the margins they are qualified. but when they are in classrooms with students who have the highest needs, a lot of times stereotypes and other types of perspectives seem to cloud the ability for some of these teachers to understand that all students can achieve high standards and have very high aspirations for themselves. when he teachers to really reinforce that and then also make sure that the accountability measures are in place. >> dr. malveaux what you think about the issue of tenure which is also part of this discussion and let's also build a off what jena was thing. >> i think which ended saying is phenomenal and really important for teachers to have high-tech cetaceans and challenging people. we go back to segregated schools and we can look at examples of teachers who push students to learn, push them to do, push them to achieve and so we have those examples. tenure is not a bad thing but tenure can be reformed. and i think that there are many in the teachers unions who are looking at reform of tenure. here is my problem with the so-called education reform. we are sitting in a city, washington d.c. come up where we have this crazy woman come in here with a broom to say she was going to sweep out all of everything and now we find that perhaps there was some fraud in the so-called metrics that said that this harsh method of dealing with teachers -- i am going to fire you if you can't get your kids grades up. but now we find the racers and all kinds of things. most teachers are good teachers. one of the things that i think we must do, and i say this as a college president who deals with students from the inner city k-12 system. what we must do is look at all of the other factors that shape a young person's life. everybody can learn and that is why i think janet said that. everybody can learn if we encourage that learning. but at the same time if somebody comes to school hungry, if somebody comes to school out of a chaotic home and if somebody comes to school where they just had a drive-by i'm not sure how much funding is going to happen. i don't want teachers to have to be social workers but i want us to look at the whole picture and i think that michelle rhee and let's not call names -- michelle rhee when she came to washington did not want to deal with some of those other issues. i think we have to deal with all of those issues at one time. we don't have an education crisis in america. we have an inner-city education crisis. if you go to alexandria virginia their children are going to harvard. everything is fine. but if you come to inner-city washington d.c., if you go toward age which is the poorest ward here in the district of columbia, you will find challenges that are partially a function of a social economic dynamic that we don't want to deal with. so i want us to look at tenure. i want effective teachers. if you are an effective we can show some folks are ineffective. if you are an effective, go away and do something else. but if you are in a district where gorey school where there are so many things working against it, let's try to work with some of that. you know what? i think we can. >> this tenure assist in this goal to bring more diversity and professorships and teachers? >> you know if tenure is a mixed blessing. on one hand tenure provides people with security of employment anyone who wants employment once the security of an employment. underhand we need to make sure we have effective teachers. in the things i think we need to do that we ever looked at him k-12 are sabbaticals. there are people who get so burned out. you have people who have to deal with crazy nonsense daily and forgive me, an academic way of saying crazy nonsense. deleterious effects. [laughter] but you know, the point is this. we need to nurture our teachers so the best of them can continue to be the best in the worst can go someplace else and do something else. tenure perhaps as not allowing us to do that but we want to protect the best of them. so there is an organization and the national educational association. i think it is called turn and i don't know what it stands for but they really are talking about reform. we want to have the best of both worlds. we are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. we are not going to say someone who is 57 years old okay we are going to throw your weight because you had a bad year but we are going to say our kids come first. our kids come first. >> you know i think the proposal that aft and weingarten raised deals directly with that. my understanding is that the teachers would be just on their performance-based on how the students in the classroom that they are in charge of are doing or not doing and should not be test driven, which is in itself a problem. and then, if the teacher in another year does not make improvements they are given 30 days for removal. i think that tenure is an absolute is not the answer but i think the whole thing of putting them out or first come first serve is not the answer. and i think when you have unions raising progressive alternatives they need to be entertained and i think that is what will get us closer. the other thing is i absolutely agree that you have got to take into consideration the environment that students are coming from and teachers that i can teach in that environment. that is part of being an effective teacher. if you can't deal with the student coming from may be a home that is not the same as a home with two parents and a peaceful community, you have got to have people that can deal and relate and educate that child. i don't think that you can have an education system set up where the child has to be derived of the environment he or she comes out of. i think the teacher is to be equipped adequate to deal with it. that is what ms. rhee della. >> that reminds me. my mother was a teacher for 25 years and worked in several districts in san francisco. one of her last schools was in a very challenging area of san francisco. that these teachers to your point knew how to teach these kids who came from very difficult backgrounds. but the testing, we go back to testing janet, that did not necessarily reflect how successful they were because they did have standardized test across the state of california. so there is opportunity there, isn't there? >> i'm going to ask you because i'm a native of san francisco. >> ii am low high school. >> is right there in the area of. >> i wanted to get more specific. >> starting school is on the top of the hill in the area of -- gosh i don't know the street. >> it is over in bay view. >> it is over and bay view, yeah. >> which is one of the poorer areas and indeed you know the challenges have always been the teachers have to love their students and they have to believe that students can learn. and this is the problem. as i think you know diane ravage road a great review yesterday in the "washington post" of a book about michelle rhee. they called her they v. swallower. >> tell us how you feel. >> tell me how i really feel? >> i don't think you are being bashful. >> is not in my dna. one of the things she talked about is an affinity. they have people who love to teach and they love kids and they are people who think teaching is the job. you have got to see every little child who is in front of you whether they are dirty or clean or whatever and say to them, you can learn because then they can. >> go ahead. >> matters hugely that i want to push want something. their scores didn't reflect how successful they were. >> that was the argument being made against the school. >> right, so our assessment has certainly gotten better and needs to get a lot better. with with the standards movement we now have is janet mentioned, we have a growing turn in the country so that's it code does not get to determine what you've learned. that said, we have a long way to go before our standards are implemented in the classroom, the four children and one community in a class called algebra are actually learning the same that their peers are in a wealthy community. our assessments guide who is learning what. they tell us that the achievement gap and allow us to focus resources on where students need them the most. assessments need to get better and dr. malveaux is undoubtedly right that the willingness to teach, the expectations that all children can learn at the highest levels when todd at them, the love for children, huge components and whether a teacher will be successful and whether we will see progress on those assessments. >> assistant secretary how do we to behold lisa because they were successful by a lot of other measures. how do we hold that up? how do we show that to the district? >> give me an example of what a successful measure that kids are running? >> no that they are learning. >> how do we know that at the assessments were reflecting a? >> the test themselves we are saying they are not successful. the teachers are saying we are quite successful. we are getting these kids to school. they're coming to school every day. they are doing their homework. there are certain parameters that they defined for themselves based on their understanding of the marketplace to say it was successful. >> the question might be what these tests are measuring. the tests are measuring multiple-choice think. your ability to say it abc, all of the above, none of the above. that is not necessarily success so this whole race to the top run to the bottom using the standardized tests with all do respect because i think you guys are on the right track but in the wrong direction. i think that we really need to think about what these tests are measuring. with s.a.t.'s we know that s.a.t.'s are projector of your first year college success. in other words if everything stays the same. everything is never going to stay the same for a freshman. nothing is going to say the same for a freshman so you are measuring something that is almost abstract. you know, if you can look at that test as an evaluation as opposed to an admissions metric you can say richard has a map rob lum so we want to intervene right now and make sure that we help him with his math problem so he can do the next thing as opposed to saying richard has a math problem so we are not going to let him in the school. so i really raise questions about the content of these tests, what they measure and widely used these tests exclusively to measure success of our young people's. >> sure and i think that is where the broader set of common standards comes into play. doesn't just become about teaching to the test of the more the test is one factor but it is not the only factor. one of the things that continues to remain a challenge for many children of color and students of color is that by and large you can see the data on this and it has proven time and time again that the kids with the highest needs have the least effective teachers in those classrooms. we have got to do something to switch that paradigm because the more that we allow for only the highest quality teachers to be in the most affluent school districts we are never going to tackle this problem so we need to really be thoughtful about how do we see more of that shift occurring so that kids can have, our kids can have the most effective teachers in place. >> how do you do that? >> it is a combination of factors and i think people are looking at that, but one of the things that we have in the latino community that is a particular challenge that i think needs to be addressed as we look at the different factors that school districts are being judged on and that is 20% of kids are in public schools. about half of them are what we call english language learners. they are still sort of transitioning into using this language in mainstream classrooms to be able to learn like everyone else. it is important for us to be able to get that right because when you look at the demographics as we just saw at least by the final statistics in the latest census we know that now the best growing part of the population of poor students a