For the president and congress. So you can submit them to the u. S. Commission on civil rights by either mailing them to the commission to the office of civil rights, 1331 pennsylvania avenue, thats 1331 pennsylvania Avenue Northwest suite 1150 washington 20425 or via email at Public Comments at usccr. Gov. Thats publiccomments uscc r. Gov. With that out of the way i would like to introduce and swear our panelists in and Stella Flores from vanderbilt university. Peggy carr from the u. S. Department of education and dr. James t. Minor also with the u. S. Department of education. Will you each raise your right ha hand, please. And i ask that you swear or affirm that the information youre about to provide to us is true and accurate to the best of your believe and belief, is that correct . Yes. Professor flores, please proceed. Thank you, commissioners, for the opportunity to speak on the civil rights implications on College Access, persistence and completion for underrepresented minority students in the united states. I will draw on evidencebased examples from the most rigorous studies on these topics including work my colleagues and i have conducted in texas where we utilize national as well as kindergarten through 20 studentlevel administrative database up database. Thats k through 20. Its critical to civil rights to improve Educational Equity in the u. S. For all students. I argue that College Completion is a function of more than the postsecondary experience and the other factor such as secondary School Context and Financial Aid opportunity and academic preparation predict the college success. We find 61 of the College Completion will be explained by precollege characterist beings and that is before a student ever enters college comprised of the individual, high School Context and academic preparation. Another 35 of the gap and racial College Completion is explained by post secondary characteristics. Every stage of schooling that does not give all students an equal opportunity to prepare for college has civil rights implications. Therefore, being given equal opportunity to prepare for and succeed in postsecondary study is the education civil rights battle of our time. Moreover, as stated by the commissioner, the consequences of not being approapriately prepared to succeed in college are costly and not only to individuals deprived of this opportunity and to local and state economies and ultimately the nation. Ill focus five key areas of underrepresented minority and low income students and they include demographic changes in the school and tped segregation levels and and the College Completion gap and end with some discussion on the role of data and understanding where the odds of College Completion are most challenged. This is not on, actually. The timer is not on. Oh, its not . Thanks for catching that. I will continue . Extra minutes for honesty. Keep going. More time so let me begin with point number one, we cannot neglect that we are in an era of unprecedented demographic change across the u. S. States, but also in our Public Schools. The majority of all u. S. Births and the majority of k through 12 Public School students are now nonwhite. The cost of failing to prepare this population to earn a postsecondary credential has become a matter of state and academic welfare. Five states have majority minority populations and 14 states have majority minority population among children under the age of 5. Latinos are now the largest Minority Group in the nation with the two and Fouryear Colleges and let me be clear of what this trend does and does not represent. Demographic growth simply means that there are more latino students and not that we as a nation has been more successful in enrolling the eligible high school of latinos and the real question is whether programs and policies have been more effective and if demographic growth is masking the underperformance of our nations schools . Our work in texas finds Latino High School graduates are more likely to enter the workforce than they are to begin in a Community College and regardless of academic preparation. Next point, poverty remains a salient characteristic particularly with race among students with Fouryear Colleges. We find 48 of hispanic students and 38 of black students are economically disadvantaged as compared to 5 of white students at fouryear institutions. Racial segregation continues to have harmful effects on key student outcomes. Racial segregation and elementary Public Schools is a key factor in the racial achievement gap as measured by differences in tax scores and our Research Suggests that racial segregation in high schools has an effect on College Completion itself. Students have different rates of participation in High School College preparation courses by race and ethic nick background which is associated with the odds of College Completion. Let me be clear here. Academic preparation remains the most important factor in predicting the odds of College Access and College Completion. However, students of all racial groups do not receive the same education in math, the gateway course or trigonometry, another gateway course. Black students are less likely than white and latino students to have taken a trigonometry course. That rate is 61 for white students, and 47 for black students. Similar gaps remain for dual enrollment programs. College costs perceived are real and Financial Aid continue to matter as gate keepers to enrollment and completion and they also may matter by race and income. More than 30 years of Research Indicates a Financial Aid particularly in the form of grants and tuitions, discounts and scholarships positively affects college enrollment. Nonetheless, Financial Aid remains a contested issue across the states and individual institutions in the form of preferences to Fund Students that are less likely to exhibit need. That is, weve seen a trend in an e crease of married need. Location of college is important especially for minority students. In terms of where black students are going to college, that is the Community College. We saw them surpassing latinos attending Fouryear Colleges. They are more likely to have twoyear colleges. No institution represents hispanics in the institution and yet we have minimal evaluation evidence on how well the hsis are doing and yet that is the place where latinos are more likely to go to college. There is substantial College Completion gap between white and black students and white and latino students. The College Completion gap at least in texas between white and hispanic students is 14 points. Between white and black students is 21 points and what drives this gap differs by these groups. For the hispanic white group, the two key factors that drive this achievement gap is attending a highminority high school and or economic disadvantage. For black students while attending a high minority high school, the most critical factor with this Group Remains academic preparation. Commissioners, improving the civil rights outcomes of all students requires a collection of strong evidence through the form of reliable, individual level with data sources to produce the most successful and sustainable interventions the students deserve. Dismantling efforts for the collection of such data is likely to lead to underresearched and ineffective policy decisions, with implications not only for disadvantaged students and also our students in the nation and we cannot afford to formulate responsible education approximately see and without strong data systems and designs. The demographic change highlighted here bring to life underexamined, as it relates to english owner and particularly difficult for the southwest and the southeast where students have an with teachers prepared to teach these populations. Thank you for the opportunity to offer this testimony. Im happy to answer questions. Thank you. You want to go next . Good morning. Good morning. I would like to begin with a brief description of what we do at the National Center for Education Statistics or nces. I say this because i think it has implications for your here on the commission and for the work of all who is concerned with civil rights issues. The First Federal department of education was established in 1867, and i quote, for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition of education in several states and territories, unquote. Congress has legislated several mandates for nces, one that might be of particular interest to you, we are to conduct objective and statistical activities to collect data that are impartial, clear and complete. In addition, congress has required us to play a Critical Role in partnering with other agencies and departments in the federal government to strengthen and to improve data quality and access, of particular note is our role in gathering the data for my brothers keeper and also more recently we are now administering the Data Collection for the office of civil rights within the department of education. Many of the demographics you see here are interrelated. Poverty, educational, attainment and other factors are linked to system and seeing as you well know, its important to note that unless i otherwise state, however, that the outcomes and measures that im going to talk about briefly today do not account or control for interrelated factors. Date from a number of ncs reports surveys and assessment support the conceptual model that is shown here. In this presentation i will explore key checkpoints along the pathway of post secondary obtainment. They include, of course, access enrollment persistence and completion. So lets start with achievement gaps as one of the first access indicators here. Achievement gaps for minorities and low sas students start early and they persist. Dr. Carter, your microphone just went off. Thank you. Lets begin with a look at some of the key trends in academic achievement gaps. Here were looking at an achievement gap between white and plaque students. Historically, black, hispanic and american indiana, lack of animative students have lower assessment scores in reading and mathematics than their white and asian peers. There are two pieces of good news included in the data that you see here and this data depict performance over time for black and white students and eighth grade students and what you see here is that the performance is improving for both groups and the distance between the performance of the two groups also known as the gap is narrowing and that is good news. While the sharp displays and the black white gap, this is also true for whites and hispanics and less true, but also true of native americans and whites and there has been a truly significant increase for asian students. Im going to skip this next graph in the interest of time. Now were looking at curriculum levels related to mathematics achievement within the racial ethnic groups. Within each group graduate students completing a rigorous curriculum earned higher scores as an assessment of educational progress than graduates completing lower curriculum. A rigorous curriculum includes three years of english and three years of foreign language, three years of social studies and four years of mathematics and three years of science including biology, chemistry and physics. However, the completion of a rigorous curriculum did not eliminate racial ethnic gaps in nape performance as you can see here. The average scores for black and hispanic students completing a rigorous curriculum were lower than the average scores for white and asian students and this is not, of course, due to race or many other confounding factors search as the disproportionate representation of ses or socioeconomic status among the minority status and the rigor, the true rigor of the courses theyre taking and not just the title of the courses. This slide depicts gaps in advanced science course taking of the level of density within a school. The term advanced science courses refers to courses beyond introductory, biology, chemistry and physics as well as a. P. And ib science courses. Density refers to the percentage of minority students within a school. The gaps you see here are larger for schools with higher density. As you can see here there are differences, by Race Ethnicity and the proficient in math and reading and over challenging subject matter on average for 12th graders in mathematics and 26 on the students of this country and its 7 for blacks and whistle for hispanics, for students that are being placed at residential facilities, and this is particularly true of males, and there exists an and the persistence is particularly complex. In this next slide here, it has increased for all races and ethnicities and this is particularly true of the hispanic students. Persistence is important. As you can see here, there are a number of factors that relate to persistence, for example, whether the student has taken credits of courses and not gone back and theyre not going to get credit for them, incurring additional costs and so forth. And finally, attainment patterns resemble some of the patterns ive already discussed. Well show this last slide here. Well go to the next one here, overall, lower percentage of minority and low ses students obtain a bachelors or higher, however, even among higher ses students there are differences in attainment among various racial ethnic groups. So, in sum, progress has been made across the metrics that i have discussed here today, but clearly there are many challenges here. We need to improve our measures and the free and reduced price lunch has long been used as a proxy for family income, but there have been new provisions and the allocations of eligibility and that has put a bit of a wrinkle and free and reduced price lunches for student ses status. Digital Data Collection is also a challenge and an opportunity. So i will stop there and if there are additional questions i would be happy to answer them. Very interesting stats. Well definitely be delving into that. Mr. Minor . Good morning mr. Chairman and members of the commission. I want to thank you for the invitation to speak this morning. I am here and happy to be here on behalf of the u. S. Department of education, which is a Program Designed to promote innovation and improvement in Postsecondary Education and expand access and opportunity to students from lowincome families and increase College Completion which, as you know, has significant consequences for our nation. Under the authorization of the Higher Education act of 1965 as amended, the office of post educational awards more than 4,000 new and continuation awards each year totaling over 2 billion annually. Presently, the Higher EducationProgram Office has approximately 7. 5 billion obligated in grants and intended primarily to improve College Access and to strengthen the capacity of institutions to serve students more effectively. No other institution or agency in the private or Nonprofit Sector comes close to making that kiebdz of invend of invest College Access annually. The office of Postsecondary Education administers numerous competitive and formulabased Grant Programs designed to support minority serve and institutions including historically black colleges and universities and hispanicserving institutions and tribal colleges and universities and native american serving, nontribal institutions and alaskan native and native hawaiian serving institutions with native american and native american and pacific islandsserving institutions as well as historically blackserving institutions and this improves fiscal stability and are intended to strengthen institutions that serve large numbers of minority students while maintaining low perstudent expenditures. These programs represent a mix of competitive and formulabased grants and are funded by congress through an annual appropriations bill. In 2015 more than 775 million was appropriated for Institutional Development programs and minorities serve an institution that these programs support have traditionally been underfunded and they rely on these programs for cysts such as Student Services and renovation, and the purchase of educational materials and even endowment building. As of 2012, minorities enrolled in undergraduates each year. Hispanics serve 50 are latino students being in 40 are all colleges. More than 50 receive pell grants compared to 31 of all students and nearly half of all students at minorityserving institutions are firstgeneration Coll