"RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF QUALITY TEACHERS"

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN HOWARD P. "BUCK" McKEON, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN F. TIERNEY, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE TIM ROEMER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

STATEMENT OF MR. TRACEY BAILEY, 1993 NATIONAL TEACHER OF THE YEAR AND ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN EDUCATORS, TALLAHASSEE, FL *

STATEMENT OF MS. AMY MIKOLAJCZYK, TEACHER, MALCOLM X ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, WASHINGTON, DC *

STATEMENT OF MR. GERALD A. VOTTA, TEACHER, CLAYTON HIGH SCHOOL, CLAYTON, NJ *

STATEMENT OF MS. MICHELINE J. BENDOTTI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ARIZONA TEACHER ADVANCEMENT PROGRAM, PHOENIX, AZ *

STATEMENT OF MR. DAN CONDRON, PUBLIC AFFAIRS MANAGER, AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES AND CO-FOUNDER, CALIFORNIA BUSINESS FOR EDUCATION EXCELLENCE, SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID HASELKORN, PRESIDENT, RECRUITING NEW TEACHERS, BELMONT, MA *

APPENDIX A - WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAIN HOWARD P. "BUCK" McKEON, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

APPENDIX B - WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONARABLE JOHN F. TIERNEY, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

"RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF QUALITY TEACHERS"

Wednesday, September 13, 2000

Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning,

Committee on Education and the Workforce,

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:48 a.m., in Room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives McKeon, Goodling, Barrett, Castle, Ehlers, Isakson, Andrews, Roemer, Hinojosa, Tierney, Kind, and Holt.

Also present: Representative Woolsey.

Staff present: Becky Campoverde, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning and Communications; Pam Davidson, Professional Staff Member; Blake Hegeman, Legislative Assistant; Dan Lara, Press Secretary; Sally Lovejoy, Education Policy Coordinator; Patrick Lyden, Professional Staff Member; D'Arcy Philips, Professional Staff Member; Jo-Marie St. Martin, General Counsel; Linda Stevens, Legislative Clerk/Assistant to the General Counsel; Rich Stombres, Professional Staff Member; Sally Stroup, Professional Staff Member; Kent Talbert, Education Policy Counsel; Kevin Talley, Chief of Staff; Holli Traud, Legislative Assistant; Mary Ellen Ardouny, Minority Legislative Associate; Marshall Grigsby, Minority Senior Legislative Associate; Roxana Folescu, Minority Staff Assistant.

Chairman McKeon. A quorum being present, both of us, the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning will come to order.

We are holding this hearing today to hear testimony on teacher recruitment and training. We will be limiting the opening statements this morning to five minutes on each side which will allow us to hear from our witnesses sooner and help members keep to their schedules.

If other members have statements, they may be included in the prepared record. With that, I ask unanimous consent for the hearing record to remain open for 14 days to allow members' statements and other documents referenced during the hearing to be submitted into the official record.

Good morning. I am pleased that over the past two years this subcommittee has devoted substantial time and effort toward the issue of teacher quality.

These efforts included numerous hearings and an active hand in shaping legislative proposals aimed at improving teacher quality.

Through these hearings, what we have found to be absolutely clear is that in order to ensure the academic success of our nation's students, there must be highly qualified teachers in the classroom. In fact, outside of the influence of parents, no other factor has a greater correlation to student success.

Unfortunately, we also discovered that too many students are in classrooms with teachers who are not proficient in the subjects they are teaching.

Many states and localities are working hard to overcome this problem. In particular, they are focusing on better ways to recruit the best and brightest students into teaching, providing an increase in incentives for top performing teachers to stay in the classroom, and using innovative methods for how to best identify such top performing teachers.

To assist in these efforts, we have moved forward over the past two years with several key pieces of legislation.

First, as part of the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998, we established Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants. These grants provide funds for states and localities to focus on reforms and initiatives aimed at ensuring that every child has a qualified teacher in his or her classroom.

In addition, this law sets in place reforms aimed at improving the quality and accountability of our nation's schools of education.

Additionally, as part of H.R. 2, the Education Options Act, we focused on ensuring the quality of the 180,000 teachers and paraprofessionals funded under title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Also, under H.R. 4141, we established the Tech-for-Success program, aimed at improving the use of technology in our nation's classrooms, especially through the expansion of initiatives to better prepare teachers, and how best to use technology to improve student academic achievement.

Further, as part of the bipartisan House-passed Teacher Empowerment Act, we provided funds directly to schools enabling them to focus on a host of teacher quality initiatives.

For example, schools would have the option of implementing bonus and merit pay, tenure reform, teacher mentoring programs and professional development.

Finally, we have worked to provide increased flexibility as part of the 100,000 New Teachers program, specifically to allow schools, especially those experiencing a high percentage of uncertified or unqualified teachers, to use funds to focus on teacher quality as opposed to hiring additional teachers.

As we continue our efforts in the remaining days of this Congress, I am pleased to be holding our sixth hearing on this very important topic.

Specifically, today, we will focus on the issues of recruitment and retention of highly qualified teachers. As part of this hearing, we will have the opportunity to discuss how teacher quality is defined; perspectives will come from teachers and administrators, and the business community, which has taken a much deeper interest in this area over the past few years.

We will also highlight what has become a growing source of qualified teachers in many states, that is, programs that provide alternative routes to teacher certification.

The knowledge we will gain from today's hearing will certainly be taken into account as we continue to move forward with these efforts.

In closing, I would like to thank each of our witnesses for taking time to be with us today and I look forward to their testimony.

I now yield to any statement Mr. Tierney may wish to give.

SEE APPENDIX A FOR THE WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAIN HOWARD P. "BUCK" McKEON

OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN F. TIERNEY, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning and welcome. I join Chairman McKeon in thanking all of you for coming here today to discuss the important issue of teacher quality, including how Congress can assist our nation's public schools in attracting more talented and dedicated individuals into the classroom and in providing for the type of supportive and constructive environment that allows them to enjoy long and productive careers as teachers.

I would imagine that just as each of us hopefully can recall a special teacher who stands out in our minds as being particularly influential in our lives, many members may recall teachers who were overworked and seeking, to no avail, assistance and training that could have improved their classroom experience.

What may have been a mere impression to many of us as students has been confirmed to us as Members who pay attention to improving the education system for our students. Many of us on the subcommittee have made this issue a priority. My staff and I have been drafting language that I am planning to circulate soon that would seek to provide an alternative path to teaching for college graduates and distinguished professionals by providing them with the support, mentoring, and pedagogical training to take full advantage of their expertise in any given field.

Regardless of which proposal we may be considering, continued attention to the issue of teacher quality is critical.

It is widely accepted based on numerous studies and reports that teacher quality is one of the most important factors for student achievement. We are fortunate to have many highly qualified individuals in our nation's classrooms today. However, we clearly are in need of many more highly qualified teachers and must continue to work over the next decade to meet the goal of filling our classrooms.

Due to the rapidly growing number of schoolage children and the large number of teachers that are nearing retirement, our nation's schools are expected to face a teacher shortage of nearly 2 million teachers over the next ten years.

Ordinarily, this would not be so troubling, given the thousands of bright young people entering teacher training programs every year. However, there are other factors at play besides the sheer number of teacher candidates that make this looming shortage a problem of great concern.

For instance, many new teachers are finding that they are ill equipped to deal with today's increasingly challenging classroom situation. Many more are lured away by higher paying jobs in other fields. And as a result, more and more high quality individuals are leaving the classroom within their first two years of teaching.

Although Congress cannot mandate greater prestige for teachers, we can provide states and local education agencies with certain tools that will help them attract and retain highly qualified teachers. For example, in the last Congress, we reauthorized the Higher Education Act and raised the bar for new teachers and required teachers' colleges to prepare their students to meet high standards. We also included incentives to draw more highly qualified teachers into at risk schools and districts where they were desperately needed.

In addition, the federal government provided states and local education agencies with funding for smaller and safer classrooms and for professional development so teachers could focus their efforts on teaching, rather than policing, and continuing to enhance their skills.

Certainly more significant federal commitment to these areas is necessary, although that is a discussion for another day when the final budget deal is negotiated, but I am always mindful when people talk about the federal role in this situation that we only provide 6 or 7 percent of all the money for elementary and secondary schools.

So in the meantime, I understand that you, our panel, have a wide range of expertise and knowledge to share with us today for alternative routes for certification, to innovative recruitment and retention strategies, to increase the use of technology in the classroom, and I hope you will share with us the proper federal role in your mind as well as the proper local role so that we can understand the restraints in each area.

I am eager to hear your testimony and I yield what time I have remaining to Mr. Roemer.

SEE APPENDIX B FOR THE WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN F. TIERNEY

Mr. Roemer. I thank the ranking member and also the chairman from California for holding this hearing today.

I think this is probably one of the single most important topics on this country’s future that we have had a hearing on in any hearing room on Capitol Hill. Teacher quality, teacher recruitment to try to make sure that we retain the best teachers in the world so that we increase the standards of classrooms, is a high priority for me and for Congress.

Several years ago, there was a bill put forward called the Troops to Teachers Bill that recruited people out of the military with good skills and put them into teaching positions across the country where they still are, for the most part. Around 80 percent of them are still in inner city areas, challenging areas, teaching to those students.

Mr. Davis of Florida and I have a bill that we have introduced called the Transition to Teaching Bill which would bring people from careers on Main Street - accountants, technology or math or science experts - into the teaching profession, put them through a rigorous certification – (it is not an alternative for circumventing the certification process) - and if they pass those certification exams, we bring them into the teaching profession.

We have already seen all kinds of exciting and interested responses from people in the private sector across the country, but we need to pass this bill.

Congressman Davis has just walked into the room; he has worked very, very hard on this bill. We welcome him to the committee this morning.

Again, I want to thank the chairman of the committee for holding this hearing. On one of the most important topics bar none that we could have to discuss on Capitol Hill.

Thank you again.

Mr. Tierney. Mr. Chairman, if I might just acknowledge that Mr. Davis has entered the room. He is one of the co-sponsors of the legislation that Mr. Roemer just spoke of. And if I could have unanimous consent to enter upon the record his statement.

Chairman McKeon. No objection.

SEE APPENDIX C FOR THE WRITTEN STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JIM DAVIS

Chairman McKeon. We are happy to have you here with us today.

I want to thank Mr. Roemer for his help on this bill. We had his bill included in the Teacher Empowerment Act, which we have passed in this Congress. It is sitting in the other body; hopefully, we will accomplish something on it before this Congress adjourns. It is a very important piece of legislation, especially in relation to what we are talking about today.

Now we will hear from our witnesses. The way we work is you each can put your full statements in the record. We would like to have you take five minutes to give us your statement or a summary of your statement, after which we will hear questions from each of the members of the committee.

We will hear first from Mr. Tracey Bailey, who is an Advisory Board Member of the Association of American Educators. He was also named as the 1993 National Teacher of the Year. We want to congratulate him for that recognition.

Then we will hear from Ms. Amy Mikolajczyk, who is a secondary teacher with the Teach for America program at Malcolm X Elementary School in Washington, D.C.

And then from Mr. Gerald Votta, a science teacher with Clayton High School/Middle School in Clayton, New Jersey.

Then from Ms. Micheline Bendotti, the executive director of the Arizona Teacher Advancement Program in Phoenix, Arizona.

And then from Mr. Dan Condron. I understand Ms. Woolsey would like to introduce Mr. Condron.

Ms. Woolsey. Mr. Chairman, I would be honored.

I am a member of the full education committee, but a guest here today on this subcommittee for this hearing, and I came because I wanted to have the privilege of introducing Mr. Dan Condron to this committee and to all of my colleagues that are here today.

Dan Condron is the public affairs manager at Agilent Technologies in my district in northern California, in Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park. He is an electrical engineer, and has a Master's Degree from Stanford University. But in addition to working for a great company and being very successful in this organization, he is a community activist. A lot of what Don Condron works on has to do with our children, their education and what is important for gaining a good, solid workforce, which means we have to have kids that are going to be ready for the future.

Dan is also married to the mayor of Santa Rosa, the largest city in my district, so the entire family is active in community and politics. He was invited to testify today because Agilent, which was formerly Hewlett-Packard, built the first work site school in the western United States and they built it in partnership with the Santa Rosa School District.

I have visited that school several times. I am eager to hear what Dan is going to share with you, because the school is a model. You will want to learn from what they are doing at that school.

Agilent Technologies is working with the National Alliance of Business and the Education Trust to include math, science, and technology education for all students, and I look forward to hearing about that from Dan and also how we are getting girls involved in technology, math, and science.

Thank you very much.

Chairman McKeon. And then we will hear from Mr. David Haselkorn, who is the president of Recruiting New Teachers.

So, we will go in that order. We will hear first from Mr. Bailey.

Mr. Bailey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Members of the committee, good morning, and thank you for inviting me to share a few thoughts with you on teacher quality this morning, particularly on recruiting, retaining and ensuring ongoing quality in the classroom.

I am also certain there is no more important discussion in education today than this.

I have been asked first, however, to describe an item or two from my own background, particularly the non-traditional route that brought me into education. I think it is relevant for our discussion.

I did not attend a college of education. I was a physics and space science major for most of my college career at Florida Institute of Technology. In my junior year in college, however, I switched to a science education degree, but only after being encouraged to consider education as an option because of a teacher scholarship loan program that was designed to bring young math and science professionals into the teaching career.

That program was offered by the state of Florida. It offered full tuition and books in return for four years of teaching in the public schools. What is interesting about that, I am sure you will hear about similar programs across the country, is that at a small university, more than a dozen of my college classmates, other students majoring in ocean engineering, in physics, in chemistry, in math, also chose to take their love of math and science and to apply their zeal in the public schools as science teachers as well.

At my college, there were no courses such as math for education majors or chemistry for teachers only. There was not a separate curriculum for educators. Everyone took the same content courses, the same labs and performed the same field work as the other science and engineering majors. This has made all the difference in how I view myself as an educator and how I have approached the courses that I teach.

I have always viewed myself as a scientist, engineer and educator all rolled into one. I think that the best teachers view themselves as these types of academic professionals, people with true expertise and skill in areas as varied as mathematics, history, business, journalism, psychology and more. We need to encourage and promote more of this view of teaching as a profession.

During my tenure as a science instructor at Satellite High, I like to think that we focused on real science . . . DNA fingerprinting, recombinant DNA, not busy work or hypothetical or role-playing issues. I think this focus on real science energizes the students and certainly kept me alive in the classroom with zeal as well.

In short, my particular focus is on recruiting teachers who love their subject matter, who know both their content and the age group they are teaching well, and who have a zeal for bringing the student and the concept together in a demonstration of energy and creativity.

However, teachers like this who view themselves as academic professionals first, not as babysitters, not as day care employees, not as social workers where the students might happen to learn something on the side, teachers like this are going to require something a little different than what we have right now in order to recruit them in large numbers into the teaching profession and to retain them for any length of time once we have them there.

I have highlighted some options and suggestions on this in my notes that I will include in the record. I would like to mention just a few in the remaining few minutes I have.

Certainly I think teacher scholarship loan programs for recruitment are a great idea. In addition to that, however, I think that we should offer summer internships, summer employment with businesses like Rockwell, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin. Say to a young person in math and science, sure, we can only pay you $30,000 as an entry salary, but we can guarantee you an internship for your first three years during the summer with Lockheed-Martin and you can pursue that physics and space science that you have always loved and bring in a little extra income and, of course, bring that current knowledge back into the classroom. I think that makes an appealing package.

Issues like an extended GI bill type benefit for teachers who want to go on and obtain advanced degrees.

Those are some areas that might help with recruitment, but I want to spend a minute on retention. Certainly it is true that we have many teachers leaving the profession out of frustration - out of the frustration of lack of respect that they have from students and from parents alike, and over the lack of respect they get even from their colleagues.

I cannot tell you how many people ask me, oh, Trace, you are still teaching? So when are you going to go back to the Space Center?

You see, they do not understand. But it would be nice to be able to counter that and say, you know, I am employed at the Space Center during the summer for two months and I bring that back to my students. Some of that prestige. You cannot mandate it or legislate it, but you could provide that environment for it to be earned.

Obviously, I think reducing the bureaucracy is important, but I think there is also something, and you have touched on a little bit of this in your comments about alternative professional tracks for teachers. Differentiated staffing. Merit pay. Performance pay. I think these are issues that certainly need to be included.

Right now, in the teaching profession, there is no way for teachers to work themselves up rather than out of the classroom. There is no promotion for 30 years. Most teachers that I know, they did not study physics or chemistry to become bureaucrats or to become administrators. For people who want to become principals, that is great and admirable, but many of us would love to have a way of moving up rather than having to leave the classroom to do so and I think there are ways that we can promote that.

Finally, a comment on standardized testing and gain scores. I know that you are going to talk about value added assessment, about ways to measure teacher quality, and let me just add my voice as one that says if we are going to talk about looking for quality in the classroom, we need to measure directly the learning gains that our students are having over time.

Science teaches us to measure directly, if possible, that which you are looking for and I do believe that we could go much further with simply measuring the annual academic learning gains of students and letting that be an indicator of teacher performance and quality.

We will talk more about this.

Thank you.

SEE APPENDIX D FOR THE WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MR. TRACEY BAILEY

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Ms. Mikolajczyk.

STATEMENT OF MS. AMY MIKOLAJCZYK, TEACHER, MALCOLM X ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. Mikolajczyk. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, and guests. My name is Amy Mikolajczyk, and I am a first grade teacher at Malcolm X Elementary School in Washington, D.C. I am also a second year corps member in Teach for America, and I am before you to day to offer testimony both on my experiences as a new teacher and also as a member of a national education reform movement.

I entered Teach for America after graduating from Dartmouth College in 1999 with a degree in women's studies. My decision to enter the teaching profession through Teach for America was based on my passion for education reform and a desire to channel this passion into something very practical.

Majoring in education was not an option at Dartmouth College and, because of my schedule; I was unable to put in the time necessary to be certified. After researching other programs, I decided to join Teach for America because of the strong network of support and training provided to the teaching corps, as well as the well-respected reputation of the program.

It was just as important for me to have an opportunity to teach as it was for me to become a teacher actively involved in the process of raising both teacher and student achievement.

The mission of Teach for America is not simply one of meeting the needs for new teachers in under resourced schools, but more importantly meeting the need with teachers committed to creating a system where one day all children will have the opportunity to obtain an excellent education.

As a corps member, I feel fortunate to have much of the support and training needed to become a successful teacher in an under-resourced school. On the other hand, in my day-to-day experience at an inner city elementary school, the largest in the District of Columbia, I understand the challenge of recruiting new teachers.

Under-resourced schools are named as such because of their lack of appropriate resources, beginning with material resources such as textbooks and furniture. Our schools also lack the ability to create less tangible, but equally important resources such as a student-centered learning environment or a zero-tolerance policy on violence.

It is difficult enough for these schools to meet the needs of their students without attempting to focus on quality teacher recruitment or new teacher training programs. Instead of being proactive, these schools are oftentimes reactive: reactive to poor student achievement and behavior, low teacher retention rates and other issues.

As a teacher anywhere, one is called upon to wear many hats in order to successfully educate one's students. And as a teacher striving to provide a high quality education, I have to provide exciting lessons, which keep my students engaged but are also standard based.

These are reasonable expectations and they are similar to what most teachers meet, but the extra hats that inner city teachers wear make doing their jobs very challenging. On any given day, I am a teacher, a mother, a father, a nutritionist, a social worker, an anger management therapist, a doctor, and a person who can distinguish the signs of child abuse or neglect in a child too angry or hungry to communicate their troubles.

Although there was nothing that could have truly prepared me for my first year in an inner city, open-spaced elementary school, what I encountered most of all was a lack of support on the local school level.

New teachers are required to go to meetings held by the district office, but since the District school system is so large and so diverse, encompassing many different student populations and regions in the city, it was difficult to meet the need of individual teachers at individual schools.

My school also paired us with a collaborating teacher and a mentor. Mine happened to be a Teach for America alumni at this school, but unfortunately both were just as overworked as I was and lacking in as many planning periods as I was. Our school valued and needed new teachers, but they were very much unable to support us.

I received the majority of my professional development as a Teach for America corps member. The summer before a corp member's commitment begins, we are required to spend five weeks at an intense preparation institute. I was able to advantage of the resources of alumni as well as the resources of master teachers that I worked with as a summer school teacher in Houston. The afternoons and evenings at the institute were used for workshops and discussions.

As active corps members, we are required to go to monthly meetings where we are able to work with other corps members to propose practical solutions to problems hindering our students' achievement. We have a chance to observe at excellent schools in addition to many other professional development opportunities.

I am a Teach for America teacher by design, but I am also a proud inner city public school teacher, similar to many colleagues around the country. I face specific challenges, but I also experience satisfying success. I credit my first year as a conservative success and a true learning experience.

The first weeks this year are laying a foundation for a year even closer to the far away ideal of an excellent education for all students.

I have created a child-centered classroom focused on rewarding and praising and encouraging, instead of constantly punishing and singling out inappropriate behavior. I have created an environment where my children are learning valuable social skills and attaining marketable goals as well.

My children's standardized test scores have increased by about 20 percent, which is a great gain, relatively speaking, but there is much work to be done if my children are to be competitive with the rest of the children in the nation.

And, finally, in addressing some of the challenges at our school, I have tried to enrich our school environment. Student violence is a large problem at our school, created in part by the lack of sufficient productive resources.

This year, along with three other teachers, I am bringing a creative writing and soccer program to our school, designed to inspire kids' creative instincts, intellectually and physically.

I also try to enhance our community and my students' lives by organizing Saturday field trips with a few of my students and offering my parents support meetings to be effective advocates for their children.

I came to you today to share my experiences as a teacher at Malcolm X Elementary School and a Teach for America corps member. The challenges of an under-resourced school are many, but in our inner city schools are the children that will be the future of America, and in order to survive, that future has to be educated, not in an adequate manner, but in an excellent manner by excellent teachers.

Thank you.

SEE APPENDIX E FOR THE WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. AMY MIKOLAJCZYK

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Mr. Votta.

Mr. Votta. I would like to thank the chairman for the opportunity to address the subcommittee today.

My engineering background involves several years in each of three disciplines: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and my own business, where I utilized my engineering/manufacturing experience in government contracting. In total, I have well over 20 years of experience in these areas.

As a young engineer, I began teaching in the evening at the local community college. I had always enjoyed it, but had to give it up as my engineering career progressed. Much later in my career, when I had my own business, I took advantage of a few slow periods to substitute teach at local high schools. This happened three times in eight years.

The third time that I was a substitute teacher, I was filling in for an absent physics teacher. After only one day as a physics teacher, I went home and told my wife Wendy, this is what I should have been doing all along.

My statement was influenced by the fact that I had been a physics major at Drexel University and engineering is, in general, the application of the principles of physics.

From that point, I began the process of investigating what was necessary to become a certified teacher. Fortunately for me, New Jersey had a system in place called the Alternate Route. This included what I am calling five major steps:

1. Passing the National Praxis Texts for both physical science and mathematics;

2. Providing proof of college courses and a degree in my area;

3. Numerous other forms and documentations;

4. Finding a school that would give me a chance at teaching.

After the first month of teaching, Alternate Route candidates are required to attend evening classes two nights a week and two Saturdays a month. These classes deal with basic lesson plan theory, educational psychology, educational practices and legal matters.

This five-month period was extremely difficult. This information, the assignments and journal keeping, although necessary, was piled on top of the most important task of preparing the actual lesson plans for the classes. Please believe me when I say that this first year was by far the most difficult task I have ever encountered. That is, working day and night seven days a week for about six months.

Now I am in my fourth year as a science teacher and it has become clear to me that high school students respond well to teachers with experience in industry. Many of my students who have graduated have kept in contact with me via e-mail and personal visits when they are home from college.

I just want to say I got my chance and I have never regretted making the change.

Thank you for your attention.

SEE APPENDIX F FOR THE WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MR. GERALD A. VOTTA

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Ms. Bendotti.

Ms. Bendotti. Thank you, Chairman McKeon. It is a pleasure to present a proposal to all of you. This proposal addresses both the quantity and the quality of the teaching profession. We can cast 100,000 teachers into the system, but without the appropriate support, I do not know that we will have increased quality.

I represent the Teacher Advancement Program. The Teacher Advancement Program has been working diligently these past few months in partnership with the Arizona Department of Education, led by Lisa Keegan, and with local school districts. We have identified five schools, which are working with us to develop and refine this model.

There are five schools, so the number five is relevant. It is also relevant because there are five components in the Arizona Teacher Advancement Program.

The first component is multiple career paths. I was a principal for 11 years and I can tell you that instructional leadership takes more than one person in a school. Multiple career paths offer teachers a way of advancing, just as Mr. Bailey suggested, a way of advancing and developing leadership within the building, but never leaving the classroom because, as he stated so eloquently, leaving the classroom is not what we want our good teachers doing.

The master teacher will be in the classroom two hours a day and helping others the rest of the time. Let me show you the power. There is a gal named Debbie Arum; she is a master teacher by any stretch of the imagination. She was working in a high SES school. This school was, in other words, serving children in a more affluent area. She heard about the Teacher Advancement Program and the opportunity to lead others. Indeed, she transferred to one of our TAP schools.

Here is a quote from one of our master teachers, her name is Denise. ``It's so exciting to see the instructional leadership of our school be shared between the principal, the mentor, and the master teachers.''

Some people say that perhaps the master teacher will conflict with the principal or that somehow a principal will not want to share his or her leadership. We have not seen that in any of the five schools. They have welcomed the opportunity to share.

Another component is market-driven compensation. We have remote areas in our country, we have urban areas, we have science and math, and we have areas that are difficult to staff. With our model, we offer a plan that will offer more money to those areas within the career path and pay for responsibilities that are in need.

I will take another quote from another master teacher. ``I am rewarded for taking additional responsibilities.''

It is as simple as that. She has the expertise and can help others.

We have another component, performance-based accountability. I heard someone earlier mention state standards. They said that standards were extremely important to students. They are equally important for teachers. By having performance-based accountability, we can define what teachers are doing in terms of performance. We can measure it and then we can reward it.

"Now it makes sense to me," as one teacher said, "It makes sense to be working with the standards in the classroom."

Originally, there was push back when we had state standards in Arizona. People were saying, "do we have to do this"? Now, when we have performance-based accountability and it is tied to compensation, we see a very big reason for tying our curriculum to the state standards.

Within the Milken Family Foundation we are developing a comprehensive program. We examine the value and importance of ongoing applied professional growth, which represents another key element.

This is probably the most appealing and most important part of the model as far as the five schools are concerned. They can finally work together. Through this model, we have time, which is provided to the teachers to work together collaboratively to develop their skills. Not in some remote classroom, but within their building, using their school goals, using the state standards.

I have a couple of quotes on that. One master teacher said, "The expertise on our campus finally has an outlet.''

Another teacher exclaimed, "We never had time like this before to talk to each other.''

I have another story. A teacher was offered two jobs. She was offered a job in a community where the children were in a more affluent area and then she was offered a job in one of the TAP schools for less money. She chose the TAP school not because of the initial salary but because of the opportunity to move up in her career. That is a very important factor in our program.

We also have, within those four components, a fifth and that is an expansion in the supply of quality teachers. We feel that with the implementation of those four things, multiple career paths, market-driven compensation, performance-based accountability and ongoing applied professional growth we will not only attract teachers, but we will retain teachers because when you ask teachers what it is that they want, they want support. They want to be compensated for what they do.

I would like to close by reading a quote. Tomahawk is one of our schools in the Cartwright District, and I have always felt that in my 25 years in education that the school secretary and the custodians tend to know what is really going on. By the time you talk to one of them, if they know something, it truly is a success.

The custodian said, "What's going on at Tomahawk? I see teachers so friendly. They meet all the time, talking about the kids and teaching. It's so different than other years.''

It does make a difference. It makes a difference when the teacher meets the student.

I thank you so much for the opportunity to present this proposal.

SEE APPENDIX G FOR THE WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. MICHELINE J. BENDOTTI

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Mr. Condron.

Mr. Condron. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Representative Woolsey and other members of the committee, thank you for inviting me here this morning to speak to you.

Agilent Technologies and other high tech businesses have been actively involved in educational reform activities in California for some time now. I have served as a member of the California Standards Commission, which sets the standards for K-12 education in the state. On that commission, I chaired the math committee and I served on the science committee.

I am currently a member of the High School Exit Exam Commission for the state of California and recently I was one of the founders of California Business for Education Excellence, a coalition of major corporations in the state and major trade associations working on education reform issues in the state.

We support high standards that define learning goals for student achievement, rigorous assessments that measure progress versus standards, strict accountability for students and schools, high standards for teacher skills and achievement, and effective programs to increase teacher availability.

As we have worked on the issue of standards, assessments and accountability, it has become very clear to us about the grave problems of teacher quality and teacher quantity, especially for math and science teachers, which are very important to our industry.

It has already been mentioned that in this country we will need over 2 million new teachers in the next 10 years. In California alone, we will need over 300,000 new teachers in the next 10 years. In California today, we only have 270,000 teachers total. I do not know where these 300,000 new teachers are going to come from.

The shortage is especially acute for math and science teachers. So for California, a state with a high concentration of high tech industry, we have a major concern about the future source of our math and science teachers.

In trying to work on this issue, we have organized the different issues involved in teacher quality and quantity into the categories of recruitment, preparation, induction, retention, and accountability. As we looked at these different categories, we came up with about 27 different issues that we could be working on as businesses to try to improve the situation and provide a little more focus on priorities. We have tried to identify what we consider the top 10 priority issues that we should work on and I would like to share those with you briefly.

First is professional development. In the United States today, our teachers average eight hours per year of professional development and that is usually after a full day of work or on their own time and during vacations.

In Japan, Japanese teachers that teach at the elementary level average 90 hours per year and at the middle school and high school level it is ten hours per week.

So, we are very concerned about the lack of investment in professional development. We feel we need to increase the amount of funding for professional development and improve the quality of professional development that we already have.

The second issue is teacher assessment, or metrics. One metric should be used to evaluate a teacher's performance. We believe incentive funding for states and districts should be provided to develop and implement value-added or other systems for evaluating teachers based on student performance, and we should use the metrics to increase the skills of the existing teacher base.

Another issue is the equitable distribution of teachers. Especially if you look at new teachers, quite often their assignments are in the most difficult schools to teach. We believe that there should be an equitable distribution of qualified and effective teachers between high wealth and high poverty schools, and financial incentives should be provided to make this possible.

We also support differential salaries, especially for math and science teachers. One-third of high school math teachers today have neither a major nor a minor in math. One-half of high school physical education teachers have neither a major nor a minor in any of the physical sciences. So if we are having trouble hiring specific types of teachers or teachers in specific geographies, we think we should pay those teachers more.

The next issue is pay for performance. We believe that we should provide salary incentives for teachers who improve student achievement results. Improving student achievement is what the educational forum is all about. If results do not improve, nothing else much matters.

The next issue is a 12-month teacher work year. Teaching should be a full-time job with a full-time salary and status. As states establish higher standards, many students require additional support to meet them, which often requires summer school. A 12-month work year would allow our best teachers to be available to teach the students who need them the most, as well as providing needed time for professional development.

I see that my time is up, so let met just mention that the final four issues are forgivable loans, mid-career recruitment, requirements for entry into the field of teaching and induction programs.

I would be happy to respond to questions regarding them.

Once again, thank you for inviting me this morning. Agilent Technologies appreciates the opportunity to testify before your committee today and we look forward to working with you in the future.

SEE APPENDIX H FOR THE WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MR. DAN CONDRON

Chairman McKeon. Thanks very much.

Mr. Haselkorn.

Mr. Haselkorn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members. It is an honor to be here and I want to applaud the subcommittee's sustaining look at the issues of teacher recruitment and quality over the last several years. And I also want to congratulate and applaud the dedication of the teachers on this panel who have really been doing the real work of education reform in this country.

One of the problems about speaking last or the benefits is that many of the ideas that have been advanced already I would subscribe to, so rather than focus on specific ideas, I would like to try and put some of them that we have heard into a frame and them add some ideas of my own.

We have heard about the need to recruit 2.2 million teachers over the next 10 years. Just to put some perspective on that, that is like to trying to replace every doctor in this country two and a half times over, except there is a five-to-one salary differential between doctors and teachers. That is part of the mentoring challenge, as is the skew, which Mr. Condron talked about with respect to teacher qualifications for students in poor districts and students in advantaged and suburban districts.

There is also a growing gap between the increasing diversity in the school age population and that of the teachers who teach them. Thirty-five percent of students currently are minority, only 14 percent of our teachers, California and Texas are majority-minority states, 42 percent of the schools in this country have no minority teachers, and so in a country that is increasingly diverse, and we have all seen the demographic projections, I think this has to be a dimension of the subcommittee's look at the issue.

RNT has been trying to deal with these issues for the last 14 years. Our ``Reach for the Power. Teach'' and ``Be a Teacher. Be a Hero.'' PSAs have received over 1.2 million phone calls to 1-800-45-Teach, the most successful public service ads in the history of the Advertising Council in terms of response.

We recently launched, just three weeks ago, a national teacher recruitment clearinghouse and job bank portal.

Mr. Roemer, this would allow an individual who might be interested in a teachers program to link in one central source and find a hyper link to a variety of programs around the country.

In the first three weeks of running this program, we have had over 2.2 million hits. That represents about 130,000 individuals. I think this indicates that there is an untapped reservoir of interest in teaching, that if we were able to tap and put to use and prepare it well, it could solve a lot of our teacher problems.

So I want to talk about primarily lessons we have learned from our campaign.

We need to expand the pool and improve the pipeline, raise standards, compensation, conditions and status for teachers to solve this problem. It is a daunting task, but it can be done and I will suggest how.

One is to improve outreach. RNT's experience shows that public service advertising can be effective. The military spends about $200 million a year on recruitment advertising. Teacher recruitment is largely a patchwork affair. Perhaps the federal government should have a role in a public-private partnership like the anti-drug campaigns that we spend millions of dollars on.

We need improved information and dissemination. I have mentioned the one-stop clearinghouse. The idea is trying to make teacher quality and not geography the central factor in the teacher hiring decision. But we also need improved teacher career corridors and grow-your-own programs, programs that start as early as the middle and high school years with future teacher clubs and particularly teacher academies and magnet schools, community college articulation and transition programs, paraprofessional career ladders such as those the subcommittee introduced into Subpart B of title II that exist in the L.A. career ladder program, Mr. Chairman, and programs like the DeWitt Wallace-Readers Digest Fund's Pathways to Teaching Careers program.

Scholarships, loan forgiveness programs, honors, awards have all been mentioned and I think they are all parts of the solution.

So we need to grow your own, we need to build community capacity. We need to tap various pools, the mid-career pool, the retired military pool, retired teachers, Peace Corps fellows, but we need to avoid quick fixes that try and do it on the cheap or on the fast track that shortcut and end run quality.

We need a service academy approach, not an officer candidacy approach because shortcuts lower student achievement and add greater cost due to the revolving door recruitment effect and remediation costs for students who have teachers who were not prepared to teach them. So I applaud the committee's focus on standards as well.

We cannot raise standards for students by lowering them for their teachers, but we can be much more creative in the kinds of preparation programs we have for mid-career professionals and talented undergraduates.

We should support improved mentoring and induction programs. We should also support improved and adequately long apprenticeship and internship programs, rather than throwing individuals immediately into the classroom and control of that classroom.

I think we should take some of this energy that is rampant out there and put it into programs of careful clinical experience and growth under the watchful eyes of a master teacher, perhaps a nationally board-certified teacher, who can get us to that issue of differentiated roles that we talked about.

We need greater state level supports like the Gallup Teacher Program or the South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruitment.

We need pension portability, and that is something that the subcommittee might want to look at in terms of a federal role and helping to incent.

This crisis has been approaching us for some time. The enrollment trends through 2100 indicate that it will be with us for a long time, so we are here for a marathon, not a sprint. We need to address the root causes of salary, status, and conditions. We need to level up salaries and conditions for teachers in disadvantaged districts to end the teacher brain drain to the suburbs.

We should target shortage area fields. We should avoid the quick fix. We should expand the pool and build the pipeline.

I think if we do this, we will find that there is an enormous reservoir of public support. One of the issues that we have been engaged in is gauging public attitudes towards the teaching profession. Lou Harris and I conducted a poll in 1998 which we are repeating right at this moment in terms of public attitudes towards teaching and found that the public strongly supports stronger licensing standards, 80 percent in favor; better induction and mentoring programs, 91 percent in favor; higher salaries, 78 percent in favor; loan forgiveness, 67 percent in favor; and it rejects the quick fix of putting B.A.s into teaching without any teacher education, only 20 percent are in favor.

The public supports doing what it takes to put a qualified teacher in every classroom and I applaud this committee's effort to turn the country's attention to those efforts.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SEE APPENDIX I FOR THE WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MR. DAVID HASELKORN

Chairman McKeon. Thank you very much.

Well, this has been an outstanding panel. Every one of you added insights and gave us information that I think will be very helpful. I wish this were our first hearing and that this were January of 1999 rather than September of 2000.

I have a couple of questions. Mr. Bailey, when did you graduate from college? What was your first year of teaching?

Mr. Bailey. 1988. Twelve years ago.

Chairman McKeon. 1988. You were the Teacher of the Year in 1993. You said that you had about a dozen other friends in college that were also in the science fields that did go into teaching?

Mr. Bailey. Right.

Chairman McKeon. Do you know how many of them are still in teaching?

Mr. Bailey. I would say that half or two-thirds are still in teaching. Some have gone into administration, and one is a principal now. One actually has gone overseas and has taken her expertise overseas.

I think those that have left, have left for the reasons that I tried to point out - the lack of salary incentives to move up. In fact, not to sound as if I am complaining, but when I won the state Teacher of the Year award in Florida in 1992, I was making about $23,000 or $22,000, and an extra $800 for coaching wrestling or something. I mentioned to you that I have seven children.

Now, you can imagine the dilemma that I was facing, wanting a large family and saying how can I support a family on $22,000, $23,000, and $24,000?

I am not saying that there is a quick fix across the board, but I am saying these types of targeted pay for performance, pay for extra work, the 12-month salaries, those types of things, take away the disincentives of teaching and take away the things that we can manipulate. It takes away the feeling of a lack of support, and a lack of respect. Again, not by legislating prestige, but I do believe some of the comments about a national advertising campaign, not just for recruiting teachers, but for focusing on respect in the classroom should be considered.

I am usually not one to turn to the advertising industry for solutions, but I think what they have done with some of the tobacco issues, such as youth smoking, can be applied to the class clown or the bully who pushes the teacher around and does not let teachers teach or students learn.

I think there are some ways to make the teaching profession more in line with other professions that we have such as lawyers, doctors, and scientists.

Chairman McKeon. You are much younger than I am. When I was your age, there was much more respect for teachers. There was respect for physicians; there was respect for attorneys. There was probably even some respect for politicians.

It seems like we have a national problem, a lack of respect for people in general, and I do not know where that came from or how it came, but we are really feeling it in the classroom. I think nationally, in all areas, we have definite problems there.

One of the things I think you have all addressed was more compensation.

I need to ask, Mr. Votta, you left business to go into teaching. That is really a reverse. Most people leave teaching to go into business where they can make more money.

Did you take a cut in pay?

Mr. Votta. Yes, I did. It was a rather significant cut. Four years ago, I started at $33,000, whereas in my own business, sales for the business were over a million dollars a year in 1994 and 1995.

Chairman McKeon. You said that when you came home after teaching one day you told your wife that it was what you should be doing. You obtained satisfaction from teaching students?

Mr. Votta. Yes, that was basically it. I was in the process of teaching students basically how to solve a problem, which I had been doing for most of my adult life as an engineer. I had the techniques and I realized that students today literally do not know how to solve problems. You know, the dreaded word, "problem," and to me that is an easy thing to do. I set rules for them and show them how to do it, and it was a big thrill for me to show them how to do that.

Chairman McKeon. I served for nine years on a school board, a number of years ago now. In California, when the mentor teachers came in, we had a big fight with the union. They did not want to have mentor teachers, they did not want to have one teacher receive a $2000 a year stipend over another teacher.

Now, it took us a couple of years, we got that in, and now it seems to be an accepted thing. In fact, now, I think they are talking about getting rid of it for other reasons. However, everybody talked about progression and a chance to move up in your field and more compensation, but the unions are real problems there.

I do not like this format; I wish we could just sit around in a little room where we could have some real give and take. I see my time is up, but I would like to spend all day doing this in a little room where we could sit and really pick your brains.

Mr. Tierney?

Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I have no objection to those types of hearings, if you want to set future ones up in that format. It might be a nice way to proceed.

Let me just make one statement. You all talked about salaries, and we understand that means local communities coming up with more money, which means in too many instances, an increase in property tax. And I suspect as long as too many communities continue to fund their schools on property taxes we are going to have a funding discrepancy problem, and the states have to step forward, understanding the Constitution and they are obligated to provide a good education for everybody. That means all these governors out there with big surpluses can put some money back in to make sure the schools can pay to have good qualified teachers. That is just a statement.

Several of the folks here today talked about pay increases or pay bonuses or accountability for teachers that reflected getting performance-based pay increases. The unions, in opposing that, raise the issue of how do you measure a teacher's performance fairly and get out of the equation politics, personalities or other things?

If you purport to measure it by students' performance, then who is to say who gets a brighter group of students in the classroom or more involved parents versus less involved, special education children might take attention with less or more support.

Mr. Condron, we can start with you, perhaps. What is your take on that?

Mr. Condron. I think the issue of teacher assessment and metrics is one of the most important issues that we need to grapple with. As we try to give some thought to these issues of teacher quality and quantity, it seems like one of the first things we need to do is work with this metrics question. So many of the other ones are a function of how you evaluate this performance.

The company that I work for is the world's largest manufacturer of electronic test equipment. We are in the measurement business. This is what we do. Lots of other companies are in the measurement business. I think that there are a lot of things to be learned by being in the measurement business that are applicable to some other fields such as education.

So I do not see this as an unsolvable problem.

Mr. Tierney. Forgive me. I hate to you interrupt you. Would you give me some specifics?

Mr. Condron. Specifically, I think we need to look at value-added metrics. I think we need to give some thought to the issue of what a particular teacher starts with at the beginning of the year and where those particular students are at the end of the year. I think there are techniques to do that.

Mr. Tierney. And what kind of expenses are you going to have in a program that will do this?

Mr. Condron. I think there are expenses, and I think it is an investment. I think it is an investment that we need to make. I personally do not feel we have a good teacher evaluation system at all right now in our state or in the country. I think it is one of the major areas in which we can make improvement, and it would help many of these other issues.

Mr. Tierney. Thank you.

Mr. Bailey. Go ahead.

Mr. Bailey. Thank you. I appreciate that. In Florida, we are grappling with that same issue. Here are a couple of quick specifics. Clearly, teachers are more comfortable with being held accountable for student gains if they know where the student is academically when that child enters the class. What am I am able to do with them during the year while they are under my care? Do not hold me accountable for something else. Where are they at the end of that year? Value-added assessment. Learning gains.

Mr. Tierney. But what about the kid who starts at one level, his parents get divorced, there is a problem at home. Are you going to blame that on the teacher?

Mr. Bailey. No, actually, it is really taken care of, because when you look at a class of 30, or 150, students during the course of the day, those things are going to average out. You can hold teachers accountable by saying in schools or classes with similar backgrounds - we are really looking at finding the very few teachers that we need to pull out - 1 percent, 2, 3, 4, percent and saying you really need some retraining in this area, and rewarding some of those that are showing truly outstanding gains. What we found in Florida is that 70 to 80 percent of the school districts were already testing at every grade level, grades 2 or grade 3 through grade 10.

They are already testing every year on some standardized test. I am not saying that they are the best. However, what we are doing in Florida is moving to a test that goes directly to our state standards, all of the students are held accountable, and so over the next three years we will, in Florida, know where is Johnny in the third grade, where is he in the fourth grade, where is he in the fifth grade, and be able not just to hold teachers accountable, but to be able to help intervene and say what happened with Johnny that made him drop down?

Mr. Tierney. I think you have to have a lot more, particularly with how you go about it and I think it is going to be a lot more work and probably a lot more money. It may be well worth doing, if we can come up with a system that would reward teachers so that there is no politics and personality and externalities completely beyond their control, but it is going to be an enormous task.

Let me just end quickly here with one thing. Mr. Condron, I wanted to hear what I thought was a good idea from Mr. Bailey about summer internships, through industry, for teachers as a way of augmenting their salaries if they are not going to go to a 12-month year of teaching. Has your group ever looked into that?

Mr. Condron. Yes. I like that idea very much. We have several teachers that worked this summer in our site in Santa Rosa and the company does this as well at our other sites. This is an idea that is supported and pursued by many of our trade associations, and we are very supportive.

I think one of the best examples of a school and business partnership is to have a teacher in the workplace and to benefit that way. We get a lot more leverage. I think it is good to have students in the workplace as well, but by having a teacher in the workplace, that teacher is much more leveraged with a larger number of students. I think it is a wonderful idea.

Mr. Tierney. Does the company get value for that teacher?

Mr. Condron. Yes. It is a win-win. The company definitely benefits. Especially in a time of labor shortage, a relative labor shortage like we have now, in which we are having difficulty attracting and recruiting employees. It definitely helps us. I mean, we need the help. So it is not a charitable activity on our part at all.

Mr. Tierney. Thank you all.

Chairman McKeon. Is it a recruitment practice? That is a danger, if you have a teacher being paid $23,000 and you have someone in Silicon Valley that is looking for an engineer for $100,000, and paying recruiting bonuses, it is pretty hard to spend a couple of months and then go back into the classroom. I just bring that up because I believe that is a potential problem, also.

Mr. Ehlers?

Mr. Ehlers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I agree with your comments. This has been an outstanding panel, one of the best I have heard this year, and I appreciate what you brought here. I am convinced that if we had a group like you on every local school board in the country, we would not have any problems with education. I do not have many questions, but I do have several comments and commendations.

Specifically, Ms. Mikolajczyk, I really admire your dedication for staying in the inner city schools. I taught for 22 years and much of that was aimed at encouraging students to teach, particularly math and science, in elementary schools. I always tried to instill in them the kind of dedication you display. That is the only way we are going to solve the nation's problems.

And, Mr. Votta, when I was in the Michigan senate, I sponsored a bill to make it possible for people like you to give up their businesses and go back to teaching. It started out as a very good bill. By the time the unions got done with it, it was very well watered down and apparently not as good as the ones they have in New Jersey, but at least it is still on the books and we can work with it.

The work that you are doing, Mr. Condron, with business, is absolutely essential. I have introduced a package of three bills, and happen to have a little flyer on it here, which I carry with me all the time. When I have to leave I will give you each one. Well, I do not have quite enough, but I will be happy to mail one to whoever does not get one.

In it is a provision focusing on the pay issue of tax credits for teachers who take an appropriate science-centered education either for secondary education or elementary education. They would receive $1000 per year for 10 years to encourage them to go into teaching and to stay in teaching.

I have spoken about the merit pay issue in my many speeches across the country over the past year. I find it very strange to live in a country that has a free market approach and believes in a market economy and yet when you apply it to the schools, you do not have that. We have one school system for everyone, we do not want vouchers, we do not want tax credits, we do not want competition, and the teachers are all paid the same no matter what their capability is and no matter what they could earn elsewhere.

I think we have to recognize that the school system should follow the same laws of economics that the rest of society does. Teachers should be paid at a level comparable to their worth, as is the case in other professions. I think that is the only way we are going to build.

For years, we retained good teachers because women had few options in our society; they were generally teachers, nurses, and secretaries. That is not true any more, and we have to be sure to make certain that the teaching profession is attractive professionally and monetarily if we are going to get the quality of teachers we need.

I think that professional development is very important. It is part of my bill and mentoring is part of the bill, so I really appreciate the testimony you have given us. It heartens me that we are on the right track in what I am trying to build.

Again, each of you are contributing a tremendous amount to society and to solving the problems of education in this nation. They are not small problems, they are very large problems, but you are on the right track. I hope our nation and we can be on the right track, and I think that we will be much better off following the example you give.

Thank you very, very much.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you.

Ms. Woolsey?

Ms. Woolsey. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to sit in on this hearing. It has been wonderful. Thank you all for sharing your expertise with us.

Mr. Votta, by example alone, you are showing your students that teaching is a good profession, but do they know that you have made this transition and are you encouraging your students to go into teaching?

Mr. Votta. Well, they certainly know that I made this transition. That is how I introduce myself each year. Some students have, not because I encouraged them, decided to change their majors in college. For example, some have changed their majors from business to engineering and asked my advice about it via e-mail.

I am not sure if that answers your question.

Ms. Woolsey. Well, it takes a bit of encouragement to get these good students to go into teaching and you, by example alone, are a good lesson to them, I can see that. Thank you very much.

Dan, first of all, we need our Chairman to know we are not in the Silicon Valley; Hewlett-Packard was, but we are in the Telecom Valley, north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Chairman McKeon. I was in the Silicon Valley a few months ago.

Ms. Woolsey. Let me tell you, there is a difference.

Chairman McKeon. They have many unfilled jobs.

Ms. Woolsey. Yes, you are right, we have the same challenges in Telecom Valley.

How do we get the same talented student in math and science and engineering, and encourage him or her to go into teaching when we will pay two, three, maybe four times the salary to work in the private industry?

Mr. Condron. I see that as a major problem, and I was going to comment earlier when the chairman made a similar statement. I think that companies in Telecom Valley and Silicon Valley are both trying to give this thought now, due to the fact that we are hiring these people. If that means they cannot become teachers, we are eating our seed corn. There is something wrong with this picture, and we cannot hire all the qualified people in math and science or there will be nobody to teach. Therefore, we cannot have a supply in the future. Somehow, the high tech companies realize that we need to be part of the solution here and realize that we need some of these highly capable people to go into teaching and not all come to work for our companies.

We are grappling with this problem. It is a problem. We are trying to think of ways we can do this. One of the questions asked earlier about internships in the summer or more partnerships between business and teachers are some examples. Obviously, there are some financial issues here, such as forgivable loans, scholarships, hiring bonus, etc., using the same tools that we use.

I would like to make a pitch here, though. I think I am the only one that mentioned it in my earlier remarks, and that is for a 12-month teacher work year. I do think that it is a piece of the puzzle. If we are going to compete with high tech companies for these employees, we need to provide a 12-month quality job that provides quality pay. I think, and this may just be a personal issue, although more and more of our high tech trade associations are picking it up, that the nine-month work year is a detriment to being competitive with other industries that are trying to recruit the same employees.

Ms. Woolsey. Yes, Mr. Haselkorn?

Mr. Haselkorn. Congresswoman, I think there are a number of ways to approach this problem. Ultimately, the root cause is the growing salary disparities between teachers and professionals in other fields. That gap is widening and I think that eventually the society, its a societal issue, will have to address the gap and address it strongly.

In the meantime, I think it gets back to the issue of differentiating staffing in some instances. If we could use nationally board-certified teachers, for example, to provide mentoring and apprenticeship for guest lecturers from industry who might come in and teach one course we would not have control of the classroom and would do it under the observation and support of a master teacher, you could begin to bridge the kind of expertise that is currently going into industry. As long as we do not change the economic structure of the society it is going to continue to go into industry. If you bring some of that talent back into the schools in a structured way that does not endanger student learning.

I think we could be much more creative in that as well as reducing the opportunity costs for talented students to enter teaching by loan forgiveness, tax credits, and all of the other good suggestions that we have heard today.

Ms. Woolsey. Like a teacher on loan?

Mr. Haselkorn. Well, like a teacher on loan. About 10 years ago or 12 years ago now, Polaroid set up a Project Reach program that was one of the first mid- career teacher programs in the country. Mid-career scientists were trained as teachers at two local universities in the Boston area. Part of that program is also to have teacher internships in the summer and, in fact, the interns had to sign a contract saying that they would go back to teaching. I am not sure how enforceable that contract was.

Ms. Woolsey. Right. My time is up. Thank you.

Chairman McKeon. Mr. Roemer?

Mr. Roemer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Again, I really want to thank the panel for your excellent counsel and advice and help on what I think is one of the most important problems and challenges in the country today.

I have three areas that I would like to ask questions about, and let me be very brief in asking them. One will be about the bill I mentioned earlier, the Transition to Teaching bill; one will be about the unequal distribution of teachers, especially in the low income areas; and the third will be about professional development, so that we continue to train people on the job to do the challenging job of teaching our young people.

With respect to the Transition to Teaching bill that we have introduced, Mr. Votta, you have made this transition from the private sector to teaching and our bill would attempt to entice people to do this in a host of different areas, technology areas, math and science areas in particular. Do you have any kinds of general recommendations to us as legislators or to people on Main Street that are thinking about going into teaching as a field?

Mr. Votta. I should mention that I know many, many engineers who would be lousy teachers. Teaching is not for everyone. However, there are tests out there called the Interests Survey, for example. I know one, that can tell a student, a young person, where their interests lie.

Now, these are sometimes given to the seniors in high school. I think it should be given to all of the seniors, perhaps even juniors, to help them decide where they are going in the world.

I tell my students that the second most difficult thing they are ever going to do in their life is to find their place in this world. They need some help and direction to do that. I think finding teachers would be through that avenue, giving the interest survey test to find out who is really cut for that mold.

Mr. Roemer. I could not agree with you more that there are some people that are in engineering or technology that we do not want to go into teaching.

Mr. Votta. Right.

Mr. Roemer. And, therefore, we want to make sure regarding alternative route certifications or licensing, that there are not ways to circumvent the process, and that they are rigorous and demanding and still make sure the people are going to be good quality teachers, whether they are coming in at 43 or 23.

Mr. Votta. If I could make another comment.

Mr. Roemer. Sure.

Mr. Votta. I have heard a lot of comments about the quality of teachers and I am sure that there are people working on this, but in my mind, a quality teacher is someone who is prepared to walk into the classroom and just do three things. He or she has to grab the attention of the students, make them do something and then grab the attention again to summarize it. That is it in a nutshell.

However, you have to do that 180 times in a year and it is a very difficult task. However, there are hundreds of thousands of teachers around the country who have succeeded in most of their 180 days. However, we cannot seem to find a way to get those days put together so that someone new can use it.

I will tell you this from firsthand experience. When I started teaching, I thought I could go on the Internet and get all kinds of information. That is not true because the things that you find on the Internet are really special classes that you can teach for one day in February. You have normal year courses.

There has to be, in my mind, a way of saying, okay, here is day number one, here are six different ways of doing it, you pick one. Here is day number two. Up to 180. That is what we need, in my mind.

Mr. Roemer. Well, let me segue into the next question on unequal distribution of teachers. The Education Trust recently put out a report that said this, and I quote, ``No matter how you measure teacher qualification, licenses versus unlicensed, in versus out of field, performance on teacher licensure exams, or even actual effectiveness in producing learning gains, low income and minority youngsters come up on the short end.''

So what can we do to address this unequal distribution of teachers, qualified teachers, into these kinds of difficult to teach areas?

And I know you commented on that a little bit in your testimony. Do you want to take the first round?

Ms. Mikolajczyk. Well, I was going to say that you have talked a lot about teacher recruitment and, you know, raising and salaries and things, but the thing that I think Teach for America does incredibly well and the thing that has made me as an inner city teacher be able to stay is the support and the professional development to keep inner city teachers there.

When I said that during the day I put on 10 different hats of being a doctor, I am, because we do not have a nurse, and being a social worker, I am, because there are 800 children at my school and one social worker.

We can talk about sort of widespread issues, but what it comes down to is when you get teachers in those schools, we need to be able to keep them there and give them the tools to keep them there. That is what Teach for America tries to do. They try to recruit not only teachers, but the best teachers, those college students who would not normally go into the teaching profession. They try to recruit teachers from Ivy League schools, and teachers from non-teacher tracks. I think that what Teach for America does very well and what has made it have such a high retention rate in some of the worst schools across the nation is that it supports teachers by allowing them to speak to other corps members about issues. They also give them practical ways to deal with inner city children, to make them successful.

Congressman Tierney was talking about the extraneous issues such as when the child's parents are divorced. In my classroom, I have three children who have lost either a father or an uncle this school year alone. Last year I had about the same number, yet our test scores still rose. If we support our teachers in developing professionally, they can be successful in the inner city and they will stay there. The reason that teachers leave, and we had 11 teachers leave this year and 13 leave last year, is because they are not supported. They do not know as a professional how to handle these students and how to get the best from them.

Mr. Roemer. No, that is a great answer. That is a great answer.

Ms. Mikolajczyk. I also wanted to say that Teach America does have a math and science initiative. In addition, we do offer that internship program. So, it is something that has worked for our program, but most importantly you have to keep those teachers there.

Mr. Roemer. If we had Mr. McKeon's format where we could just sit around and follow up, I would love to follow up with you at some point in the future, and ask you what kinds of professional development opportunities are significant for schools with those kinds of social and familial challenges, and what would turn it around and not lose 11, 13 teachers per year. Thank you for the good work you are doing, too.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. If we had my kind of format, we would not have a vote coming up in a couple of minutes.

Mr. Hinojosa?

Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Chairman McKeon. I have really enjoyed listening to the presenters here.

Your presentations have been very informative and I would like to ask a question of Amy. I would also like to ask a question of Gerald Votta and Ms. Bendotti.

The first point is that it is obvious that we are just not paying teachers enough, there are not enough incentives so that we can pay teachers something comparable to salaries in other professions.

I know that there are some school districts that have hiring bonuses. So, Amy, what I would like to ask you is what if we had as a second alternative a bonus, a hiring sign-up bonus, versus helping teachers buy a home and letting the school district pay the house closing costs up to $5000?

Ms. Mikolajczyk. We actually have a similar program in the District of Columbia; it is called Teacher Next Door. I am not sure of the specifics, but the District works to put teachers, police officers, and other professionals into the community. So, they already have programs like that. Again, it comes back to the fact that those programs are wonderful and they do entice some teachers. Once we work on enticing those teachers, though, it does not matter how many we entice if we can only maintain 40 percent of our staff year to year. When I moved to D.C., we had a signing bonus and we also had an opportunity to buy a house with a low interest loan, I think. Also, they probably paid part of the costs, I am not sure because I do not own a home yet, but it is great to have these signing bonuses. However, what we really need to be talking about is how to retain the excellent teachers that we already have. Once we have recruited them, how to keep them there and keep them in the inner city where we need them the most.

Mr. Hinojosa. Okay. I will ask Gerald, who was a businessman, what if school districts allowed teachers to have their full-time job as a teacher but allowed them X amount of time to do consultant work, the same way that we allow university professors to teach courses at the university and yet many of them do consulting work for businesses outside of the university where they can make additional income. Would that work in the school districts?

And I will also ask Ms. Bendotti if she would respond to that question.

Mr. Votta. I do not know of any rule or regulation against doing that now.

Mr. Hinojosa. Is it being done?

Mr. Votta. There are many teachers that have side occupations, if you will. Certainly for the newer teachers, it is very difficult to impossible to do a second occupation, because in that first year you are really, truly occupied.

Mr. Hinojosa. Ms. Bendotti, what do you think?

Ms. Bendotti. Absolutely. The Milken Family Foundation and the Teacher Advancement Program addresses that. The master teacher is released, in its final phases, for approximately 25 percent of the time to serve as a consultant. In addition, within our model, they can be compensated from that outside source. The goal is to create niches for the teachers in terms of a career path so that they can expand their salary if they are gifted and talented in their profession.

Also, the multi-tiered aspect of the TAP program allows us to, so to speak, eliminate the lockstep. When we talk about urban schools, when we talk about the schools that are hard to staff, what we have replaced the lockstep pay scale with is the career path. So, if you see that you have an opening in science and math that is valued and there is an opening in the master mentor range, you can start that teacher at a much more agreeable salary. That is a wonderful tool and it is already working in our sites when we initially staff the schools.

Mr. Hinojosa. My last question is would this be a function that you all would expect the federal government, the state government or the local institution, LEA, to be the ones to set the guidelines to be able to do this, to encourage this additional income?

Ms. Bendotti. Are you referring to the teacher?

Mr. Hinojosa. Do we as federal officials get involved? Or do you expect the state legislators to do it? Or do you expect your LEA, the superintendent or school board trustees, to set these guidelines? It has to get started somewhere.

Ms. Bendotti. Yes. We are working in partnership with the Department of Education, with the leadership of Lisa Keegan. We are also working with the local districts and with the Milken Family Foundation. Of course, support from all sources in remaking, reshaping, and restructuring the teaching profession I think is necessary. This is a national situation and it is not just localized at the district level or the state level. Therefore, I would see support as being something that would be most beneficial.

Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you. I think we are being called to vote.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. A comment was made by someone earlier that this was the best panel that they had ever seen in all the hearings that they had sat in on, and I would like to commend you for the insights that you have brought us. We will have your full testimonies in the record, plus what you added during the discussion, but if there is something that has come to your mind that you would like to add, please contact the staff. We will be sure to get that in the record, also.

I would like to ask you if we could get any questions that we have to you, I know I have a lot of other things down here we did not have time to do. I know Mr. Tierney asked if you would make yourselves available for them. We would appreciate it.

Mr. Tierney. If people are willing, and I understand this is voluntary, but I would like everybody to submit to me ideas of what specific types of support along the lines Mr. Roemer was talking about and Mr. Condron and Mr. Bailey, just how you might go about rating teacher performance in a way that would be fair in terms of pay, without subjecting teachers to some of the old dangers of politics and personality and that nature, that would be very helpful.

Chairman McKeon. In elementary school, where you are teaching all the subjects, you measure at the beginning of and end of the third year. However, when you come in and take a physics class with no prior knowledge, it is a very difficult, very complicated situation. At least we are working at it, and I know that there is a lot more that needs to be done. We appreciate your being here today, and with that, we will end this hearing.

Thank you very much.

[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]