Building Strong Schools

I wanted to welcome you to the kick off of the education track, Education in America and thank our sponsor Boeing. This is the second year that they have sponsored the education track. We have a terrific panel discussion to get us started with the simple and central topic of this session being building strong schools, three practitioners on our panel coming from different backgrounds, facing different challenges and having different approaches to these. First let me introduce, second to my right, Governor Roy Romer, probably doesn't need any introduction to you all. He was an office holder in Colorado for 30 years, a dozen of those as Governor but has also served as State Treasurer and in the Colorado House and Colorado Senate and was DNC chair from 97' to 99'. More important for this conversation though Governor Romer served as superintendent of the LA Unified School District from 2001 to 2006 and he now chairs a group called "Strong American Schools." It's a nonpartisan campaign promoting sound education practices for all Americans and he also directs ED in 08, you will see the pins and materials around. It's a nonpartisan campaign to drive public awareness in action in an effort to make education one of the top domestic priorities and to get it on the agenda of the presidential candidates in the 2008 election. To Governor Romer's right is Michael Bennet, who is Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. He is celebrating his second anniversary in that role this year. He as already lived through several careers. He began in public service under former Ohio Governor Richard Celeste, went to Law School at Yale, served as a law clerk in the Fourth Circuit US Court of Appeals, was an Attorney briefly at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, then had a business career in Denver working at the Anschutz Investment Company as a Managing Director, became the chief of staff to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper who asked him to step into the Superintendent role two years ago. And his path and current efforts are profiled or were profiled in a January issue of The New Yorker in terrific piece by Kate Boo, which you might want to look up. And finally on the far end is my Michael Feinberg who is co-founder of KIPP Foundation, KIPP is Knowledge Is Power Program. He is also Superintendent of KIPP Houston, which includes four middle schools, two early childhood and elementary schools and one high school. He co-founded KIPP in 1974 and the KIPP Academy Houston a year later. KIPP is a network of over 52 high performing schools around the nation. And Mike has been named an Ashoka Fellow in 2004 and has been awarded the Thomas B. Fordham Prize for Excellence in Education as well as the National Jefferson Award for the Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen. And finally last but not least you will be in the able hands of Margaret Carlson who is editor-at-large for The Week and a columnist for Bloomberg News. Margaret has had a long career in journalism and in television commentary. She spent much of it at Time where she was the first woman columnist, White House Correspondent and Washington bureau chief and she has also handled Washington coverage and editorial duties for a variety of other publications including The New Republic, Esquire and The Washington Weekly. She has a law degree from Georgetown, has been a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics and is a long time observer of Washington and of presidential politics. So I will turn things over to you and thanks to all. Thanks Elizabeth, I am usually on stage with a bunch of politicians and now I find myself with people who actually do things and have done things, but it makes me comfortable that I have a recovering politician here on my right, Governor Romer, who went straight and is now actually a little bit back in politics as he tries to herd the cats who are presidential candidates into talking about education. And since all candidates are all over the map in what they talk about and it changes from minute to minute in what they think is to their advantage, you have a you have a challenge in front of you but tell us how you are going to how you are going to approach that? In a very brief two minutes and you have a pamphlet which describes ED in 08, this is a big idea. It is we are going to talk about the importance of education. It is an attempt to bring education to the forefront in the next presidential campaign in this presidential campaign. It is financed by two foundations so to the tune of $60 million. We are going to run a presidential campaign in the primary states on education, its bipartisan. So you see a lot of challenges here. But we are we have troops on the ground. That's one of our tactics. We have a very, very sophisticated website. We will be doing paid media. We will work on earned media. But our object is we have two audiences, one the presidential candidates and their staff and second, America, and let me draw this picture for you. Assume you are President of the United States. The day after you are elected you wake up in that White House and you say, "Okay, I got the war in Iraq, I got global warming, I got healthcare, but how do I balance our our payments? How do I get those budget in shape? How do I keep the economy healthy?" It is based upon skills and knowledge. This . Yeah, this is and the answer to that is based upon skills and knowledge. All of you know that the economies of the world are going to be driven not by resources but by how skilled we are and how knowledgeable we are. And how are we doing? We are not doing well. If you compare this nation internationally with 28 industrial nations, we are 24th from the top in our performance in problem solving and our performance in math. We simply have a greater potential but are performing less well. We have a million two drop outs and we are trying to write an immigration law that can import enough talent to keep our economy going. For those we do graduate the state California system this last year had 45 percent of the entering fresher and take remedial courses in English, 37 percent remedial courses in math. Even what we are producing is not good enough. This is one of the most important policy issues of the United States. We are trying to bring that front and center. We are trying to make the candidates direct their attention to it. Finally, just saw that we do still have a total field of saying, I am for kids, we are saying, direct yourself to three policy areas. One, rigid or more rigorous uniform standards across state lines. As you will know we got 50 states with 50 different ways of trying to arrive at how good is good enough. Secondly an effective teacher in every classroom. That's the heart of this matter and we believe teacher pay needs to be totally re-evaluated, there needs to be differentiation of pay, we need to have pay for performance and there are ways in which we can do that including teachers. Third, we need more time and on task for students and more support for students during that time, remedial support. Those are the that's the broad contours. It is very, very challenging to do this, Ken Mehlman, the former chair of the Republican Party, I am former chair of the Democratic Party, rosily wrote a joint letter to all the candidates in both parties. That's progress at least for saying, "This is an issue we want to really address." My partner in this, my Executive Director is Marc Lampkin, a Bush Republican. I've met more Republicans in the last six months than I knew in my whole life. I'm weathering the storm. But let me conclude by saying this is a challenging event. It has a lot of stress and strain to it. It's something that just needs to happen. I think I should conclude with this. You will know that this nation's education is primarily the responsibility, by tradition of state and local governments, 90 percent. How would you like to be the head of a great nation and not be in control of probably the most important tool for your future and that is education. The President has got to learn that is president of not he or she, president not just of Congress, but of 50 states and 14,000 school districts. There needs to be a coherent policy here. Look at what Tony Blair did for England in the last 10 years on education. So that's some of the things I want to discuss today, go ahead. Thanks Governor and we will come back to know what you think of the current president's effort to get a grip on education with notes I have left behind. But let's give Michael Bennet a chance. Michael was On anything, you know. Michael Bennet was memorialized in a New Yorker profile. He is an innovative and creative Superintendent of Schools. He is also half of the fabulous Bennet brothers. James Bennet, his brother, is in the audience. He is the editor of The Atlantic magazine. We had a piece in the paper recently saying that the birth order was crucial to was the smartest in a family, I am not going to ask who is the older Michael. You might tell -. We have our answer. Okay, the elder of the Bennet boys - please proceed to tell us about the Denver public schools and your brother. I only say that though I am the elder I clearly - I am the out layer in the study and I am very proud to be writing on apathetic because there is my younger brothers hotels to get to spent a week in Aspen with you, and I want to start by thanking this crowd for sitting reasonably proximate to each other, I - in an effort to build culture, I go out to me with every faculty in our school district once a year and Denver public school teachers have an incredible mathematical skill, which is that they can arrange themselves room as far from each other and for me as possible, which is a demonstration of some of the cultural challenges they were facing. I want to just give you a few numbers of about Denver because I think there are not different in most other city, they are not materially different in any other city in the country, to give you some sense of how profound this crisis is that Governor Romer talked about, where a city of 550,000 people very thriving capital of the Rocky mountain west, our school district has 73,000 children in it, 57 percent Latino, 20 percent African American, 20 percent Anglo, 67 percent free introduce launch only four in ten of our kids can read professionally, only one in ten by the tenth grade of profession on a math test, that is a seventh or eighth grade math test, if you take it in Europe, what that means is that when I became the superintendent the year before, in the entire city county of Denver, there were 33 African American students who were professional in that test. And 63 Latino students, filled in four class rooms worth of students profession on a test, reasonably tough by US standards but a junior high test by European standards, our kids, the ones that are graduate and do go to the college, 40 percent of them need remediation, similar numbers to the one that you mention, only nine percent of our ninth graders finish a four year college, so one of my great curiosities and the reason I really want to take this up was was the curiosity that how can we let this happen in this country not just in Denver but in cities across the country, how could we except that level of abject failure in every year right another check to support the same system, and I don't know the answer to that but we will talk a little bit about it today, but I will tell you what part of the answer is that they were treating it like some one else's problem, and until we treat it like its our problem, until it is a problem of every body sitting in this room and every body you know, we are not going to fix it, when we do get to that point we will be able to fix it, and I think that's why what Roy is working on it so important because we have got to elevate the conversation nationally, its not just a local issue, obviously but it is very very hard to penetrate on this issue, because people believe for what ever reasons that it is intractable, or there that its some one else's problem to solve and that mindset is the first thing that has to go as we recognize that working in a system that is governed by rules written deep in the last century that have absolutely no application to our kids today just will not work. Thanks Michael, and now Michael two, I was a bit with too high minded to mention it but Kip was featured on Oprah, does that mean that you are on Oprah talking about kip? Did you get Governor Romer on Oprah with adding no weight, that might that might help, because all the candidates actually go on there now. So Michael tell us about kip and how it works into things like the Denver schools. Absolutely absolutely. And it was also what the governors doing too, one thing I - just a disclaimer as I begin to talk about KIP, when I start Clip in 1994 with Dave Levin I had a pony tail, so KIP does creates a very hair loss, so just be aware of that issue listen what the story and Dave and you know Dave and I were two teach American core members from 1992, they decided that we were fed up with the limited impact we could make with our kids for one year at the end of elementary schools we start the knowledge's power program, it turn into a school in Houston a school in the South Bronx New York with Dave returned to home to start a school and, by 1999 our school in Houston we had the highest performing middle school in math in entire city of Texas and that's where the population, those 99 percent minority 90 percent free breakfast, free lunch. So we were gaining a lot people on the stage to scratch over anything potential, its all we want to happen. 60 minutes to this piece on our schools and the very next day we got a we got a phone call from a district in California, not not the governors districts, the different district. And all I heard in the phone was, "Mike, we saw that program on TV last night. We would like to order 15 kips next year please." Oh, my did you watch let me go check in with vendor, I will ship them out. So being believing in that, teach American mission of one day our children this Nation will tax for education with I was we are drawing our schools to full size; beside we had a - our main focus within our kids to gains them matches two college, but through college and be successful there. But what could we do to leverage our success so that there was a greater impact. And so in 2000 we started the kip foundation with help from Don Doris Fisher, founders of of the Gap and Old Navy Old Navy. And our our, the foundation's focus was to find other great teachers and train them for a year and how to plan open run, their own KIP like school around the country. And so today there are 58 around KIP schools in 17 states. There are not all cones of each other, were they are all starting to try to prove that our what our five pillars are of KIP can can be replicated across the board in all the Denver schools and certainly as you can hear, that it has a lot of similarities between our five pillars, what the governor was talking about. Certainly, and one of our pillars is more time on task everyday, every week and every year no short cuts. And another, one of our pillars is high expectations which are clear to find and observable; which for us means college crap, not just at the high school level all the way down to pre-k. My pre-k kids last year, we knew they were the class of 2020. There are still work work in account of the 2020 but they knew that they knew that, with out you they were going to college. And that's how it lined up very well with the more vigorous standards that the governor is talking about. And the third pillar was of power lead that is the great school leader in place who have got low control of staff and budget, who is going to then also be able to hire great teachers which guess that the other third that the third big strategy that that have innovated is working on. Our fourth pillar is choice and commitment, the factor with in public education that there should, that that families especially underserved families that are locked in to that community that don't have choices of private schools still have choices of various public schools to go to which makes the schools then three those kids in those family as they are customers need to serve or they are accountable, not just to the state and to knotholes behind but to the but to the families as well. And our final final pillar is focused on results on the output; not just on the inputs and all the compliance things but what are we doing to make sure that we are looking at the score board and we are making the growth every year we want to get the kids at the top of the mountain. Now, it's so often comes in these discussions of what's works back to principle, and back to your your pillars. Which by the way don't seem to cause that much? How can, what KIP is doing fit in to what you were doing in Ally and in Denver? I mean, do you take pieces of it now? How does that integrate into the real world? As you know, the work we are doing and heading away is very much patterned after the concept of the pillars in KIP. But back on KIP as an organization; when I was in Ally, I was very attracted to it. Now what is one of its main function in addition to serving the kids, it's an illustration. It's an illustration to the rest of us as to what can work and how do you make it work? I for example, try to get a KIP school in the Ally. System and it had its difficulty. We we did a lot of charges but I you know, it was just a simple thing; and I began with fifth grade and our system didn't fit that easily. And you will be may be amazed that how structure of bureaucracy some times as a block and but, this is a good program. I mean, I I think what these guys have done is one of the most important things that has happened to public education last 15 years. I mean, it is it is that important and it when you walk into one of their schools, and I am proud to say we have one in Denver its one of our best schools. What's happening in that school is very much what Mike described. But it's very unlike what's happening in most of our other middle year schools. And the question becomes why why would that be, why if you have seen these things literally across the parking line from the another one of our schools. Why aren't we learning from each other about how to do the work. And a part of what we are trying to do is break down those those sort of barriers that exists in our own system. It is focused on the principles as I think enormously important than something we have learnt from. So almost every day, we just begin the day our chief academic officer who is a kind of [0:19:46] ____ start with a group of 15 of our principals in one of their schools. So that every three weeks we cycle through the entire principle core. We spend an hour and a half with them every morning to talk about best practices in teaching and learning. To talk about the implementation of our instructional program and to talk about the fact that all of us have been sent here not to just run the system but actually transform the system, what that means is that we have sort of and this would have been very hard Speaker: impossible to do in Ally but we have basically put ourselves into this conversation with our school leadership raise the expectations of them and its not being transmitted through the bureaucracy that exists between us and them and our hope is that what it will lead to is their capacity, their capacity to lead their teachers to make them leaders in this work will be greater because of the work we are doing with them and we are sorry to see some evidence of that I mean in Denver in one year that the - every year the union surveys our work force to demonstrate how unhappy people are before collective bargaining starts and the answer to the question I view my principle or my principle engages me as a professional in the work of my school. It's very important to me because I think people need to see their school as projects to make better has gone from thirty five percentage to seventy one percentage in year which means that something is happening people are engaged to work in a way that they haven't been before and one of the models for that is what these guys have done. You know what in New York City where the mayor has taken over the schools, there are still the teacher's union and you know trying to deal with the teachers union hamper some of what's trying to - KIP and Denver is trying to do. Did you have that in LA? Yes, I had a very strong teachers union and let me take this as an illustration, this is a very excellent way to go but is not the only way to go and it has some unique features. First it's it's selective because you have to have parents who want to join and it's selective in a sense that the I think you begin at a year at a time to build a culture and holistic Ally Ally had some 130,000 students when I came and in it was performing terribly low and how do you change that, we started to use charters we created a 100 charters but still a drop in a bucket compared to the system. We came in with a rather top down, we are going to change. First we said, we are going to raise our expectations fairly radically, we are going to have very regress curriculum and we are going to all do it one way. We are going to adopt a regress phonetic course and we raise scores in that district phenomenally phenomenally. That's not the only way to go either. We dealt with a union that opposes at time supports at times but I had there was no authority of the dealing with that circumstance and I just want to say I'm not anti teacher union. I think that there we need to have them as a part of the creative response to the educational problem and they need to change and we need to change our systems. Michael gets to choose his teachers now. And that creates that gives you an offer lot of power to run a school the way you want it. Assign them and fire them. And doesn't that make I mean isn't that huge difference? Researches will show that if you get an excellent teacher most youngsters who are behind within three years will catch up and you have a disproportionate number of less scale teachers assigned to the post groups and that is something we need to change. The question I think on the union is I mean there is going to be so much conversation as we think about institutions that are groping programs in a world that's changing radically before - American public institution , school districts like the one that I'm working with now are one of those institutions groping through out that - I mean it's - when you hear the numbers like the one - I hope the numbers that I mentioned earlier give you some sense of what it is we are we are facing here and --. Well it - but here is a thing we can't - it is depressing but we can fix it. I believe when you talk more about some of those solutions but my - what I - my argument are our union is that they are in the same wrestling match with relevance, so we are. Then this is so the question is not whether we can have a labor relationship at the end of day because we probably will question is what's that is going to look like and how do we want to best organize ourselves, not just to support the kids by the way which is the most important question but also to make the working lives the people that are in the school district better because they are not great right now and will come back to fine later and talk about some of that but but but that's really, really hard for people to get their heads around because we have basically had this model since the end of World War two and it hasn't changed and people people don't really you know, are are can't imagine what the future might hold for them which does make it very, very tough You know, I asked the Principal what the most important thing she has done in the last year and this was a while ago and she said she put a a couple of washers and drawers at her school because truancy was a huge problem. She talked to the kids and a lot of it was they didn't have clean clothes to wear and her kids were in that school and she had her kids wash their clothes at the school so that there was no stigma attached to the clothing and she also did a cloth swap so that the forth graders were bringing their clothes in and the third graders were picking them up and it was all there and it was a little thing that she was able to do because her school became a chartered school and and she just did it and she didn't have parent involvement necessarily I mean she she had parents who weren't involved and so it it seems like okay here is one of these little things you do and they make a huge difference any of the little things either don't get spread around other schools so that they know about them or the Principals are caught up in a bureaucracy and they can't do it. What's that are there any magic lamps that that you see that no no what are the what are what are the There are no short cuts - there is no this is not simply well that's a great story that all straight part to lead but that doesn't mean the sphere of public education we fought with the trap we hear that story we think are we alright let's go check in inventory for the washers and driers and shift them out to all to school. There are no magic lamps but there are certain areas that we know and we need to concentrate on the pillars that I am using and that Mike is using one expectations lets talk about Aiwa, - Aiwa kicked off our campaign in Aiwa last week and I once believe their schools are very well, very good and I have your comparison for how Aiwa judges for efficiency is against how nape the national test. And and there are creek gaps I mean Aiwa what it believes for efficient is below basic on the nape scale, once you go into Aiwa, they think our schools are pretty good, they just don't understand at the carrions need their lunch and just going to absolutely out performers. If you we are not paying enough attention to what the rest of the world is doing, Singapore, Korea, China, Finland they are doing very much better than we are and so their needs to be a wake up. Everybody kind of feels like Congress is so bad but my Congress was very good and they feel all of the schools of America are collectively bad but my school is very good so what one real thing we can do is to give them a major, give them a annual X-ray this is what your kid is doing as compared to what they need to do. Imagine a stair step it has got 12 steps first to twelfth grade, there is a pattern that you need to be in Math in order to do algebra at eighth grade, you need to have an accurate judgment on a forth grade Math to see whether your kid is getting there and if it isn't, it's kind of like you take an X-ray in your bone's broke you got to fix it. We don't have that in America that's called standards and authentic test. Now, that gives it a tough ground because that people's say we get too many tests may be we have too many tests we are not having then right kind of test. What is in Aiwa in aberration because most poles have people putting education as a huge problem and when you talk to parents they think that their schools aren't good either they are sending their kids to private school because the public school is not good enough or they are in the public schools and they are just full of complaints about themselves They they think it as a problem because that drop out down the street fell out of school but my kid graduated and he is so he or she is okay and they go to college and they are not prepared. How about Michael in Denver how how are the parents in the Denver school district? If you poll which we have done what you see is that people in Denver believes that our school district is marginally worst marginally than other school district which is fascinating because actually I wouldn't have thought that would have been the result but if you ask them how do you like your school the answer is 71 percent say it's just fun And part of the issue is part of the question there is what what standard do you comparing it to I mean if you are a recent immigrant to this country from Mexico for instance, this school might look good to you compared to what you had before I mean part of what we have to do and just come in after what the governor said is we need educated people in this country, I mean you ask what the political question people putting this high on their list in terms of the outcome so quickly the debate gets in to just this binary question we we need more money for schools that's one political answer or don't put any more money in schools because we don't think they use it well beyond those two ideas which is actually in the heart of what we need to get to there is almost no useful political conversation so there is no there is no where to lead anybody and until people in this country really understand what a standards based education looks like and what it is, why it's important, how to detect its presence, how to detect its absence and if it is absent how to what to do about that, we are not going to get where we need to be and the political conversation is going to be continue to be as lame as it's been for the last decade Alright so Michael you have like this prussic of the schools where, in fact you do have a bit of a magic want. Can that be, can the scale of that increase to. And that's that's the hundred million dollar question right now literally, because this is just to our theory of change that the schools like KIP, there is KIP, there is achievements first is uncommon school's, Northwest street, green dot there is these growing groups of schools kind of most of them coming out of the teacher of America pipe line that are all doing these five pillars basically in their own setup. And what we are trying to do is basically break the monopoly, I mean the brutal fact is right now the way we setup public education, public education is the idea that we are going to deliver free education to the to all the communities, the way we have chosen to set that up, with the school electing school boards hiring a superintendent, hiring principals, creating zones with in certain neighborhoods, we set monopolies where in certain neighborhoods you only have one option what you going to what's you are going to, monopolies we know, create low quality at high costs. The whole choice of commitment pillar to us is a fact that we have got to put enough choice of commitment in there to basically break up the monopoly. KIP is never going to serve a hundred percent or even close hundred percent of the kids. But we want to see if we can have the what we call the FedEx effect, which is you know when FedEx got up to ten percent market share that on the US post office another govern monopoly learnt how do next they are you know it worked in the, it worked in the package business, it work in public education I don't know but some one got to be forced enough to step on traffic and see what happens. And so we are going to try to our goal to these different cities is in between KIP and achievement first on government schools, can we get up to ten percent, but now we are doing a good job with our kids but that success is enough of a scale to try to help these guys leverage that so that they improve their schools as well too. So Michael how does play into what you are trying to do? So so what - so in Denver about ten percent of our kids are in charted schools and and as in the rest of the country, in Denver what you would find is that in general the charters are in about the same bulk as with our schools that is that is a about half of them or better or about half of them are less good, which tells you that there is not necessarily any magic to the charter schools, KIP and some others are very high very excellent providers of chartered schools but what we have set in this country is and I think I think it partly comes about the politically debate what we said that we want an invasion, we want choice, we want competitions, that's what we said in a lot of places, we certainly said that in Colorado, 40 percent of the kids in our district chooses school other than the school of assignment and actually if you had the kids that are opting out of our district all together it's over a 50 percent of the kids that are not going to their to their neighborhood school. So we have a real ethic of choice of work, but but even though we said we want invasion, said we want competition, when the district, a district starts to try to respond to that competitive market place tries to do what you describe the post office having done, We get very very nervous because everybody's assumptions about things like the existing collective bargaining agreement kids - where kids are assigned to go to school, how schools function, how long the school year is how long the school day is, all those kinds of things start - the question is called up and so the easiest thing in the world for the for the minority of people who's whole job is to say no to any thing, sweep in and stop it and then they give rid of the superintendent and then somebody else comes in and goes through the same routine and then they stop and they goes through to the same routine so again my point here is that we need, what we need to do is we need to put our school districts back in to negotiation with their communities that's the most important thing we can do so that we can say what is it going to take for you to send your kids back to our school, what is that that you want out of our schools and what that requires is fairly massive public education, the kind of stuff that Governor Romer is trying to do, to get people aware of the issue and to understand also that even though it is depressing, that it can be fixed because we see examples I mean if we go to the you know I should just mention, KIP, if you go to the KIP school, you go to several other schools in Denver where you see high poverty kids performing at really high levels, what we should be saying it's okay, now what is you going to take to get that every where. Right well you know that this brings up some thing which is our panel is too good, we only have the good guys on this panel, and who are the bad guys who are keeping this KIP from happening or good schools from happening? Lets talk about the bad guys you you go to church with them every day and these are the ordinary people in America, the people who don't want to expand the school year are the people who have resort industries like this one, the one the families to come here for the full summer Yeah great, now hold on hold on, if you start to expand the school year by 30 days, you wouldn't believe the people will come out of the wood work and say that idea, it's because it conflicts with our commercial interest, it's all the tourist industries part of the agricultural industry, the movie houses, it's a lot of people, so the bad guys are spread all over, we just need to, we do not have enough commitment I want to get on this issue of understanding, in our campaign we are communicating with all the campaigns staff and I got to tell you we were just writing some policy pamphlets, we want to use them on our website and we decided that we had to go back and define terms of what is the standard? What is the relevant of their test? What is the point about this on, relying higher expectations? Yeah we don't even have a language in this country in which we can well debate these issues and - I am right now just - I am working with the NEA and the chamber of commerce, thank of that correlation to see if we can get a an educational establishment sponsorship of a debate on educational loan, that's an idea we were working on, so some of these things - Because you get you get every thing in the world cost some thing even those all those cameras or some thing, so you pay in some way, but I am one another thing on the table, Loren Reese some of you in room know her a very very excellent guru in education, Loren phone to me as I was driving up here last night, and her point to me is Roy, it's not the standards, it's the task, that's what really count and she is right, it's the quality of the test, in other words you can have standards which you interpret that to teachers by the quality of the test, and she - That she she tell me things in the sense, Let me finish the sentence let me finish the sentence, cheap test cost cheap dollars, good tests cost good dollars, the federal government ought to be in here helping us really create good tests and fewer of them but we don't even have an and I was saying the word Loren I can't bring that one forward because it's politically not acceptable in this country and go out and talk about standards, but I just want to throw a complication in because of this audience as this is a sophisticated audience. Well you can bring up standards, but you can't bring up tests, is that the political derivative active part of it? Yeah because go out and take a poll on what the nations responses to leave those child behind, you know you will quickly get into this burning scorching too many damn toss etcetera and so politics is out of the possible and we need to work hard to keep these pillars going and don't get them consumed in flames by over emotional lack of understanding and let me tell you the other one is, I don't want a national superintendent of schools every time, every time I am on Aiwa or somewhere I say that's the first thing we don't want a national superintendent of schools, how do you get national standards? Think a moment about it, you got 50 states the best way to get national standards is to get 20 of those states and they are already working on it called achieving and they agree on what the national standards are get them to bench mark it against the world and then the President of the United States the first week after he was elected calls in 50 states. He says, "We are going to have uniform standards in this country. We are not going to have Congress set them. No, you are going to set them. You 20 I am going to adapt yours. The rest of you 30, you got nine months to come on board. Now I am going to put incentives on your table to drive it. And then, your benchmark it. And one of the bench marks listen to this, - "You have each State's higher education sign off that they will use the standard that the state accepts as the admission criteria for their University and College. They have done a better job of setting regress standards. They are better and they have been in the business a little longer. And I think that they are coherent in the policy in Massachusetts, they are moving on extended time. I think Massachusetts got a bit By extended time you mean they have gone against the cape card resort industry and extended the year? Have they extended the year? Uh-huh. They they have grants at the state level that district can apply for to get additional money to extend their to extend their school year. And what about extending the day? Has has that proven? That we need. Here is here is the basic illustration why it's so important? If you look at the basic school day, 8O'clock to 3O'clock; in some places it's like 8:45 to 2:00. But it looks seven hours. Take out lunch, take out recess, take out bathroom breaks; you done a four may be five hours of instruction a day; for a 180 days, less then half the year. There are even if we solve all the rest of the issues then we have great teachers. If we expect great teachers to be able to apply regress standards to get kids caught up to where they should be, with four hours a day plus and half the year or as on to be great or as on to be miracle workers. All right. And Michael Bennet, what about you know, the money in Denver? How do you get more of it? Do you I mean, you must need more of it. You have a a tax based sufficient insufficient, you have got pensions to pay-off, how you are going to do it? Well, I would never say "I don't want more money. In fact, we could put more money to very good use doing some things that might not actually have an affect on achievement but might make people feel better like reducing class size. For example, which is something that's really on the minds of parents and really on the minds of our teachers as well, you know. But you know, the governor mentioned at the beginning that we are 24th of 28 industrialized countries in terms of critical thinking skills and other kinds of things. And we are almost the highest Per-Capita spender on education among that group of countries. And what that tells me is, "Yes, I would like more money but may be we are not spending the money that we are spending as efficiently and as well as we should be. And in Denver, we do face some very-very difficult physical constrains because of adults decisions about our pension for example; as you mentioned that are crushing the kids its only chance to go to school is right now. It's not their fault but some body made a bad decision about the pension. Only their and and you know, but their chance to go to school is now and we are spending for every dollar of the compensation in our system a quarter an additional quarter on the pension. And, I I never want to be known as the guy that through out the number of hosts who's pension nor will I ever do that. But it is a fact that we have to deal with and we have got to find a way to re-distribute the resources that we that we have better and a part of it goes to what the governor said about differentiation of pay, you know. I mean, we have a system still which large Denver actually have just to be the leader on this question on American this year, was a champion of the of our differentiated pay structure. But two years after that passed, Denver's voters there isn't another district of any size in their country that's even close to doing what we are trying to do and we are trying to do isn't even nearly where it needs to be in order to have a an efficient distribution of resources. I'll stop, but I want to come back to answer the question you ask, because I can't resist it; that who is the bad guys question. My answer to that question is is, "all of us because I have seen in bigger group than he is talking about. Because because, as long as we see these school districts as something that's separate from the life of our cities or separate from our own lives because we have been able to make a decision for our own kids. It's different than the one or we are able to say, "It's because here are a bunch of bureaucrats or because it's a public agency or because it's a collective bargaining agreement or because our kids are poor or whatever those reason are if we keep saying that stuff it's never going to get any better what we have understand is that at this state of this school systems is a reflection of our values, we may say that's not true or we may believe that we live in a land of of equal access and opportunity but if the results are what I just described, that's false so lets decide whether or not we would like to have a true expression of our values as Americans which I believe we can and then lets do everything we can to make sure that our districts and school by school we are actually meeting that challenge and I can't tell you how far away from that conception of what the project is we are right there. But how can you know that you you are in a position you are in a position to fix it. Right well sort of yes and no I mean I we will do every thing can or die trying to do it in Denver and we think we have some opportunities there that other people in other places don't don't have which is great because there are some levels to pull. But lets talk that no child left behind for a second, it that which is the expression of our federal policy on this question of education right now, huge benefits to no child left behind, it was the first attempt that external accountability for our school districts and very very important and it also forced us to disaggregate our results by things like ethnicity and by fervidities lunch and by special education, incredibly important. And it also screwed Okay and we shouldn't be surprise at the first attempt at external accountability here was some what screw which it is I mean and I can talk about why I think that is which should be even less surprising is that the response of begin institutions like the one I am working with right now was equally screwed and it leads to this question of you know teaching to the tests and too many tests and all those kind of stuff. But so all that's valuable I mean I believe that measures are little off I don't think we should care so much better how this issue of fourth graders did compared to last grade - fourth graders, we should care more about how this group of fifth graders did compared to how they did to fourth grader, it will move that way, it's moving that way, but what are we doing to attract teachers in this country to this profession nothing not only that I would argue that the federal policies have actually driven people away from the profession in the popular personal stuck because governance in this isn't good. In the popular press, we spend all those time on too many, you know we are loosing the race for engineers, we were loosing the race for mathematicians and all that's true, but we are also loosing the race for people to teach people to be engineers as to be mathematicians and that's because we have a system that was designed for a work force that had absolutely no choice, professional choice other than becoming a nurse and you could assume pretty fairly that you are going to get the best British letter to the teacher - student in her class to compete a teacher those days are gone But is a good teacher ever going to make what a good lawyer makes I mean our our system is so cute so that teachers are way down there are no good lawyers, I am a lawyer so I can say there are many good ones but our pay scale in this country is so cute That's one of the problems. Let me just before this last week there were 340 questions asked of the presidential candidates and their debates. How many of you think about education, one - one now I tell what I think is going to finally drive this issue is the bread and butter issue of America, this generation is coming to the conclusion that there children may have less of a standard living than they have, that their children may not be able to afford the house they own on the street is because they will not have access to jobs that they had access to. There is a world out there that is becoming very skilled very knowledgeable we are digitizing work, we are shipping it all of over the world, this nation is going to be really pressed in the next 20 to 30 years, in its in its economic ability to produce and I think that finally is going to drive the the bread and butter politics in this country. But it is so late this is so late to have it happen that way and that's what we what we need to get to it to it sooner. The the communication here is is just so obvious to me, if you take the major issues of war of Iraq, global warming, health care you can't solve those issues with out an educated nation, you need an educated nation to do that. And if where are we you know the commentators I have said I was a very sophisticated commentators in last two - three months, then they started reciting to me what happened to Algore when he got on this kick, you follow - we need to break into this both in every lock of community and we need to break in to in terms of national conversation about education. Well before we take questions from the audience, I have a question to Michael Feinberg. I was a school teacher and I teach from America kind of things in south central Ally Prior to Governor Romer's time and before I went on to less important carrier I taught --. Yes. And I taught third grade and here was the neon flashing thing that was going on. The third grader still loved to come to school. They were excited you know my feed back to them they cared about it you know a star on their paper and then by fourth grade and fifth grade you looked at that score and the light in the eye was gone, it disappeared in a year or two and how do you get - I have read about incentive payments in this things sounds all completely wrong to make. How do you get the light in the eye of the third grader to last till you know on and on? Welcome to world at middle school. This it's that's about - it goes back I think to a great principal, a great school leader and a great staff of teachers building the culture were not only is it regress in its high expectations, it's fun and that's - I think that's you know we want to be in successful at more of being cases that goes to school from 7.30 to 5'O'clock and four hours and Saturdays and half the summer. You know if if there wasn't some additional peal because you are right many after third, by fifth sixth grade I mean sixth grade wake up in the morning go today is math class. They are excited. So what do we do in to make this appealing and that goes to get back to culture and that goes back to how are we training and preparing our principals and school leaders to really be leading the school and create the culture with that what happens in day in and day out. Right, now Michael said is there a mayor in the audience? Mayor could you introduce of Denver? Yes, Mayor of Denver. Could you give us could you give us it's a pop quiz. Actually you know I have one end of course which is, what about mayors taking over the school system we have that person the latest is Washington D C where I live. You haven't done it, you haven't taken over Michael Bennet yet. Uh what you what you think of mayors taking over school districts?