Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20150122 :

CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings January 22, 2015

Dollars are well spent. From the standpoint about the concerns of the services provided, we think when you allow states to weaken the standards, and we have seen again, how states have used waivers to, in effect, create a day facto weakening of standards standards. We are deeply concerned. Well, i understand the need for flexzblety. But if the only principle here is that the states can do whatever they want, then they should raise their entaxes to pay for it. Throwing billions of federal dollars at the states with no accountability for the states of how they spend taxpayer money is not what we were sent here to do. So, thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator warren. And i did welcome senator collins to the committee, which i should. Were delighted to have her back. She and senator cassidy are the only two members of the kmiet tee this year. Senator roberts. Number one, weve flipped the seating arrangement here. The lights are a little brighter, the heat is a little warmer. You can see what the majority used to enjoy. At any rate, i thought id make that observation. Steven, how do you pronounce your name . Thats what i figured. Thank you for your statements on behalf of teachers. Thank you for your viewpoint. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on testing and accountability. I want to let everybody know the witnesses, and thank you all for coming. This is working draft. This isnt set in stone. And so thats why we have you here. Its the republican view or democratic view and it is a bipartisan view and it is a working draft. I think that should be emphasized. Theyre only granted to states that are implementing preferred education process. They will handle that issue with the courts. They have before and im sure theyll do it again. That was braukt up by mr. Henderson. At any rate, on principle evaluations, it has been a kovrp rehencive state approach to design a robust evaluation system. But the department of education i believe, is going beyond the statute, initially, and conditioned waivers for state adoption of policies. Back in august of last year, kansas agreed that the department of educations primtive requirements, they were informed that their esea flexibility was fully approved and they will no longer be labeled highrisk status. I think thats a pattern weve seen nationwide. And its clear to me that the administration has tried to query states to implement something called common core. I introduced the local level to prohiblt the federal governments role in that. I aappreciable dwrat the chairmans draft. I just want to i dont think washington has been what is best for the students that they serve. And my Main Objective for renewing and improving sea is to make common sense changes to simplify the law and make it for plexble for states without sacrificing any acountability. The question i have is what is the most effective paired back vergsz of acountability that still ensures education for all. I definitely see the role of assessments, you will owe norksz at a larger level. But reviewing that at the state level, i do feel that the role is to ensure that states are using tax dollars appropriately for Public Education. It hasnt happened in our state. Our city has not been held acountable to those federal tax dollars. But what i do feel is that there needs to be a balance, a communication. And if you were to ask me what my vision is its to create alongside educators, alongside district administrators. A system of communication that involves much more comprehensive assessments and ways of communicating besides a single metric that can be very flawed. So i just wanted to point that out. We need better and more diverse assessments that are used primarily to help schools and teachers adopt and plan. We need to remove high stakes from those assessments. We then need to limit acountability through the use of grade span. I appreciate that. Thank you, mr. Chair mesne. In my view thats why this discussion is so important. It was to create a system of askountblety that disaggregated data and showed us, you know how kwids were perform inging its demonstrated a huge achievement gap. If e in my mind if you want to cure this problem of pov e poverty in our country the way to do that is by making sure people can read when theyre in the first grade. Thats the most posht e important thing that we can do there was an comment point earlier in no child left behind asked and annalsed the wrong question. Which was how did this years fourth graders do compared to last years fourth graders. Not only is that the wrong question, if youre a fourth grader becoming a fifrlt grader then e then there was high stakes accountableility tied to that that meant that states and local School Districts and schools were responding to the wrong question. The field has moved well beyond that. I wonder whether you could describe to the committee how youve used student growth measures to drive change in the school district. How does it inform the districts policies with respected to choice i think we would benefit from understanding that. If you get hit, the important distinction between growth and status. So thank you. That is the fundmental question. Just look at the percentage of kids that are proficient. So where we have moved is looking at growth. Just how much progress does a student make from one year to the next. And, again thats equally important for highachieving students. You just measure status, i. E. ,are they proficient . Are they at grade level . Youre ignoring kids above and below. You want to see their growth. You want to see how much theyre learning. Thats why the annual nature of assessments are so important. So we do look, first and foremost, at growth. For example, we used to have schools where the students were relatively high status, but their growth was low. And they coasted. They said look, were doing great. Congratulate us. But kids werent really doing well. When they begin to measure growth and disaggregate growths based on students with disabilities that have shown a real light on how kids are actually doing. Again, the important thing was not just to shine the light. What are we going to chak to see more growth. Parents of data want to see how much theyre going to grow. The first thing they should look at is the business schools. They have in mind of teaching in the classrooms. This wonderfully rich and deep teaching around critical thinking. But its also important, again, for parents to see the ropes. Were very transparent about that and thats published. Particularly, when youre in a district where parents do have choice where you have Charter Schools and district one schools, its extraordinarily important that the community and parents get information about how much kids are growing. Again, if you have a system that just says expert and kids are proofficial e efficient you set up a set of a mr hazard, a disinsent ef to take kids who are low performing. You equally have that obligation. Therefore, particularly at an era of choice and accountability. As, for example, at charters, we have to make decisions about which charters to authorize. Which charters to close. Weve closed more lowperforming charters than the rest of the state has combined. And thats really helped us to encourage our growth as a district is, again, related to focus on the growth that schools are made from yeartoyear and make sure that parents have that information about their kids and their schools. Im out of time. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, senator burr. Thank you all for being here. Ive got to admit senator warren stimulated something in my mind. I agree federal tax money should be held acountable. If we said to a state, okay, were not going to take your tax money for edge kax, were going to let you keep it. You figure it out. You fund education. The first question i thought of was how many states would take us up on that . Federal government gets out of my way . I get to decide how its done . How would they do it different lid than if they do it today. We put the burden on them. I throw that out to you. Heres my question, extremely syrup. Its the most simplified question. My kids now are adults, never tested well. Its probably genetic, but they didnt test well. So my question is this. Is it more important that we know what students know . Or is it more important that we know students are learning . Dr. West . So its much more important to focus on the School System to e to find out what students have an impact on. What students know is going to be influenced by family jeanette e nettics and outside of the schools control. When were thinking about accountability, it should be for student learning. Ets a canun d rum. I dont see how you could go one way or the other. You need to know both. You node e need to know in the end do you only reward a student for what they know . Or do you reward a student for if theyre learning . I mean i go back to no child left behind. And it hnt rolled out exactly like i envisioned when i worked closely with the bush administration. Average yearly progress. Thats not necessarily what you know, thats what youre learning. I think this got hijacked somewhere to where everything is about what they know. Thats what the annual test is. I think we emphasized how much students grow. Thats to a standard. Thats pretty important that our kids graduate from High School Ready for college or for a career. That is a standard. Thats important to help our students. Are we graduating kids where theyre prepared to succeed in college and in todays knowledgeintensive economy. Its an important, philosophical question. But it assumes that students basically begin on an even playing field. And part of the concern i have about the way in which the question is framed, is that students who are poor students of color students with disability students who are not proficient in english are not given the resources that they need and only through these assessments are we able to demonstrate the its under state institutional law or whether they have failed to make the kind of progress that would allow them to continue doing what theyre doing without interventions of the kind that the law now would require. I mean, part of the problem we have is that when states are given the kind of deference and latitude that they have, you see a weakening of standards and there is no way of reaching those problems because the state has no incentive other than the say yes, the Business Community in the state wants to have a stronger graduating pool. But leaders of the state are not held acountable by the failure to meet those standards unless the federal government steps in. And i think the waivers reinforces that. Thank you. I want to start by saying yes, i know many students who are brilliant but are poor test takers. And they go onto become bring yant people. And go onto do amazing things. The tests alone does not define their value, nor their contributions to society. So i want to emphasize the fact that these tests again, they narrowly measure they are narrow measures. I can test my students on basic skills and tell you, qualify that information such as multiple case facts. When it comes to the kind of knowledge that were talking about, that is not easily kwaubt e quantity if i believe because its limitless. There has to be a better way to assess students, to share information that goes beyond the realm of standardized assessments. For my job, its students learning. I think schools should be acountable for students learning. But i think students need to be held acountable for what they know and can do which is exactly the model we used in consortium. Students at the end of high school need to demonstrate mastery on four different performance tasks. We could do a lot better job of helping students prepare for those and truly learning if we got rid of this notion of a kid that enters in ninth grade needs to be done four years later. Thank you. Thank you e thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator burr. Senator franken and then isaac southern. I want to thank the chairman and Ranking Member for this great group of witnesses and where were getting. I think your questions hit on this proficiency versus growth. And its a great topic because a sixth grade teacher who brings a kid from a third grade level of reading to a fifth grade level of reading is a hero under the proficiency measure, theyre a goat. In minnesota, they had a race to the middle. They would focus on the kid just above and just below to get that per zen tang above proficiency and the kid up on the top would be ignored. And, mr. Lazar, you hit on this. And the kid at the bottom would be ignored. Thats why growth is so important. To me, to do growth, youve got to measure every year. I also think you should do it in realtime. The question is what kind of assessments are you making . The assessments that measure these fine, little discreet skills, thats what youre going to teach to. So that informs or that creates a curriculum that is focusing on the wroeng thing. So if we can create assessmenteds that measure what we want, then we are getting somewhere. When i talk to employers in minnesota, they want people who can do critical thinking. They want people who can work in teams. We have to hold schools accountable. Mr. Bosburg, i want you to run with it and anyone else run with what i just said. Thank you, senator. And i think you put it very very well. About how important it is to care about growth for all kids. And not just kids on a cusp of a particular line. The thing i like about the law was called no child left behind. Thats the thing i liked the most about it. I think one of the things were very much looking forward to is the new generation of assessments. It is a much more sophisticated set of assessment. It is much more around complex thinking, problemsolving. Its not about mem raization. If youre someone whos teaching mem e mem raization, your kids arent going to do well. Its about the kinds of skills that we do care about for our universities and for our economy. At the same time i think sometimes, again, we try and create too much. This one vessel of this onceayear assessment told everything. It can want i any you want a good assessment. And, at the same time, to welcome multiple measures. The performancebassed assessments that mr. Lazar talked about to be able to judge, you know, as ms. Lee said, no one assessment is going to be able to judge everything. So i think it is absolutely, again, this isnt an either or. To be able to have common, statewide measures, sophisticated measures, of student progress in literacy or math is, i any, essential. So you can see bhou e how kids are doing from district to district. You can see where are the best schools in the state working with english language lerners. If measurement from school to school or district to district you cant capture best practices. You cant understand where the most progress is being made. I think those should be short. Id like to keep it to no more than four hours a year. Then then welcome other more performance based assessment. If the state gets to that level, what the state looks at as well. Anybody else want to weigh . On your kind of performance, dont you agree that if youre going to hold schools accountable, you have to have something that you can objectively look at but can you design a computer adaptive test, you design something that gets more at the thing you want to measure . You can. It takes more time and its more expensive. I did some work on doing prototype tasks. Its a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of time and a lot of expertise to design those. I think if we were going to identify a role for the federal government in education its put funds and resources behind tests development and assessment development. Do range of them an make them available for schools to choose. The type of work we do in my school we have wonderful teachers who are committed to doing it and we have arranged time in our program to be able to do that. It was the prose initiative in new york city. What we do isnt something that all schools can start doing tomorrow. If schools could choose the ones that fit their needs were in good shape. Thank you. Senator iaascs. Thank you. Thank you for having what is a very important hearing. Listen to michael ben nitnett talk a minute ago, i happened to wrote no child left behind. Everybody gone onto bigger and better things. Thats night when the congress finished meeting and ted kennedy and i were in the basement of the capitol and we signed off, we almost said in unison, if this works were going to be in trouble in six years because it will impossible for schools to maintain ayp because it will be larder and harder and harder to do. Assessment was very important. Focusing on the individual was more important. No child left behind did that fp now child flew under the radar scream. We did something we always had and aver rajjed them out. Were doing x. That wasnt anything good for little johnny who couldnt read. I hate that reference but i guess ill use it. We need little johnny involved as well too. I have a question for miss lee or probably a bit of statement. I didnt get to hear your testimony, and i apologize. In the last attempt, we almost got there on reauthorization. It fell apart. I fought very hard to allow for alternative assessment to take a standard test and make a special needs students take it you have connective disabilities and cognitive disabilities, its impossible to have a one size fits all assessment. I felt the teacher and the parent and the child aep should decide. I agree. Everybody make note of this answer. I started teaching first year of nclb. Ive seen first hand in what is called the high school for students at risk. Special education district in new york city. What i found was that youre right. No assessment fits all, include including all students. What i would have to do in my assessments is diversify. What i know about my students i assess them. Sit alongsidealongside. Get to know them and who they are. Their abilities. Set high standards and work with the parent and the team. It was not just me but related service providers. You have experts and specialists coming in and we Work Together add team to develop assessments to determine students where they with and where we wanted and to set goals for them. That work has continued. I feel as though again to echo steve that states or federal government does have a role in ensuring that this is made possible. One thing i learn is if youre testing is never aligned with your curriculum, youre never going to get good data. To align a test we required with a curriculum that was national would blow up in our face. We did random sample to try to assess the integrity of whatever assessment they were using. I think one of the things the federal government can do is to help the schools that is give them the excuse that were making them do it but make sure the curriculum and alignment of testing are in line. If you do that then you find out what the student is learning. A lot of people are saying thats teaching to the test. Thats what education is about. If you teach and you test what the student is taught, then you get a true measure of how much they achieved. I think mainstream seszment means that

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