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	<title> - EDUCATION REGULATIONS: WEIGHING THE BURDEN ON SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS</title>
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	[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
	[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



	EDUCATION REGULATIONS: WEIGHING
	THE BURDEN ON SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS

	=======================================================================

	HEARING

	before the

	COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
	AND THE WORKFORCE
	U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

	ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

	FIRST SESSION

	__________

	HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 1, 2011

	__________

	Serial No. 112-7

	__________

	Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce



	Available via the World Wide Web:
	http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html
	or
	Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov



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	64-657 WASHINGTON : 2011
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	COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE

	JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman

	Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin George Miller, California,
	Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Senior Democratic Member
	California Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
	Judy Biggert, Illinois Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
	Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
	Joe Wilson, South Carolina Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
	Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Virginia
	Duncan Hunter, California Lynn C. Woolsey, California
	David P. Roe, Tennessee Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
	Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania Carolyn McCarthy, New York
	Tim Walberg, Michigan John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
	Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
	Richard L. Hanna, New York David Wu, Oregon
	Todd Rokita, Indiana Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
	Larry Bucshon, Indiana Susan A. Davis, California
	Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
	Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Timothy H. Bishop, New York
	Kristi L. Noem, South Dakota David Loebsack, Iowa
	Martha Roby, Alabama Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii
	Joseph J. Heck, Nevada
	Dennis A. Ross, Florida
	Mike Kelly, Pennsylvania
	[Vacant]

	Barrett Karr, Staff Director
	Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director


	C O N T E N T S

	----------
	Page

	Hearing held on March 1, 2011.................................... 1

	Statement of Members:
	Kline, Hon. John, Chairman, Committee on Education and the
	Workforce.................................................. 1
	Prepared statement of.................................... 3
	Additional submission: Letter, dated March 15, 2011, from
	the National School Boards Association 61
	Miller, Hon. George, senior Democratic member, Committee on
	Education and the Workforce................................ 4
	Prepared statement of.................................... 6

	Statement of Witnesses:
	Hatrick, Dr. Edgar B. III, superintendent, Loudoun County
	Public Schools............................................. 3
	Prepared statement of.................................... 10
	Haycock, Kati, president, the Education Trust................ 11
	Prepared statement of.................................... 13
	Nelson, Christopher B., president, St. John's College,
	Annapolis, MD.............................................. 3
	Prepared statement of.................................... 3
	Wilhoit, Gene, executive director, Council of Chief State
	School Officers............................................ 15
	Prepared statement of.................................... 16
	Additional submission: Letter, dated February 1, 2011, to
	Chairman Kline and Mr. Miller.......................... 64


	EDUCATION REGULATIONS: WEIGHING
	THE BURDEN ON SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS

	----------


	Tuesday, March 1, 2011

	U.S. House of Representatives

	Committee on Education and the Workforce

	Washington, DC

	----------

	The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room
	2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Kline [chairman
	of the committee] presiding.
	Present: Representatives Kline, Petri, Biggert, Platts,
	Foxx, Hunter, Roe, Walberg, DesJarlais, Rokita, Bucshon,
	Barletta, Noem, Roby, Heck, Miller, Kildee, Payne, Andrews,
	Scott, Woolsey, McCarthy, Tierney, Kucinich, Davis, Bishop, and
	Hirono.
	Staff present: James Bergeron, Director of Education and
	Human Services Policy; Kirk Boyle, General Counsel; Casey
	Buboltz, Coalitions and Member Services Coordinator; Heather
	Couri, Deputy Director of Education and Human Services Policy;
	Theresa Gambo, Office Administrator; Daniela Garcia,
	Professional Staff Member; Jimmy Hopper, Legislative Assistant;
	Amy Raaf Jones, Education Policy Counsel and Senior Advisor;
	Barrett Karr, Staff Director; Brian Melnyk, Legislative
	Assistant; Brian Newell, Press Secretary--Workforce; Mandy
	Schaumburg, Education and Human Services Oversight Counsel;
	Alex Sollberger, Communications Director; Linda Stevens, Chief
	Clerk/Assistant to the General Counsel; Alissa Strawcutter,
	Deputy Clerk; Tylease Alli, Minority Hearing Clerk; John
	English, Minority Legislative Fellow, Education; Jamie Fasteau,
	Minority Deputy Director of Education Policy; Brian Levin,
	Minority New Media Press Assistant; Kara Marchione, Minority
	Senior Education Policy Advisor; Megan O'Reilly, Minority
	General Counsel; Helen Pajcic, Minority Education Policy
	Advisor; Julie Peller, Minority Deputy Staff Director;
	Alexandria Ruiz, Minority Administrative Assistant to Director
	of Education Policy; Melissa Salmanowitz, Minority Press
	Secretary, and Laura Schifter, Minority Senior Education and
	Disability Policy Advisor.
	Chairman Kline [presiding]. Good morning. We appreciate the
	opportunity to hear the thoughts and expertise of our witnesses
	on this important subject.
	Today's hearing is the first in a series the committee will
	convene to examine the federal rules and regulations that are
	undermining the strength of the nation's education system.
	Education is critical to fostering a competitive workforce,
	encouraging a strong economy, and improving the prosperity of
	future generations. The further a student can advance in his or
	her education, the more likely he or she will be able to secure
	a stable job, earn a sustainable income, and have the tools
	necessary to build a successful future.
	The current state of education in America is troubling and
	unacceptable. Every year, more than a million students fail to
	graduate from high school. Making matters worse, an increasing
	number of students who complete high school are unable to meet
	the costs associated with higher learning.
	Those who do attend college can emerge without the
	knowledge and skills necessary to compete in the workplace. The
	nation's education system is clearly broken, despite escalating
	intervention by policymakers in Washington over the last 45
	years.
	In 1994, the Government Accountability Office conducted a
	review of federal education regulations at the K-12 level and
	the burden they placed on state and local school leaders. The
	GAO discovered states employed 13,400 full-time individuals to
	implement federal education programs. At the time, the federal
	government imposed 41 percent of the administrative burden, yet
	paid just 7 percent of the total costs. Although those figures
	are more than a decade old, the situation hasn't improved. In
	fact, it has gotten worse.
	Recent reforms at the federal level have exacerbated the
	burdens placed on state and local school leaders. States and
	school districts worked 7.8 million hours each year collecting
	and disseminating information required under Title I of federal
	education law. Those hours cost more than $235 million. The
	burden is tremendous. And this is just one of many federal laws
	weighing down our schools.
	Evidence of this costly dynamic was clearly visible during
	the administration's recent experiment with Race to the Top.
	Instead of rewarding states for pursuing innovative solutions
	to advance student achievement, the administration forced
	states to navigate an overly complicated, expensive process and
	adopt policies that reflect the priorities of Washington
	bureaucrats.
	The administration has also tied assistance for states to
	improve under-performing schools to a one-size-fits-all plan to
	boost failing schools. Instead of instituting the common-sense
	reforms our nation needs, initiatives like this merely extend
	the status quo.
	The trend of imposing onerous mandates that lead to greater
	costs and paperwork burdens is also happening in higher
	education. The latest rounds of negotiated rulemaking didn't
	actually clarify the law. Rather, they made it more confusing,
	forcing schools to redirect critical funds to pay the
	inevitable fines or hire outside counsel to help make sense of
	the new regulations.
	This ``Washington knows best'' approach is not helping our
	nation's education system improve. Instead, it is increasing
	regulatory burdens on schools and piling more costs on the
	backs of our students.
	We have to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and
	effectively. But we must also ensure federal mandates aren't
	road blocks to success in our nation's classrooms. Anyone who
	has talked to a superintendent or a teacher understands that
	federal law can stand in the way of innovative solutions and
	meaningful reform. Reducing the regulatory burden placed on our
	education system makes good fiscal sense and good policy sense.
	The House has charged this committee to look at rules and
	regulations within our jurisdiction that may hinder job
	creation and economic growth. Today's hearing is part of that
	important effort. And we will leave no stone unturned as we
	look to strengthen education and the workforce.
	I look forward to our witnesses' testimonies and will now
	recognize my friend, the distinguished senior Democrat member,
	George Miller, for his opening remarks.
	[The statement of Chairman Kline follows:]

	Prepared Statement of Hon. John Kline, Chairman,
	Committee on Education and the Workforce

	Good morning. We appreciate the opportunity to hear the thoughts
	and expertise of our witnesses on this important subject.
	Today's hearing is the first in a series the committee will convene
	to examine federal rules and regulations that are undermining the
	strength of the nation's education system.
	Education is critical to fostering a competitive workforce,
	encouraging a strong economy, and improving the prosperity of future
	generations. The further a student can advance in his or her education,
	the more likely he or she will be able to secure a stable job, earn a
	sustainable income, and have the tools necessary to build a successful
	future.
	The current state of education in America is troubling and
	unacceptable. Every year, more than a million students fail to graduate
	from high school. Making matters worse, an increasing number of
	students who complete high school are unable to meet the costs
	associated with higher learning. Those who do attend college can emerge
	without the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in the workplace.
	The nation's education system is clearly broken, despite escalating
	intervention by policy makers in Washington over the last 45 years.
	In 1994, the Government Accountability Office conducted a review of
	federal education regulations at the K-12 level and the burden they
	placed on state and local school leaders. The GAO discovered states
	employed 13,400 full-time individuals to implement federal education
	programs. At the time, the federal government imposed 41 percent of the
	administrative burden yet paid just 7 percent of the total cost.
	Although those figures are more than a decade old, the situation
	hasn't improved. In fact, it has gotten worse. Recent reforms at the
	federal level have exacerbated the burdens placed on state and local
	school leaders. States and school districts work 7.8 million hours each
	year collecting and disseminating information required under Title I of
	federal education law. Those hours cost more than $235 million. The
	burden is tremendous, and this is just one of many federal laws
	weighing down our schools.
	Evidence of this costly dynamic was clearly visible during the
	administration's recent experiment with Race to the Top. Instead of
	rewarding states for pursuing innovative solutions to advance student
	achievement, the administration forced states to navigate an overly
	complicated, expensive process and adopt policies that reflect the
	priorities of Washington bureaucrats.
	The administration has also tied assistance for states to improve
	under-performing schools to a one-size-fits-all plan to boost failing
	schools. Instead of instituting the commonsense reforms our nation
	needs, initiatives like this merely extend the status quo.
	The trend of imposing onerous mandates that lead to greater costs
	and paperwork burdens is also happening in higher education. The latest
	rounds of negotiated rulemaking didn't actually clarify the law; rather
	they made it more confusing--forcing schools to redirect critical funds
	to pay the inevitable fines or hire outside counsel to help make sense
	of the new regulations. This Washington-knows-best approach is not
	helping our nation's education system improve; instead, it is
	increasing regulatory burdens on schools and piling more costs on the
	backs of our students.
	We have to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and
	effectively. But we must also ensure federal mandates aren't roadblocks
	to success in our nation's classrooms. Anyone who has talked to a
	superintendent or teacher understands that federal law can stand in the
	way of innovative solutions and meaningful reform. Reducing the
	regulatory burden placed on our education system makes good fiscal
	sense and good policy sense.
	The House has charged this committee to look at rules and
	regulations within our jurisdiction that may hinder job creation and
	economic growth. Today's hearing is part of that important effort, and
	we will leave no stone unturned as we look to strengthen education and
	the workforce.
	I look forward to our witnesses' testimonies and will now recognize
	the distinguished senior Democratic member, George Miller, for his
	opening remarks.
	______

	Mr. Miller. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank
	you for holding this hearing. I think it is an important
	hearing to discuss the role of the federal government in
	education.
	There is a consensus across the parties in Congress, the
	president and Secretary Duncan that the federal role in
	education needs to be reevaluated. And I think we can all agree
	that any federal involvement in our schools needs to work for
	the best interests of the students.
	I want to start with a story about one of the best days of
	my career, which was right after school performance was
	reported in the local newspapers under the requirements of No
	Child Left Behind. These requirements gave parents an insight
	into what was happening in their local school and being able to
	compare it to the school down the block and across the city and
	across the greater East Bay of the San Francisco area.
	They not only saw their AYP results compared to other
	schools, they saw disaggregated data about children like their
	children, English learners, minority children, poor children.
	But they also saw something else. They saw that their school
	didn't have very many highly qualified teachers, something we
	think is an anachronism today but remember the struggle simply
	to get that definition into this law.
	So they wanted to know why they didn't have them. At that
	time, my state had 60,000 teachers in the classrooms who were
	on the temporary emergency credential. And some of them had
	been on the classroom--on that credential that is good for 1
	year, 5, 6, and 7 years, hiding out in poor minority schools
	where nobody would ask whether or not they were qualified to
	teach or assess what they were doing. That was a great moment
	in my career because those parents now had information and
	started a revolution in that district.
	And I think that that is what we have to understand, that
	there is a purpose to some of this. I join the chairman as he
	talks about regulations that can absolutely drive you crazy. As
	somebody who is involved in the writing of that policy, I want
	to see what happens. And let us not pretend like it is only the
	federal government.
	I once had a contest with Chairman Boehner when he was--
	Speaker Boehner now--when he was chairman of this committee,
	with Harold Levy, who was the head of the New York schools at
	that time, about where the real burden came from. He texted all
	of his principals and asked them was it the federal government
	or what. And they said, no, it is your office. It is everything
	you send us every day asking us to fill out, forms and
	requirements. So this is not just a problem at the federal
	government.
	But I also want to talk about what we have learned by
	having these kinds of various types of reporting requirements.
	Prior to the law, to No Child Left Behind, only 11 states had
	access to data that showed gender and ethnicity. Only six
	states had data about the achievement of poor students. Only
	seven states were able to see data about the achievement of
	students based on English proficiency. These students were
	invisible. They were struggling in classrooms across the
	country, but nobody knew it.
	Their parents didn't know it. School officials didn't know
	it. The community didn't know it. And so, nobody was able to
	fix it or to address the needs of these students.
	We passed No Child Left Behind to tackle this very harsh
	reality. We meant what the title said. No longer would it be
	okay to let a child fall behind because we didn't know how they
	were doing in school. Schools had to be accountable for all of
	their students.
	Today's parents, nonprofits, charter schools are all
	responding to the students' needs demonstrated by this newly-
	found data. The law implemented a system of reporting and
	accountability to ensure that all students are being held to
	the same high standards and to compare students' achievement
	across schools, districts and states. These new requirements
	allowed us to move the system forward. They allowed us to have
	a conversation today about how to reevaluate the federal role
	without losing sight of what we got right for students, parents
	and communities in NCLB.
	We have all learned what we got right. We also have learned
	about what we got wrong. We learned there is a lot more we need
	to do to better support states and districts to improve the
	system and most importantly, to improve the outcomes for
	students.
	There has to be more coherence in the system. This means
	setting strong goals, maintaining strong and meaningful
	accountability and giving states and districts the support and
	the flexibility to reach those goals and to meet the needs of
	students. We need to fund programs in a way that allows
	districts to maximize the funding to meet the unique needs of
	their students and community. We also need to recognize the
	critical role of data to guide programs and measure the
	performance.
	Strong use of data is what allows the federal government to
	get out of the way while maintaining the integrity of these
	programs. Strong, reliable data lets teachers, parents,
	administrators and communities take responsibility for the
	design and account for outcomes in a performance-based system.
	Similar principles apply to how we approach regulation
	accountability in the higher education arena where we have the
	duty to protect the integrity of billions of dollars in federal
	taxpayer dollars.
	We also know, however, that the outcomes we ask for drive
	practice. We need to be mindful about those outcomes and
	supporting the goals and accountability systems we set.
	Let us remember, too, that we have all of these
	conversations and questions, and throughout these
	conversations, we have to ask the question, what is right and
	what is burdensome in the system. But first, we must ask, what
	is in the best interest of the students. Without that
	framework, we have lost sight of the true purpose.
	I look forward to this hearing. And thank you, again, Mr.
	Chairman, for inviting our witnesses to testify and enlighten
	us on this subject.
	[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:]

	Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Senior Democratic Member,
	Committee on Education and the Workforce

	Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this hearing.
	Today we'll hear about the role of the federal government in
	education.
	There is a consensus across both parties in Congress, the President
	and Secretary Duncan, that the federal role in education needs to be
	re-evaluated.
	And I think we all agree that any federal involvement in our
	schools needs to work in the best interest of our students.
	I want to start with a story about one of the best days in my
	career which was right after school performance was reported in my
	district, as required by No Child Left Behind.
	These requirements helped give parents insight into what was
	happening in their children's schools. After a newspaper first
	published the AYP results about my district, parents called for a
	community meeting, not because they were upset about the scores,
	instead because they were infuriated they hadn't known this information
	before.
	That moment highlighted what we got right in No Child Left Behind--
	real information for parents about the state of their schools.
	Before we passed NCLB ten years ago, accountability in education
	was nearly non-existent and, worse, student performance was masked.
	Prior to the law, only 11 states had access to data that showed
	gender or ethnicity.
	Only 6 states had data about the achievement of poor students.
	Only 7 states were able to see data about the achievement of
	students based on their English proficiency.
	These students were invisible. They were struggling in classrooms
	across the country, and nobody knew. So nobody did anything to fix it.
	We passed No Child Left Behind to tackle this harsh reality, and we
	meant what the title said.
	No longer would it be okay to let a child fall behind because we
	didn't know how they were doing in school.
	Schools had to be accountable for ALL their students.
	Today, parents, non-profits and charter schools are all responding
	to students' needs demonstrated by this newly found data.
	The law implemented a system of reporting and accountability to
	ensure that all students were being held to the same high standards and
	to compare students' achievement across schools, districts and states.
	These new requirements allowed us to move the system forward.
	They allowed us to have these conversations today about how to re-
	evaluate the federal role without losing site of what we got right for
	students, parents and communities in NCLB.
	While we have learned what we got right, we also have learned a lot
	about what we got wrong.
	We learned there is a lot more we need to do to better support
	states and districts to improve the system, and most importantly,
	improve outcomes for students.
	There has to be more coherence in the system--that means setting
	strong goals, maintaining strong and meaningful accountability and
	giving states and districts the support and flexibility to reach those
	goals and meet the needs of students.
	We need to fund programs in a way that allows districts to maximize
	funding and meet the unique needs of their students and community.
	We also need to recognize the critical role of data to guide
	programs and measure performance.
	Strong use of data is what allows the federal government to get out
	of the way while maintaining the integrity of programs.
	It lets teachers, parents, administrators and the community to take
	responsibility for the design and accountability for outcomes in a
	performance based system.
	Similar principles apply to how we approach regulation and
	accountability in the higher education arena, where we have a duty to
	protect the integrity of billions of dollars in federal taxpayer
	dollars.
	We also know, however, that the outcomes we ask for drive practice.
	We need to be mindful that those outcomes are supporting the goals and
	accountability systems we set.
	Let's remember, too, that as we have all of these conversations and
	question what is right and what is burdensome in the system, that we
	always first ask ourselves what is in the best interest of students.
	Without that framework, we have lost sight of our true purpose.
	I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about what's happening
	in school districts and institutions of higher education and what we
	can do to ensure our students succeed.
	______

	Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman.
	Pursuant to Committee Rule 7-C, all committee members will
	be permitted to submit written statements to be included in the
	permanent hearing record. And without objection, the hearing
	record will remain open for 14 days to allow statements,
	questions for the record, and other extraneous material
	referenced during the hearing to be submitted in the official
	hearing record.
	It is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished panel
	of witnesses. Dr. Ed Hatrick is in his 20th year of service as
	the superintendent of Loudoun County Public Schools. Over his
	44-year career in Loudoun County, he has been a high school
	English teacher, high school principal, director of special
	education, director of instruction, supervisor of guidance and
	foreign languages, and assistant superintendent for pupil
	services. Dr. Hatrick is also the president of the American
	Association of School Administrators and vice president of the
	Urban Superintendents Association of America. It is a shame we
	couldn't get somebody with some experience.
	Welcome.
	Ms. Kati Haycock serves as president of the Education
	Trust, a national civil rights advocacy organization that
	promotes high academic achievement of all students at all
	levels. Before joining the organization, she served as
	executive vice president of the Children's Defense Fund and
	founded and served as president of the Achievement Council.
	Welcome.
	Mr. Gene Wilhoit serves as the executive director of the
	council of Chief State School Officers, a trade association
	representing the leaders of the state departments of education.
	He began his career as a social studies teacher in Ohio and
	Indiana and served as a program director in the Indiana
	Department of Education, a district administrator in West
	Virginia, and a special assistant at the U.S. Department of
	Education before becoming executive director of the National
	Association of State Boards of Education. In those positions,
	he shepherded finance reform, designed and implemented
	assessment and accountability systems, and reorganized state
	agencies to focus on service and support.
	Mr. Christopher Nelson serves as the president of St.
	John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. He is a member of the
	Maryland Independent College and University Association and has
	served as chairman of its board of directors. He is past chair
	and a founding member of the Annapolis Group, a consortium of
	over 120 of the nation's leading liberal arts colleges and has
	served on the National Association of Independent Colleges and
	Universities' Board of Directors.
	A reminder on the light system--there is a little box in
	front of you. When you start your testimony, a green light will
	come on. After 4 minutes, it will be a yellow light. And after
	5 minutes, a red light will come on. And that will be an
	indication that you should look for a way to wrap up your
	testimony or your response.
	I will assure you all that it is not my intention to drop
	the gavel in the middle of a sentence or a paragraph. We would
	like you to complete your thought.
	However, once again, I will remind my colleagues that when
	the red--when the light turns red for you, the gavel is much
	more likely to come down to be respectful of everybody's time
	here.
	We will just go right down the line and start with you, Dr.
	Hatrick. You are recognized.

	STATEMENT OF DR. EDGAR HATRICK, SUPERINTENDENT, LOUDOUN COUNTY
	PUBLIC SCHOOLS

	Mr. Hatrick. Thank you, Chairman Kline, Ranking Member
	Miller and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me
	to testify today regarding the impact of federal regulations
	and reporting from a public school administrator's perspective.
	My name is Edgar Hatrick. And I am the superintendent of
	Loudoun County Public Schools. And I also serve as president of
	the American Association of School Administrators.
	Loudoun is a large, growing school district of more than
	63,000 students located in Virginia outside of Washington, D.C.
	I speak to you today from my 44 years of experience as an
	educator, which includes 20 years as superintendent. I am here
	to talk to you about the impact of federal regulations and
	reporting requirements on school districts.
	Loudoun County Public Schools, or LCPS, like school
	districts across the country, complies with all regulations and
	reporting requirements of our local school board, our state
	education agency and federal agencies. It is important to note
	that, while Loudoun County Public Schools has resources such as
	data analysts, program analysts, and a research office with
	support staff, 70 percent of school districts in the United
	States have an enrollment of 2,500 students or less with very
	limited staff, but with the same regulations and reporting
	requirements. Fewer resources do not excuse compliance from
	federal reporting.
	Federal regulations are necessary for program integrity and
	to implement programs consistent with congressional intent.
	However, when compliance with reporting requirements becomes
	the focus of implementation, it sends a powerful message that
	the process is more important than the product. In other words,
	the pressure to comply makes it seem like adherence to data
	collection and reporting are more important than our mission of
	teaching and learning.
	Specific regulations, data collection, and reporting vary
	greatly and are dependent on program, grant, and agency
	requests. However, there is overlap, resulting in redundancy of
	reporting and resources being diverted from the mission of
	teaching and learning.
	I would like to share with you an example. The Office of
	Civil Rights, OCR, reporting requirement comes with no funding
	and ignores the availability of this information from state
	education agencies. The most recent OCR data collection was
	completed this past December and required aggregating and
	disaggregating more than 12 categories of data with more than
	144 fields for each of our 50 elementary schools and 263 fields
	of data for each of our 24 secondary schools for a total of
	13,994 data elements.
	And this was just for one school district out of the 13,924
	school districts in America. For LCPS, this required 532 hours
	of staff time, at an estimated cost of $25,370, which
	translates into diverting 82 instructional days away from
	students.
	The vast majority of the reporting requirements from OCR
	are seeking data already transmitted to the Virginia Department
	of Education, thus causing duplicate effort. To inform policy,
	federal regulations and reporting requirements need to align
	with the mission of public education to serve students. From my
	vantage point, it appears that some federal reporting
	requirements are not connected to federal programs or funding.
	In fact, there is often confusion about whether reporting
	elements are required by the federal government or by our
	states.
	Another reporting area that has limited funding tied to it
	is IDEA. Federal funding for IDEA provides 9 percent of the
	total cost of serving the 6,719 students with disabilities in
	Loudoun County. Local school districts collect and report data
	to the state that is used in the state performance report as a
	part of the federal monitoring of IDEA. States, including
	Virginia, submit data to USED on the outcomes for students with
	disabilities as a part of state performance report. Currently,
	Virginia collects data for 20 indicators. And Loudoun County
	Public Schools provides the data on an annual basis.
	I would like to describe one of the 20 indicators on which
	we have to report. Indicator seven, titled, ``Improving
	Cognitive and Social Outcomes for Preschool Students with
	Disabilities,'' mandates that a team of professionals must
	provide developmental information on the entry status of a
	child into special education. Each report takes approximately
	30 minutes to complete per student.
	It requires input from three professionals: a psychologist,
	an eligibility coordinator and an early childhood special
	education teacher. Last year, we reported on 409 preschool
	students, which took 613 hours at an estimated cost of $25,000.
	In other words, 94 instructional days, again, were diverted
	from instructional support to students in the classroom. And
	there are 19 other indicators that also are complex and costly.
	Careful thought about what information is really needed
	versus what is nice to have and use occasionally or not at all
	ought to be required before school districts are required to
	gather and report information. I would rather spend our
	precious education dollars on service because the services are
	mandated to the full extent of the IEP. If compliance is
	important, then the service mandate must be adjusted or funding
	for IDEA increased.
	Loudoun is a growing school district. And the number of
	hours for the collection of these data will continue to
	increase while resources continue to shrink. Again, I realize
	the importance and value of federal regulations and compliance
	with reporting requirements. However, when all requirements are
	treated as equally important, even though not all requirements
	are equally important, it distracts staff from activities with
	a high payoff for students.
	In conclusion, as you consider the policy implications, I
	pose these propositions. First, federal agencies must better
	coordinate, align, and limit reporting requirements to be less
	onerous, redundant and/or duplicative. Second, reporting on
	implementation of federal regulations should be reduced and
	more closely linked to the funding provided.
	And at the end of the day, it must be clear that the data
	were actually needed and how the data were used so the
	importance of the data can be judged by Congress and those of
	us in the field. Policies and regulations should be written so
	that they support the mission of teaching and learning and
	limit or eliminate the impression or actuality that the process
	of filling in the compliance reports and other regulatory
	reports is more important than improving educational outcome
	for students. Thank you.
	[The statement of Mr. Hatrick follows:]

	Prepared Statement of Dr. Edgar B. Hatrick, III, Superintendent,
	Loudoun County Public Schools

	Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and Members of the
	Committee: Thank you for inviting me to testify today regarding the
	impact of federal regulations and reporting from a public school
	administrator's perspective.
	My name is Edgar Hatrick and I am the Superintendent of Loudoun
	County Public Schools and also serve as the President of the American
	Association of School Administrators. Loudoun is a large, growing
	school district of more than 63,000 students located in Virginia
	outside of Washington DC. I speak to you from my 45 years of experience
	as an educator, which includes 20 years as a superintendent.
	I'm here to talk to you about the impact of federal regulations and
	reporting requirements on school districts. Loudoun County Public
	Schools (LCPS), like school districts across the country, complies with
	all regulations and reporting requirements of our local school board,
	our state education agency (SEA) and federal agencies. It is important
	to note that while Loudoun County Public Schools has resources such as
	data analysts, program analysts, and a research office with support
	staff, 70% school districts in the United States have an enrollment of
	2,500 or less with very limited staff but with the same regulations and
	reporting requirements. Fewer resources do not excuse compliance from
	federal reporting.
	Federal regulations are necessary for program integrity and to
	implement programs consistent with Congressional intent. However, when
	compliance with reporting requirements becomes the focus of
	implementation it sends a powerful message that the process is more
	important than the product. In other words, the pressure to comply
	makes it seem like adherence to data collection and reporting are more
	important than our mission of teaching and learning.
	Specific regulations, data collection, and reporting vary greatly
	and are dependent on program, grant, and agency requests. However,
	there is overlap, resulting in redundancy of reporting and resources
	being diverted from the mission of teaching and learning.
	I'd like to share with you an example. The Office of Civil Rights
	(OCR) reporting requirement comes with no funding and ignores the
	availability of this information from State Education Agencies. The
	most recent OCR data collection was completed this past December and
	required aggregating and disaggregating more than twelve categories of
	data, with more than 144 fields for each of our 50 elementary schools
	and 263 fields of data for each of our 24 secondary schools, for a
	total of 13,944 data elements. And this was just for one school
	district out of the 13,924 school districts in America. For LCPS, this
	required 532 hours of staff time at an estimated cost of $25,370, which
	translates into diverting 82 instructional days away from students
	The vast majority of the reporting requirements from OCR are
	seeking data already transmitted to the Virginia Department of
	Education thus causing duplicate effort.
	To inform policy, federal regulations and reporting requirements
	need to align with the mission of public education to serve students.
	From my vantage point, it appears that some federal reporting
	requirements are not connected to federal programs or funding. In fact
	there is often confusion about whether reporting elements are required
	by the federal government or by our states.
	Another reporting area that has limited funding tied to it is IDEA.
	Federal funding for IDEA provides 9% of the total cost of serving the
	6,719 students with disabilities in Loudoun.
	Local school districts collect and report data to the State that is
	used in the State Performance Report as a part of the federal
	monitoring of IDEA. States, including Virginia, submit data to USED on
	the outcomes for students with disabilities as a part of the State
	Performance Report. Currently Virginia collects data for twenty
	indicators, and Loudoun County Public Schools provides the data on an
	annual basis. I'd like to describe a one of the twenty indicators on
	which we have to report.
	Indicator 7, ``Improving Cognitive and Social Outcomes for Pre-
	school Students with Disabilities,'' mandates that a team of
	professionals must provide developmental information on the entry
	status of a child into special education. Each report takes
	approximately 30 minutes to complete per student. It requires input
	from three professionals: a Psychologist, an Eligibility Coordinator,
	and an Early Childhood Special Education teacher. Last year we reported
	on 409 pre-school students, which took 613 hours at an estimated cost
	of $25,000. In other words, 94 instructional days again were diverted
	from instructional support to students in the classroom. And there are
	19 other indicators that are as or more complex and costly. Careful
	thought about what information is really needed versus what is nice to
	have and use occasionally or not at all ought to be required before
	school districts are required to gather and report information. I would
	rather spend on services because the services are mandated to the full
	extent of the IEP. If compliance is important then the service mandate
	must be adjusted or funding for IDEA increased.
	Loudoun is a growing school district and the number of hours for
	the collection of these data will continue to increase, while resources
	continue to shrink.
	Again, I realize the importance and value of federal regulations
	and compliance with reporting requirements. However, when all
	requirements are treated as equally important, even though not all
	requirements are equally important, it distracts staff from activities
	with a high payoff for students.
	In conclusion, as you consider policy implications, I pose these
	propositions:
	<bullet> Federal agencies must better coordinate, align and limit
	reporting requirements to be less onerous, redundant and/or
	duplicative.
	<bullet> Reporting on implementation of federal regulations should
	be reduced and more closely linked to the funding provided. And at the
	end of the day it must be clear that the data were actually and how the
	data were used so the importance of the data can be judged by Congress
	and those of us in the field. Policies and regulations should be
	written so that they support the mission of teaching and learning and
	limit or eliminate the impression or actuality that the process of
	filling in the compliance reports and other regulatory reports is more
	important that improving educational outcomes for students.
	______

	Chairman Kline. Thank you.
	Ms. Haycock?

	STATEMENT OF KATI HAYCOCK, PRESIDENT,
	THE EDUCATION TRUST

	Ms. Haycock. Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and
	members of the committee, my name is Kati Haycock. I am
	president of the Education Trust here in Washington. And I want
	to thank you for the opportunity to testify before you this
	morning on the role of the federal government in education and
	its impact on states, districts, and schools. And I want to
	apologize in advance for what is quite obviously a voice that
	is not fully recovered from a bout of laryngitis last week.
	You know, in his address to CPAC last month, Indiana
	Governor Mitch Daniels used language that, I think, aptly
	captures the historic role of the federal government in
	education. ``Our first thought,'' he said, ``is always for
	those on life's first rung and how we might help them increase
	their chances of climbing.''
	Indeed, it is important to remember that from the very
	first iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
	during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson through the more recent
	presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the federal
	role--the role of federal support for education has been very
	clear: to provide schools that serve concentrations of low-
	income children, of ethnic and language minorities, and
	students with disabilities with the extra support that they
	need to help move these youngsters up from the bottom rung of
	life's ladder up higher.
	But while the focus of that investment has always been
	clear, it is important to acknowledge its implementation has
	been far from perfect. And among the most important lessons we
	have learned is that excessive controls on how federal dollars
	are spent at the state and local level are often
	counterproductive.
	Now, in the early years of ESEA, the green eye shades guys
	who monitored the use of federal funds had essentially one
	operative question when they visited state and local school
	districts. What they said to us is prove to us that the dollars
	that we gave you are being spent only on the children for whom
	they were intended. Never did they ask the more important
	question--and that is, are these children learning more.
	Beginning with the 1994 reauthorization and continuing in
	2001, Congress actually began a very important transition from
	an emphasis on bureaucratic monitoring to an emphasis on
	improved results. That started by ensuring that states actually
	had standards and could monitor the progress of students.
	But essentially what Congress did is propose a trade. You
	show us improved results, especially for the children who are
	under-achieving, and we will stop telling you how to spend the
	money.
	Now, the truth of the matter is that it is very sad that
	there are many educators who actually would argue that the
	focus on improving results is, in and of itself, burdensome.
	Those educators would prefer to go back to the days when we
	could just sweep the under-performance of certain groups of
	kids under the rug or where we at least weren't obligated to
	actually improve their performance.
	Here, however, it is vitally important that you stand with
	the 103rd Congress and the 107th Congress and with the children
	themselves. Tell them we are not going back to the time when
	results didn't matter. In fact, if there is one thing that I
	think both critics and supporters of NCLB agree, it is that the
	law's focus on the under-performance of certain groups of
	students was dead on, hugely important.
	Of course, that doesn't mean you have to do it the same way
	next time. But the important thing is that both children and
	taxpayers themselves deserve a focus on improved results. This
	is not a time for us to slow down the pace of education
	improvement.
	There are also some who would argue that the law's focus on
	public reporting is, in and of itself, burdensome. Here,
	though, we hope you will stand for the right of parents to
	honest reporting on how their children are performing and on
	school and teacher quality and for the right of taxpayers to
	actual honest reporting on whether their investments are
	actually making an impact on children.
	It is, however, important to acknowledge that in the shift
	to--from an emphasis on monitoring to an emphasis on results,
	the federal government has not always lived up to its part of
	the bargain. And I want to give you three quick examples of
	that because these are the burdens, often horrendous ones, to
	which Congress should focus its attention during
	reauthorization, sheering off unnecessary burdens and producing
	a thin law with a clear focus on improved results.
	One of those is the provisions of the school improvement
	requirements, which, by some counts, require schools to produce
	plans that have no fewer than 17 elements. But here is what
	happens. Those 17 requirements go to the states. The states end
	up turning them into 50. That turns into a 100-page plan. And
	school principals will tell you they end up spending 7 or 8 12-
	hour days filling out the plan, only to have to do it again 2
	weeks later when their teachers return.
	That is the kind of requirement you could eliminate in the
	next law. The same could be said of the law's supplement, not
	supplant requirements, which served an important purpose, but
	end up being so difficult to monitor that you end up getting
	the green eye shades folks involved again. And that result is
	schools don't have the flexibility that you intended to
	provide.
	And one final example of an unnecessary burden, certainly,
	is in the depth of the detail required on what happens when
	schools don't meet their targets. Most of those are so
	difficult to administer, require so many plans and so much
	coordination that in the end, there are very few benefits to
	kids.
	Requirements like these are one of the reasons why the
	current law is more than 1,000 pages long and why it has an
	additional 300 pages of regulation. And surely, if you were
	extraordinarily disciplined in the coming reauthorization, you
	could produce, again, a thin law that would focus entirely on
	what is important, that is results, rather than what is not.
	And I think, just in conclusion, there is one practical
	test that you could use in fashioning that law, asking one
	important question. And that is, does the proposed provision
	provide a powerful level to educators in improving achievement,
	especially among the children who are most likely to be left
	behind. If the answer to that is yes, the provision goes in. If
	the answer to that is no, it does not. Thank you very much.
	[The statement of Ms. Haycock follows:]

	Prepared Statement of Kati Haycock, President, the Education Trust

	Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and Members of the
	Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you this
	morning on the role of the federal government in education and its
	impact on states, districts, and schools.
	In his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference
	(CPAC) last month, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels aptly captured the
	historic federal role in education when he said, ``Our first thought is
	always for those on life's first rung, and how we might increase their
	chances of climbing.'' Indeed, from the first iteration of the
	Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) during the presidency of
	Lyndon Johnson, through the more recent presidencies of George W. Bush
	and Barack Obama, the focus of federal support for education has been
	clear: to provide schools serving concentrations of low-income
	students, ethnic and language minorities, and students with
	disabilities with the extra support they need to help move these
	youngsters up the American economic ladder and the American social
	ladder, more generally.
	But, while that focus has been clear, its implementation has been
	far from perfect, and we have learned a lot of lessons along the way
	about how the federal role should work. Among the most important:
	Excessive controls on how federal dollars are spent at the state and
	local level are counterproductive.
	In the early years, the green eye-shades monitoring federal funds
	had one operative litmus test for states and localities: ``Prove to us
	that the dollars we gave you are being spent only on the children for
	whom they were intended.'' Never did they ask the more important
	question: ``Are the children learning more as a result of our
	support?'' Under this structure, the feds knew very specifically where
	dollars were going, but they had no idea what those dollars were (or
	were not) doing.
	Beginning with the 1994 reauthorization and continuing with the
	2001 reauthorization, Congress began an important transition: from an
	emphasis on bureaucratic monitoring to an emphasis on improved results.
	That started by ensuring that states had standards toward which all
	students were moving and goals for measuring their progress.
	Essentially, Congress proposed a trade: You show us improved results,
	especially for underachieving children, and we will stop telling you
	exactly how to spend the money we gave you.
	Sadly, there are many educators and others who would argue that the
	focus on results is, in and of itself, burdensome. They would prefer to
	go back to the days of sweeping the underperformance of some groups of
	children under the rug of school-wide averages--or, at the very least,
	to be free of the obligation to actually improve their achievement. For
	them, it is enough to have ``served'' them, even if they remain on the
	very bottom rung.
	Here, however, it is vitally important that you stand with the
	103th Congress and the 107th Congress--and with the children
	themselves. Tell them we are not going to turn back the clock to a time
	when results didn't matter. In fact, if there is one thing on which
	both critics and supporters of NCLB agree, it is that the law's focus
	on the underperformance of groups of children was dead-on. Of course,
	your focus on results for all children doesn't have to be done in
	exactly the same way as No Child Left Behind.
	Looking at just a snapshot of achievement without recognizing
	growth, for example, was far from perfect. But both taxpayers and
	children deserve a focus on improved results, and the country needs us
	to pick up the pace of improvement, not slow it down.
	There are some, too, who would argue that federal requirements for
	reporting to parents and the public are burdens that districts should
	not have to bear. Here again, though, we hope you will stand for the
	right of parents to honest reporting on school and teacher quality and
	for the right of taxpayers to honest reporting on the impact of their
	dollars.
	However, it is important to acknowledge that in the shift to an
	emphasis on results, the federal government has not lived up to its
	part of the bargain. These are the burdens--often horrendous ones, I
	might add--to which Congress should turn its attentions during
	reauthorization, sheering off unnecessary regulatory burden and
	producing a ``thin'' law with a clear focus on improved results. Let me
	provide a few examples.
	a. The school improvement provisions of the law, for example,
	require the development of a plan that, by some counts, contains no
	fewer than 17 elements, most of which are simply pulled from a grab bag
	of activities important to various interest groups. I saw the effect of
	this in a recent visit to a small school district in the Midwest.
	Here's what happens: The federal government demands a plan with 17
	elements, and sends that requirement to the state. The State Department
	of Education, in its infinite wisdom, turns that 17 into 55, formats
	them within a 100-page plan, and demands the plan BEFORE school starts.
	For the principals of these schools, the burden looks like this: six
	12-hour days to produce a plan, which--to be a real plan--has to be
	redone two weeks later once their teachers return and can provide
	input.
	b. The same can be said of the law's supplement, not supplant
	requirements. Though designed to respond to a real problem--that,
	instead of using federal funds to increase supports for struggling
	students, as intended, states sometimes simply replace state dollars
	with federal dollars--these provisions cannot be adequately monitored
	without returning power to the green-eyeshade folks. The net result:
	Schools do not get the flexibility over their federal dollars that you
	aimed to provide.
	c. And here's one final example of unnecessary burden: Schools that
	fail to make annual yearly progress face a number of consequences,
	including offering choice and supplemental services, like tutoring, to
	students. Doing this requires district approval and coordination,
	review and selection of providers, plans--and, of course, meetings with
	parents and written notice to them.
	In short, it's a lot of work for a school. But, does it result it
	any real benefit to kids? No, because test results don't come back
	until the end of the year and parents have no idea about the
	availability of these options until after the deadline for opting into
	them has passed.
	Requirements like these are one of the reasons why the current law
	is more than 1,000 pages long, and why the regulations issued under it
	add another approximately 300 pages. Surely, if you were
	extraordinarily disciplined, you could design a thin law that focused
	energies on what is important, rather than what is not.
	Let me conclude by proposing a practical test for determining
	what--beyond accountability for results and honest public reporting--
	should go into that thin law: Does the proposed provision provide a
	powerful lever to help local educators do what it takes to raise
	achievement, especially among the children most often left behind in
	state improvement efforts? If the answer is yes, the provision goes in.
	If the answer is no, it does not.
	Thank you.
	______

	Chairman Kline. Thank you.
	Mr. Wilhoit?

	STATEMENT OF GENE WILHOIT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COUNCIL OF CHIEF
	STATE SCHOOL OFFICERS

	Mr. Wilhoit. Members of the committee, it is a pleasure to
	be with you today to talk about eliminating unnecessary
	requirements, and I think equally important, a parallel
	conversation about how the federal government can use its role
	to leverage continued improvement in public education. We are
	at this point, as states, realizing that this is not a federal
	issue alone, that states need to be as diligent as the federal
	government in terms of redefining the requirements and the
	processes that are engaged in accountability measures.
	But we do understand, clearly, that we are not asking for
	no regulation, no reporting at all. In fact, this is not a
	matter of whether we collect or not collect data. It is about
	the thoughtful process. And it is about how we can support
	ourselves in terms of a strategically driven process of
	collecting information. Because we will need information to
	assure that we are accountable for the funds that you are
	providing to public education, we are also engaged in a process
	of reflective thinking now that we have not been engaged
	historically. And we need that information to drive educational
	improvement.
	So you have my written testimony, but I would like to just
	provide five areas where I think you could provide some
	leadership as we move forward in this area. First, I think
	there needs to be a much more centralized process for driving
	data collection across the states.
	From what we can gather, the historic process that has been
	put in place and that is perpetuated is that these data
	collection efforts have been driven from various program
	offices, not from a centralized source within the department.
	So I think we could dramatically increase our capacity if we
	could bring that together in a single place within the federal
	agency. And from that place, we could then begin to organize,
	make some very serious decisions about what is necessary and
	what is not, make some central decisions about how we--why the
	information is important and why it is not.
	Secondly, I think you could remove some redundancies and
	find some major improvement very quickly in the process. I
	reference a report that we commissioned where we looked at 625
	different data reports that are requested through the states
	that filters down to the local community. In those, we found
	241 discrete data elements that were repeated or requested more
	than once in a single area.
	I referenced in my testimony this issue of data collection
	in students with limited English abilities. We found 73
	different requests in the reporting requirements to the states
	and then filtering down to the locals, again, for the same
	information. Those redundancies don't appear to be particularly
	characteristic of any one program. They run across all the
	federal program areas. There needs to be a thorough process of
	removing those redundancies.
	Third, I think it is important that you hold steady on some
	of these requirements. They are changing dramatically. An
	example that I would use here is that in the last
	reauthorization of IDEA, there was--there were 20 new reports
	added to the reporting to the states and then down the locals
	during the last 6 years. Almost all of those have been revised
	in terms of annual updates and changes in the process.
	That creates an additional burden on folks. And it also
	removes the sort of ability to track change over time when you
	have different kinds of reporting requirements coming in from
	states, not to mention the diversion of effort at the local
	level.
	Fourth, I think you could, in your relationship with the
	department, provide for a much more dynamic process than we
	have right now for updating regulations. The intent of current
	federal law, No Child Left Behind, was lofty in many areas. We
	added tremendous restrictions in the regulations process.
	But what has caused major problems over the last few years
	is that those regulations, which were frozen at that time have
	not had a vehicle for improvement, other than a waiver process,
	which, is again, within itself, requires a tremendous amount of
	reporting. It becomes a process of persuading the feds that
	this is important to do. And it has to fit within, again,
	another set of regulatory guidelines. It is a difficult
	process.
	If there were a process to constantly review those
	regulations and build from knowledge that is being accumulated
	and updated, we wouldn't have had a lot of the pressure points
	we have right now on implementation. A couple of examples that
	I use in here are around the issue of freezing the
	accountability around results and not accounting for growth in
	this process. There was a good reason for that when the law was
	established.
	States didn't have the capacity to put growth models in
	place. They have them now. They are still, with that new
	information, unable to move forward and to redesign those
	accountability systems because of the regulations.
	And then, finally, a suggestion I would give is that you
	need to tie regulations to the oversight function. They are
	carried out. We have multiple agencies overseeing the
	implementation at the state and local level. They all have
	different criteria for overseeing and adhering to the--making
	sure we are adhering to the regulations. And they all report in
	different ways and have different sorts of oversight teams.
	So I appreciate the opportunity to raise these five issues.
	I hope they are helpful as you think about the process. Just to
	restate, the states are committed to doing what we can in
	partnership with you. I think you have a good partner in the
	department in some areas that are--the new secretary is willing
	and anxious to make some of these changes with us.
	[The statement of Mr. Wilhoit follows:]

	Prepared Statement of Gene Wilhoit, Executive Director,
	Council of Chief State School Officers

	Good morning Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and Members of
	the Committee. My name is Gene Wilhoit and I am the Executive Director
	of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). CCSSO represents
	the public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary
	education in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Department of
	Defense Education ctivity, the Bureau of Indian Education and five U.S.
	extra-state jurisdictions.
	Thank you for inviting me to speak with you about federal
	regulations that provide minimal or no value to students and schools,
	but represent significant state and local burdens. Eliminating dated or
	unnecessary requirements, while also rethinking the appropriate federal
	role in education is essential to unleashing innovations needed to
	improve American education. This Congress has an important opportunity
	to further states' work by streamlining regulations and creating policy
	conditions conducive to local leaders' success. We look forward to
	working with this Congress and the Administration to create a federal
	role that supports innovation, while still holding states accountable
	for all children. In the meantime, states intend to continue leading
	ground-breaking reforms designed to help all students meet college and
	career ready standards. Federal education laws and regulations can
	support states by removing arriers to innovation and resisting the
	temptation to codify a single right answer for the nation's more than
	90,000 public schools.
	The basis for some federal education policies, and the laws and
	regulations that embody them, no longer fit the present reform context,
	because of changing conditions at the state, local and school level.
	The dynamic environment of education reform necessarily means that some
	regulations outlive their purpose and of course other regulations are
	not sensible on the first day they are issued. We are already engaging
	with the Department of Education on many of these issues and look
	forward to continuing positive dialogue between Congress and the
	Administration. My objective today is to highlight several examples of
	regulations and requirements that do not currently support sound
	education reform or directly encourage improved tudent achievement.
	This list is not exhaustive, but does illustrate the need o update the
	Department of Education's regulatory framework.

	Federal Data Collection and Reporting Regulations
	Federal education laws and related regulations require the
	collection and reporting of thousands of data points--most collected at
	the school level. Data are collected by the Department of Education to
	support valuable research, oversight and accountability and to
	otherwise guide and inform policy decisions at all levels of
	government. States strongly agree with the need to strategically
	collect critical data to support accountability and inform policy
	decisions, but strongly oppose data collection for the sake of data
	collection. In collecting data, priority should be given to supporting
	mproved student achievement and other data collections need to be
	thoroughly screened to determine if they are truly needed.
	Federal education data collection is often redundant and generally
	lacks a coherent and comprehensive vision. The absence of a unified
	data strategy arose out of inconsistencies and redundancies in federal
	statue, but also multiple offices within the Department of Education
	collecting the same data. The Department does not have a central
	process for ensuring that the same data (or very similar data) is not
	being collected by multiple offices. These problems are compounded by
	data requests not clearly linked to federal statutory objectives,
	collection requirements that sometimes change year-by-year (limiting
	decision-makers' ability to compare data over time), and lack of timely
	notice about new reporting requirements. It is oteworthy that the
	Department of Education is aware of these issues and as been working
	with CCSSO to identify possible solutions.
	To be clear though, we are still working with the Department to
	further explore and better define this challenge. A CCSSO commissioned
	preliminary data collection analysis detailed 625 separate federal data
	reports and within them 241 discrete data elements that were reported
	more than once. For example, Student Limited English Proficiency Status
	is required in 73 different files. Moreover, we discovered that the
	same data element is often collected up to 3 different times a year.
	Since states are required to report data in aggregate table formats
	there is no simple way to report an individual piece of data. Thus each
	time a data element is collected or recollected there is a cost
	associated with valuable staff time at the school, district and state
	level that is expended to obtain, verify and then report these figures;
	cost and time that could be better spent focused on supporting efforts
	to improve low-performing schools or other important reas. We are in
	the early stages of this data burden analysis and will keep the
	committee apprised as we gather further information.
	The data collection problem is compounded by redundant requirements
	and changing obligations year-by-year. For example, after the 2004
	reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the
	Department of Education issued regulations requiring the collection of
	data around 20 additional indicators. The Department subsequently
	reworked or changed nearly all of these requirements, some of them more
	than once, over the past six years. This moving target unnecessarily
	burdens states and localities and makes it very difficult to establish
	solid baselines or compare ny of the data from year to year.
	Furthermore, the data elements collected for three of the indicators
	are already collected as part of EDFacts.
	As a result of the existing burdens, states have spent so much on
	their current data collections that they have no additional resources
	to support eaningful research or add additional elements on the link to
	improved tudent achievement.

	Accountability and Adequate Yearly Progress Regulations
	In preparing for today's hearing, our members highlighted a range
	of regulatory requirements linked to outdated statutory provisions
	currently under review by Congress. While the statutes themselves are
	not the intended focus of today's hearing, it is difficult for some
	important areas to ogically separate statute from regulation, so I want
	to highlight several such examples raised by our members.
	In many respects, federal regulations are responding to outdated
	statutory requirements. This is the case with federal regulations that
	prescribe a one-size-fits-all accountability system that over-
	identifies schools as failing, mandates rigid improvement actions, and
	misallocates scarce resources that should be focused on states'
	persistently lowest performing schools. For example, the current
	Adequate Yearly Progress system reflected in statute and regulation
	does not allow most states to create accountability systems that give
	schools credit for student improvement over time. Under an existing
	pilot program, the Department of Education allows a small number of
	states to use growth models for this purpose, but federal requirements
	forbid the majority of states from using such systems for
	accountability determinations. This dated requirement was created
	before states developed the longitudinal data systems needed to track
	student progress over time-which in turn allows for the creation of
	evaluation systems to measure educator effectiveness and support
	instructional improvements. States capable of implementing a fair and
	reliable growth model should be empowered to do so integrating them
	into their accountability systems. These statutory and regulatory
	requirements have inhibited states from implementing innovative
	assessment and accountability models, including the use of high quality
	adaptive assessments that can better meet the needs of individual
	students. The current rigid accountability system also leads to a
	serious misallocation of resources, because state school turn-around
	funding and efforts are targeted across a larger number of schools
	(many of which are relatively high performing), rather than being
	targeted to the persistently lowest erforming schools that need the
	most assistance. This misallocation irectly impacts the students
	requiring the most support.

	Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) Regulations
	As with accountability above, federal HQT requirements and
	regulations have not kept pace with practice. The regulations have
	become a strain on states' abilities to move toward models of teacher
	effectiveness tied to student achievement, and the regulations have
	also become increasingly complex to address implementation realities,
	particularly in rural areas. Current requirements overemphasize the
	value of credentials as an indicator of a teacher's ability to succeed
	in the classroom, fail to fully address the unique needs of small and
	rural communities, and burden states' abilities to dedicate staff and
	resources to developing educator evaluation systems focused on
	outcomes, not inputs. Requirements do not withstand examination of
	student achievement results in the classrooms of some HQT teachers and
	the regulatory framework diverts time and attention from the need to
	ensure that all students are taught by an effective teacher. Leading
	states are now exploring the implementation of next generation educator
	evaluation systems, which will substantially rely on tudent achievement
	results to measure an educator's performance, even as they continue to
	help their schools satisfy HQT requirements.
	Despite the national transition to output based effectiveness
	models the Department of Education continues to rigidly enforce the
	agency's HQT regulations, which have grown increasingly more complex as
	the Department struggled to create workable regulatory exceptions
	focused on small and rural schools, special education teachers, and to
	enable needed alternative certification pathways. These complicated
	exceptions and the burdensome compliance and reporting associated with
	them, could be minimized by formally shifting federal law to a teacher
	quality policy-set focused mostly on student outcomes and other related
	variables, and not educator inputs. In order to have an effective
	teacher in front of every tudent in this country, these inconsistencies
	must be rectified and the focus needs to be on outputs instead of
	simply credentials.
	If states all permitted to implement growth-based models for
	Adequate Yearly Progress, then the same data used in those models can
	be integrated into educator effectiveness models that are based on
	student performance and outcomes, rather than educator inputs. States'
	longitudinal data systems can link student data across years to
	determine growth and those same growth data can be included in educator
	effectiveness measures. These data can also become important in the
	identification of effective professional development programs and
	activities that can assist educators in improving their practices.

	Federal Program Monitoring Visits and Tracking Federal Funding
	Regulatory requirements focused on tracking and accounting for
	federal funding lack a focus on outcomes. The federal government's
	current system mandating how funds must be spent and accounted for by
	recipients is ``stove piped'' and does not focus on whether funds are
	well used. As the stewards of state funds, chiefs agree that a public,
	transparent accounting of taxpayer dollars is critically important, but
	the system must be efficient to ensure that scarce resources are not
	being unnecessarily diverted from the needs of students. For example,
	independent programs and separate staffs are often created, each with
	their own purposes and agendas. Too much time and effort is spent
	inefficiently accounting for federal funds program by program-including
	engaging in burdensome audits and program reviews focused on these
	issues-which has nothing to do with whether the funds are well spent on
	students. This challenge flows in part from the statute, but is
	compounded by the broad ange of Office of Management and Budget
	circulars and regulations that detail how recipients must account for
	funds.
	Lastly states often face auditing or site visits from multiple
	Department of Education entities at separate times and the reports
	developed following monitoring visits are sometimes not delivered to
	states in a timely fashion. Furthermore, follow-up by the Department to
	state responses is often slow, while States are given a short window to
	respond to findings. While monitoring visits serve an important
	purpose, the overall burden associated ith them could be minimized by
	eliminating unnecessary regulations and instead focusing more on a
	given program's outcomes for children. In closing, CCSSO supports a
	meaningful federal role in ensuring strong accountability and efficient
	oversight. The federal government must not, however, unnecessarily
	burden states and local districts with regulations that stifle or limit
	innovation. One state recently reported to us that it has had to shift
	staff into compliance oriented positions in order to meet their federal
	obligations and estimates that well over half of its state agency time
	is spent dealing with federal regulations--I'm sure we would all agree
	that spending time that way is missing the mark.
	States seek a fundamental shift in federal law that rightly raises
	the bar in terms of education goals, but clears-away unneeded
	regulation and returns power and judgment to states and districts with
	regard to the means of achieving those goals. This approach will result
	in a new and better federal policy-set that expects and promotes
	innovation, evaluation, and continuous improvement in state policies,
	instead of relying on a one-size-fits-all approach riddled with
	regulatory requirements that may discourage or prohibit effective
	evidence-based reform. States seek this proposed new state-federal
	partnership, because the elimination of burdensome regulations alone
	will not resolve the complex challenges facing the nation's ow
	performing schools, even though such changes are critically important
	to state and local leaders' abilities to help all students succeed. In
	accordance with this approach I submit for the record a recent letter
	CCSSO sent to Congress outlining a new state-federal partnership. Our
	collective goals must be to raise student achievement and turnaround
	low-erforming schools. The state school chiefs around are true partners
	toward these goals.
	______

	Chairman Kline. Thank you.
	Mr. Nelson. Let us hear from higher education.

	STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER NELSON, PRESIDENT,
	ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE

	Mr. Nelson. Thank you. Chairman Kline, Ranking Member
	Miller and members of the committee, I am Christopher Nelson,
	president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. And I
	have served in that capacity for over 20 years.
	St. John's is one of over a thousand members of the
	National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
	on whose behalf I am also testifying. I am grateful for this
	opportunity to discuss with you the regulatory burden on
	colleges and universities.
	In the overall scheme of things, St. John's has been one
	tiny college among thousands. We maintain an enrollment of
	under 500 students. Nonetheless, the regulatory world applies
	to us as much as to the rest.
	Ours is a community devoted to liberal education. Our means
	are the reading of great works of literature, philosophy,
	mathematics, and science. The curriculum is rigorous and fully
	required of every student. Anything that distracts us from our
	central purpose is a loss, particularly now when resources are
	tight.
	When I consider the appropriate sharing of public and
	private responsibility for higher education, I turn to the
	words of Justice Felix Frankfurter in a 1957 Supreme Court case
	where he laid out the elements of autonomy that should belong
	to every college. ``It is the business of a university,'' he
	said, ``to provide an atmosphere in where there prevail the
	four essential freedoms of a university, to determine for
	itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught,
	how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.''
	In my written testimony, I provide examples of the
	unintended effects of certain particular regulations, the
	duplicative nature of others, a summary of the time required to
	respond to the myriad regulations, and reports required of us
	and the number of ``burden'' hours calculated by federal
	agencies who are required to describe the cost of compliance
	measured in staff time expended.
	To give an example, the Higher Education Opportunity Act
	alone added well over 200 pages to the Higher Education Act and
	over 200 pages to the federal regulation to the implementing
	regulations. The October 2009 general issues regulations alone
	included estimates that reported burden hours would increase in
	20 different areas, ranging from one to approximately 110,000
	hours.
	There are cumulative numbers. And this is just one
	regulatory package. The cost of compliance is large for
	institutions of all sizes, but particularly so for a school of
	our size that has no office of institutional research of staff
	dedicated to support that function. This means that literally
	dozens of people on our campus, myself included, assume this
	burden as part of our daily work.
	One effort to quantify the regulatory burden was undertaken
	by the Catholic University of America, which compiled an A to Z
	list of the laws that apply to colleges that fill nine single-
	space pages. You may have this in front of you, an alphabetized
	list of these things.
	I also have with me three large notebooks right here to my
	left that the Catholic University allowed me to borrow for this
	purpose. And these just contain the summaries of those laws,
	not even the regulations or sub-regulatory guidance issued
	pursuant to them.
	Please understand that I don't question whether any one of
	these regulations supports a good end, but simply note the
	accumulative effect. My written testimony speaks to the many
	forms of regulation under the Higher Education Act, some
	directly related to programmatic administration and much that
	is not. And they come from agencies outside the Department of
	Education by virtue of the many other functions we serve.
	What concerns me most, however, is the extent to which the
	regulatory process intrudes into the core of the academic
	undertaking, intrusions that challenge the independence of our
	schools to determine what may be taught, to whom, by whom, and
	how. Diversity of mission and purpose is the greatest strength
	of American colleges and universities. Attempts to regulate us
	as though we are all trying to accomplish the same thing would
	be a mistake.
	Institutional autonomy is a strength. If a college has
	abused its public trust, correction ought to be aimed at the
	one who has abused that trust, not at the rest of us by another
	unnecessary regulation.
	Let me suggest one other thing you might consider. As new
	requirements are created, get rid of some of the old at the
	same time. The concept would be something along the lines of a
	pago system for regulation that could be applied both to
	regulatory requirements and to data collection.
	Thank you for looking at the question of regulatory burden
	and for inviting me to speak with you.
	[The statement of Mr. Nelson follows:]

	Prepared Statement of Christopher B. Nelson, President,
	St. John's College, Annapolis, MD

	Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and members of the
	committee, I appreciate having the opportunity to appear today to
	discuss the regulatory burden on colleges and universities. I am
	Christopher Nelson, president of St. John's College in Annapolis, MD,
	and I have served in that capacity for twenty years.
	St. John's College is a co-educational, four year liberal arts
	college known for its distinctive curriculum grounded in the study of
	seminal works of the Western tradition. St. John's is a single college
	located on two campuses, one in Annapolis, Maryland, and another in
	Santa Fe, New Mexico. The campuses share an identical curriculum and a
	single governing board. Each campus is limited to fewer than 500
	students, and the faculty-student ratio is 1 to 8. We have no majors
	and no departments; all students follow the same program. Students
	study from the classics of literature, philosophy, theology,
	psychology, political science, economics, history, mathematics,
	laboratory sciences, and music. No textbooks are used. The books that
	form the core of our study are read in roughly chronological order,
	beginning with ancient Greece and continuing to modern times. All
	classes are discussion-based. There are no class lectures; instead, the
	students meet together with faculty members to explore the books being
	read.
	We are a community dedicated to liberal education, which seeks to
	free men and women from the tyrannies of unexamined opinions and
	inherited prejudices. It also endeavors to enable them to make
	intelligent, free choices concerning the ends and means of both public
	and private life. The books we read are timeless and timely; they not
	only illuminate the persisting questions of human existence, but also
	have great relevance to contemporary problems. They change our minds,
	move our hearts, and touch our spirits.
	St. John's is one of the over 1,000 members of the National
	Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), an
	organization that represents the diversity of private, non-profit
	higher education in the United States. Some years ago, I was involved
	with a NAICU group that looked broadly at the responsibilities of
	independent higher education. Our conversations about these
	responsibilities offer a general framework for illustrating the many
	different ways to look at regulatory burden on colleges.
	Briefly, this burden can be viewed from three vantage points:
	(1) Responsibilities under the Higher Education Act;
	(2) Regulation by agencies outside the Department of Education; and
	(3) The quasi-regulatory conferred on accreditors by virtue of an
	institution's participation in Title IV programs.
	I'll talk about each of these points in a bit more detail, but
	start by observing that-whatever the vantage point-the regulation of
	colleges and universities is massive. Various efforts have been made in
	the past to quantify it, but no one has managed to come up with a
	definitive number.
	One of the more ambitious efforts to compile this information as a
	means to assist with compliance has been undertaken by the general
	counsel's office of the Catholic University of America. Among other
	things, they have compiled an A-to-Z list of laws (http://
	counsel.cua.edu/fedlaw/A-Z.cfm) that apply to colleges that covers
	nearly 9 single-spaced pages. They have kindly let me borrow the three
	large notebooks on the table before me that contain just the summaries
	of the laws on the A-to-Z list. That doesn't even include the
	regulations or sub-regulatory guidance-which for the Department of
	Education alone takes up three large file boxes.
	When I step back from the mass of the more mundane record-keeping,
	reporting and compliance environment, I try to see what the effect of
	all this is on our principal task, fulfilling our educational mission
	for the sake of our students. Every diversion or distraction from these
	primary purposes weakens our best attempts to achieve those ends. Most
	especially, we all need to keep in mind the immortal words of Justice
	Felix Frankfurter in a 1957 Supreme Court case, when he tried to lay
	out clearly the essential functions of a college our university that
	should be protected from governmental intrusion:
	It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which
	is most conducive to speculation, experiment, and creation * * * an
	atmosphere in which there prevail the four essential freedoms of a
	university--to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach,
	what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to
	study.
	Higher Education Act
	An outgrowth of the NAICU group I mentioned was a categorization of
	three types of regulation that are related to the Higher Education Act.
	These categories included:
	(1) regulations directly related to the administration of HEA
	programs;
	(2) regulations providing for appropriate accountability of
	recipients of HEA assistance; and
	(3) regulations that are not related to program administration or
	accountability, but that are applied by virtue of the fact that Title
	IV assistance is provided.
	It is the third category where most concerns about regulatory
	burden have been raised. It is not a question of the good intentions
	behind these requirements, but that they continue to accumulate with no
	paring back or review of what is already on the books. Just a couple of
	examples-
	<bullet> Colleges have been required to include in their annual
	campus crime reports ``arrests or persons referred for campus
	disciplinary action for liquor law violations, drug-related violations,
	and weapons possession. (HEA Section 485(f)(1)(F)(i)(IX). Under the
	Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA), enacted in 2008, colleges now
	have to include similar (but not quite identical) information in a
	biennial drug and alcohol abuse prevention report. (HEA Section
	120(a)(2)).
	<bullet> Likewise, colleges have long been required to certify
	compliance with restrictions on lobbying at the time of applying for
	federal support and after receiving it. However, under HEAO, an
	institution must annually ``demonstrate and certify'' to the Secretary
	of Education that it has not used any HEA funds to attempt to influence
	a member of Congress in connection with any federal grant, contract,
	loan, or cooperative agreement, or to secure an earmark.
	The Higher Education Opportunity Act alone added well over 200
	pages of language to the Higher Education Act and well over 200 pages
	of the Federal Register devoted to regulations to implement it. And
	that is without counting the Federal Reserve regulations issued to
	cover the Truth in Lending Act provisions included in the HEOA or any
	of the additional IPEDS survey questions and guidance.
	One observation I would make about federal regulations is that
	there is a section in each final regulation that calculates estimated
	``burden hours'' for institutions and students to comply with the
	regulations. For example, the general and non-loan programmatic issues
	regulations issued in October 2009 estimated the addition of 8,541
	burden hours for the reporting of information about retention rates,
	placement rates, and post-graduate employment. Various other burden
	estimates in this particular regulation ranged from 1 hour to 109,645
	hours.
	This is just one regulatory package. These hours add up to a point
	where compliance becomes onerous for institutions of all sizes-but
	particularly so for those as small as St. John's College. We have no
	office of institutional research or staff to support that function.
	This means that literally dozens of people on our campus, including
	myself, assume a portion of the reporting and compliance burdens in our
	daily work. But what is just as troubling is that, although there is a
	law that requires agencies to calculate estimated burden, no one really
	seems to pay much attention to what that burden is.
	We see a similar phenomenon with data collection. The Higher
	Education Act requires institutions to provide data to the Department
	of Education through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
	(IPEDS). No one would argue with the need to have good data about
	institutions of higher education. However, to me, good data means data
	that people want and will use. Over the years, the amount of data
	collected under IPEDS has continued to grow without any real review of
	whether it's useful. I understand that the Human Resources survey
	(http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/surveys/2008/pdf/HR--2008.pdf) is one of the
	more onerous of the nine IPEDS surveys (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/
	resource/survey--components.asp), and it is not clear that much of the
	information collected on it is ever used. (I have with me a copy of
	this one. The questions and instructions cover 137 pages.)
	Finally, I would observe that there are occasions where regulations
	collide in ways that lead to nonsensical results, and I'll just give
	just one example. Several years ago, a women's college wanted to offer
	a post-baccalaureate pre-med program. The institution was told that-
	unless men were admitted to the program-they would be in violation of
	Title IX regulations because the program enrolled only students who
	already had BA degrees, even though the program itself did not offer a
	higher degree. Consequently, the institution opened the program to men;
	and the highest number of men who have enrolled since that time is 4.
	Nevertheless, this school was told two years ago that it would need to
	fill out a detailed Equity in Athletics Disclosure (HEA Section 485(g))
	form because it was a ``coeducational'' institution. (Speaking of that
	form, we at St. John's are sent that form despite our having no
	intercollegiate sports, intra-mural teams that include both men and
	women, and an entire athletic budget that pales in comparison with a
	single Assistant Coach's salary at some universities.)
	Regulation by Other Agencies
	The NAICU group I mentioned also looked at the many different hats
	we wear and the wide variety of bodies to which we must be accountable.
	Broader regulation of colleges comes as part of our roles as property
	owners, landlords, financial agencies, laboratories, and the like.
	Again, appropriate regulation related to carrying out those
	functions is not the problem. Where we often run into difficulty is
	when we find ourselves having to deal with regulations that were not
	really intended for us.
	A couple of recent examples--
	<bullet> Just last week, more than a dozen higher education
	organizations joined efforts in submitting comments to the Securities
	and Exchange Commission (SEC) on proposed rules that would require
	individuals who fit the broad definition of ``municipal advisor'' to
	register with the SEC, and comply with new record-keeping requirements.
	The SEC proposal is part of the ongoing implementation of the Dodd-
	Frank Wall Street Reform Act, signed into law this past summer. This
	act was never intended to regulate colleges and universities, and our
	institutions are not even mentioned in the bill or law. The intent was
	to regulate ``market professionals'' and ``market participants.''
	However, the SEC proposals--if implemented--could require tens of
	thousands of college and university officers and employees to register
	with the SEC and adhere to new reporting requirements.
	In addition, while the definition of ``municipal advisor''
	expressly excludes elected trustees and employees of public colleges
	and universities, it does not expressly exclude appointed trustees of
	public universities or trustees and employees of private colleges and
	universities. Yet, employees and officers of private colleges and
	universities perform the same functions as employees and officers of
	public institutions.
	<bullet> There is currently a great deal of confusion about the
	application of the Federal Trade Commission's ``red flag rules.'' These
	rules require the development and implementation of written identity
	theft prevention programs and are primarily targeted to financial
	institutions and creditors. Last December, Congress passed legislation
	to limit the entities required to develop these programs and some
	college officials thought they might not be covered under this new law.
	However, it now appears unlikely that most colleges will be excused
	after all. The legislation provides three definitions of a creditor,
	and the exemption applies only to the third of the three.
	In addition, regulation by agencies other than the Department of
	Education results in the same type of accumulated burden. Again, it is
	not a question of whether any one of these regulations supports a good
	end, but of how these things pile up. The substantial expansion of the
	information to be provided under the IRS Form 990 is one such example.
	[Additional information attached.]
	Accreditation, Autonomy, and Academic Integrity
	What concerns me most, however, is the extent to which the
	regulatory process has ripple effects that intrude into the very
	essence of the academic undertaking, effects that challenge the
	independence of our schools to determine what may be taught, to whom,
	by whom, and how. This goes beyond the question of the amount of staff
	time and institutional resources that are devoted to compliance
	activities.
	I cannot measure the amount of time I have spent personally
	defending the essential strength and good effects of the peer review
	process that underlies the accreditation of our colleges. This defense
	has been required continuously over my entire 20-year period of service
	as a president against efforts, some less successful than others, of
	federal and State agencies to dictate to us or to our accrediting
	agencies what our standards ought to be for a core curriculum in the
	classroom, for student assessment, for institutional accountability,
	for inter-collegiate comparisons of measures of success according to
	wildly diverging institutional missions and purposes, and on-and-on.
	Some of this regulatory reaction is in the interest of consumer
	protection. Of course none of us would defend fraud or deceptive
	practices, but too often the attempts at regulation have rested on a
	consumer metaphor that is not well suited to many, if not most, of our
	institutions. People do not buy diplomas, they earn them. Knowledge is
	not poured into students like milk from a bottle; it is undertaken
	through an activity of learning that belongs to the students. Students
	must work at their education. So, while educational opportunity may be
	fairly claimed by them as a right, the education they might acquire is
	not. Better the government help encourage and support access to our
	institutions than seek ways to have us alter our many and diverse
	visions of what an education ought to look like! This diversity of
	mission and purpose is the greatest strength of American colleges and
	universities. In reviewing the regulatory environment for higher
	education, it would be good if this truth might be kept in mind: that
	institutional autonomy is a strength, and that where institutions abuse
	their public trust, correction ought to be aimed at the institution
	that has abused that trust rather than at the rest of us through
	another general wide-ranging regulation.
	Conclusion
	As is so often the case, it is easier to describe problems than to
	implement solutions. However, I do have a few thoughts about steps I'd
	encourage you to take as you deal with regulatory burden.
	#1--As new requirements are created, get rid of some of the old
	ones at the same time. The concept would be something along the lines
	of a ``pay-go'' system for regulations. This concept could be applied
	both to regulatory requirements and to data collection. Remember too
	that all of us are regulated by another huge apparatus of State
	regulatory agencies (and I have attached a list of forms St. John's
	must file with both federal and state agencies.)
	#2--Recognize that the accumulation of layers and layers of
	regulatory activity can't be addressed simply by picking a few selected
	regulations to be abolished or modified. A good start would be to
	provide funding for section 1106 of the Higher Education Opportunity
	Act (P.L. 110-315) [full text attached], which provides for a review by
	the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to
	determine the ``amount and scope of all federal regulations and
	reporting requirements with which institutions of higher education must
	comply.'' However, funding for this study has not been provided, and so
	it has not been initiated.
	I realize that funds are limited, but-at the same time-would point
	out that over the past several years the federal government has
	provided some $500 million for the development of state systems to have
	educational institutions to collect piles of unit record data. The
	Administration's FY 2012 budget request includes an additional $100
	million for this purpose. This committee wisely took the lead in
	preventing the development of such a data system at the national level.
	Rather than continuing to support activities that lead to even more
	form-filling and paperwork by educational institutions, why not stop
	funding State efforts to do just that and use those resources to figure
	out how to pare down unnecessary burden?
	#3--Finally, please be mindful of the ripple effect that
	legislative action can have. I know this can be tedious, but it is
	critical.
	I understand that today's hearing is but one of a series of
	oversight hearings your committee intends to conduct. Thank you for
	taking the time to look at the huge regulatory apparatus that is in
	place and for giving me the opportunity to appear before you.

	ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

	IRS Form 990
	The Internal Revenue Service issued final new Form 990 and
	instructions in January 2009, for 2008 tax-year filings and beyond. The
	new form was designed to report much more detailed information in a
	variety of areas, but most specifically information regarding
	compensation, governance and endowment.
	The additional disclosure of compensation information on certain
	employees and officers and certain compensation practices go far beyond
	what the tax-exempt community has ever been accustomed to providing.
	The new disclosures are more closely aligned with those required of
	publicly traded companies.
	The new Form impacts the way tax-exempt organizations, including
	colleges and universities, must report the details of compensation
	arrangements. They are complex and require cost estimates that have
	previously been used for internal reporting only.
	For example: Part II of Schedule J specifies that all nonprofits
	must now report details of respective compensation plans in a tabular
	form that provides information on each named official--including all
	officers, directors, trustees, up to 20 key employees, and highest
	compensated employees--a breakdown of the following:
	a. base salaries
	b. bonus and incentive compensation
	c. longevity and severance payments
	d. deferred compensation
	e. cost of nontax benefit plans (medical, disability, housing,
	education, etc.)
	f. any compensation that was previously reported in a prior year
	Form 990
	There are additional new disclosure requirements relating to
	endowments on Schedule D, including:
	a. beginning and end of year balances
	b. contributions to endowments
	c. investment earnings and losses
	d. grants or scholarships from the endowment
	e. expenditures for facilities and programs
	f. administrative expenses
	g. percentage of endowment held as board designated, permanent or
	term endowments
	h. whether or not endowment funds are held by other organizations,
	related or unrelated
	i. description of intended uses of endowment funds

	SEC. 1106. ANALYSIS OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS ON INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER
	EDUCATION

	The Secretary of Education shall enter into an agreement with the
	National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences for the
	conduct of a study to ascertain the amount and scope of all federal
	regulations and reporting requirements with which institutions of
	higher education must comply. The study shall be completed not later
	than two years after the date of enactment of this Act, and shall
	include information describing----
	(1) by agency, the number of federal regulations and reporting
	requirements affecting institutions of higher education;
	(2) by agency, the estimated time required and costs to
	institutions of higher education (disaggregated by types of
	institutions) to comply with the regulations and reporting requirements
	described in paragraph (1); and
	(3) by agency, recommendations for consolidating, streamlining, and
	eliminating redundant and burdensome federal regulations and reporting
	requirements affecting institutions of higher education.

	St. John's College List of Reports filed with federal and State
	Agencies
	The following is a list of reports coordinated by our Registrar and
	completed by various St. John's employees over the course of a typical
	academic year. It is by no means complete as to reports prepared by
	other offices. They are in addition to reports to and surveys by non-
	federal and non-State agencies, e.g., reports to admissions guides,
	foundations, and the like.
	The first part of the list includes reports requiring input from
	more than one office. The latter part of the report includes surveys
	completed largely by one office.
	Multi-Office Reports:
	1. IPEDS (the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System)
	Annual Collections
	IPEDS is run by the Department of Education and participation is
	mandatory for schools receiving Title IV funds.
	Offices with input:
	Business Office (finance survey)
	Financial Aid (annual awards)
	Registrar's Office (enrollment; degrees awarded; graduation/
	retention rates)
	Personnel Office (faculty information)
	2. MHEC (Maryland Higher Education Commission) Annual Collections
	Maryland's state reporting requirements, which are also mandatory
	for schools receiving Maryland state aid (like the Sellinger Grant).
	Offices with input:
	Financial Aid (student aid file-FAIS; S5 report)
	Registrar's Office (enrollment; degrees awarded; complete student
	data file; etc.)
	3. MICUA (Maryland Independent College and University Association)
	Surveys undertaken to meet collective reporting by the MICUA to the
	Higher Education Commission.
	<bullet> Accountability Survey (Admissions; Business Office,
	Financial Aid; Registrar's Office)
	Single-Office Reports:
	1. Advancement
	<bullet> National Endowment for the Humanities
	--We the People Endowment fund financial information
	--Effects of We the People Expenditures
	--Details of We the People Expenditures
	<bullet> Maryland State Arts Council (interim and final reports)
	--Mitchell Art Gallery budget and fundraising figures
	--Information about exhibitions, programs, and visitors
	<bullet> Maryland Cultural Data Project
	--Mitchell Art Gallery budget and fundraising figures
	--Information about exhibitions, programs, and visitors
	<bullet> Arts Council of Anne Arundel County (interim and final
	reports)
	<bullet> Mitchell Art Gallery budget and fundraising figures
	<bullet> Information about exhibitions, programs, and visitors
	2. Business Office
	<bullet> Form 990, 5500, 5527, W-3, 1099, to internal revenue
	service
	<bullet> Report unclaimed property to state of Maryland
	<bullet> Annual property tax return
	<bullet> Quarterly Line of Credit covenant test to PNC bank
	<bullet> NACUBO annual endowment survey
	<bullet> Provide information for annual insurance audit
	<bullet> Provide inputs to annual FISAP report (federal financial
	aid)
	<bullet> Provide inputs to Middle States Survey for accreditation
	<bullet> Provide inputs to American Academy of Liberal Education
	Survey for accreditation
	3. Financial Aid
	<bullet> FISAP (Fiscal Operation Report and Application to
	Participate)
	<bullet> College Board
	<bullet> MICUA
	4. Library (generally needed for accreditation purposes)
	<bullet> ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries)
	Trends and Statistics
	<bullet> National Center for Education Statistics, Academic
	Libraries Survey
	<bullet> Miscellaneous surveys such as the ALA-APA Library Salary
	Survey
	5. Personnel Office
	<bullet> Workers Compensation
	<bullet> BLS--Department of Labor
	<bullet> CUPA
	<bullet> HEDS/AAUP
	6. Registrar's Office
	<bullet> Solomon Lists to Armed Services
	<bullet> Middle State's Institutional Profile
	<bullet> Open Doors Survey (international students)
	______

	Chairman Kline. Thank you very much.
	Thank all of you for your testimony.
	Thank you for bringing the display, Mr. Nelson. I am
	looking at that and thinking about what you said that that is
	the summary of the regulations. I hesitate to see what the
	whole pile looks like. You probably would have had----
	Mr. Nelson. It is actually just the summary of the laws.
	The summary of the regulations would be volumes and volumes
	more. Bigger.
	Chairman Kline. Well, that is exactly what we are trying to
	get out. So I do appreciate the--the visual aid there. I think
	it is helpful to us.
	And I want to thank all of you.
	In his opening comments, the Ranking Member pointed out
	that it is not just the federal government that has
	regulations. And I feel your pain, I think, to quote an old
	famous quote. When you think about all the regulations that are
	generated by the state, by the school boards, individual
	principals, and superintendents, everybody is trying to get
	data and to make decisions and to make sure that things work.
	And so, there is no question that you not only have those
	binders, but many more.
	Along that line, any of you, I guess we can start with Dr.
	Hatrick or anybody else. When you look at--when you look at the
	federal government, particularly--but I guess you can look
	across the state--where else are schools--and I am really
	looking at K-12 now, mostly. Where are these regulations coming
	from, what kind of agencies?
	Mr. Hatrick. Well, we have a number of regulations and
	reporting requirements to do with child nutrition, to do with
	Head Start, of course, everything surrounding IDEA that is sort
	of outside of ESEA. And then the ARRA funding that we received
	is now carrying with it probably one of the biggest reporting
	requirements we have ever experienced.
	I mean, we are literally going to submit the grades for all
	of our children to the federal government. And they are going
	to be paired with teachers. I am not sure to what end. We don't
	have a national grading scale. We don't have a national
	curriculum. But for some reason, there is interest in
	Washington in knowing what Susie made in English in the third
	grade.
	So it is just in almost every aspect of what we do--and I
	think the point is well-taken by the Ranking Member and by
	everybody else, this is not just a federal problem. My teachers
	look at me and say the same thing that you said.
	Now, sometimes they are not aware that what I am asking of
	them. I am asking because I have to report it to somebody else.
	But every time you turn around, there is both a new requirement
	and, as the teachers say, you keep adding to our daily
	requirements for what we are supposed to do, but you never take
	anything away. Well, we in the superintendency, feel the same
	way.
	Chairman Kline. Anybody else, examples of regulations,
	particularly from agencies other than the Department of
	Education?
	Mr. Nelson or ever who----
	Mr. Nelson. Well, there are a number of different agencies.
	Because we serve in capacities other than education alone, we
	have regulations for under securities law, labor and
	employment, laboratory safety, OSHA, EPA, you name it.
	Under this list that the Catholic University of America has
	done, we have got regulations just under A for the Age
	Discrimination Act of 1975, the Age Discrimination and
	Employment Act of 1967, the American Jobs Creation Act,
	American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Americans with
	Disabilities Act, Employment, Americans with Disabilities Act
	with respect to students, animal welfare, anti-kickback acts,
	anti-terrorist financing guidelines, Anti-Trust Act of 1890,
	Artists Rights Acts, athletically related student aid, Atomic
	Energy Act, and so on. So that they don't all apply to St.
	John's, but they apply to colleges and universities across the
	country. And that, of course, is just A.
	Chairman Kline. It would be funny, except I know that it is
	a real burden.
	Mr. Nelson. Yes.
	Chairman Kline. And we want to get at that. So, again, I
	thank you for your testimony.
	Mr. Wilhoit, you mentioned that rules can stifle or flat-
	out prevent innovation by states. Can you give us some examples
	where rules have just blocked you from making the changes? You
	alluded to some in your testimony, but----
	Mr. Wilhoit. I think a couple of examples of that--we have
	to remember that the environment today is very different than
	it has been in the past. There is a tremendous pressure on
	states to make dramatic changes to reach the goals we have
	established. And so, any time you freeze a set of process
	regulations and the more you define how one carries things out,
	the more difficult it is to reach the goals. So in many cases--
	I will just use Title I as an example.
	When I was commissioner, I had an interesting comparison to
	make. I looked at the Title I schools who were making dramatic
	improvement in terms of student results, something I was very
	interested in. And then I looked at the results of the federal
	monitoring of Title I. And there was no correlation between the
	ones that were successful in getting student results and the
	ones who were successful under a Title I audit because those
	Title I audits were looking at procedures about how one puts a
	program in place.
	You could literally get a positive audit under the
	regulations of Title I and not be a high performing Title I
	school. What we have is more emphasis on the procedure that one
	goes through, the rules one follows, the kinds of day-to-day
	activities of the processes and papers that you have on file,
	literally. They go through those cabinets and look at whether
	those files have all those line items or not.
	And then I am over here as a commissioner trying to figure
	out how any of that has any relationship to the high-performing
	districts. You could have one--a school that is doing well and
	still not be in compliance with Title I. You could have a
	school that is in compliance and not be achieving.
	Chairman Kline. Thank you.
	Mr. Miller?
	Mr. Miller. Let me pick up on that, Gene. I think a lot of
	that is quite possibly because you weren't asking the right
	questions at that time. You were asking questions about whether
	or not you had all the marbles in the right hole. But you
	weren't asking whether or not kids were getting a good
	education at this school because you didn't have any data. And
	most school districts were terrified of the data.
	And most states were terrified of the data. They weren't
	interested in talking about performance. You know, we have a
	requirement in No Child Left Behind that 95 percent of the
	students at the school have to take the exam.
	People say, ``That is outrageous. What about kids who are
	sick? What about kids who are traveling with their parents?
	What about kids who are,'' whatever. The fact is, before that
	requirement, they were taking kids on field trips because they
	didn't want those kids taking the test because they would bring
	down the performance of the school.
	They were telling parents, ``You can keep your kid home
	today.'' They were going to study hall as opposed to the exam.
	What we tried to do--I mean, you make a great case here. You
	make a great case for reauthorization because No Child Left
	Behind was the last ESEA authorization of the last century. We
	have moved into a new century.
	Districts that used to fight data now want data. They want
	to be performance-based, at least they say they do for the
	moment. They want to be performance-based. They want to be
	based on outcomes. That is an entirely different system than No
	Child Left Behind addressed.
	One of the great disappointments was when Bill Clinton
	talked about who was going to go across the bridge to the 21st
	century, we didn't bring the American education system across
	that bridge until much later. So now the question is, I think
	as Ms. Haycock's pointed out, if you have a thin system and you
	have good data and it is performance-based and it is outcomes-
	based, there is a lot fewer questions you have to ask about
	whether or not you have five reams of paper and did the federal
	government pay for three of them or did the federal government
	pay for four of them because you are only allowed to pay for
	two-and-a-half of them. And if you don't measure them the right
	way, then you can't use that paper for those Title I students.
	What the hell does that tell you? But that was on an old
	command and control system. We are trying to transition, if we
	can ever get the reauthorization of this, to a performance-
	based system where, with common data across the state and with
	some sense of common core standards, we would then be able to
	see how these schools were doing. And that would be a rather
	simple question for parents, for teachers, for the community on
	how their schools are doing.
	That is a far cry from the system that has evolved since
	1965 to today. When I came to this committee we talked about
	radioactive dollars. And if they weren't radioactive and they
	didn't follow every child and you couldn't measure, we took all
	the money away from you. That was really not a good move for
	districts that were trying to provide an education.
	So we have gone through a lot of iterations here. And you
	know, when we decided as a nation and the court decided it for
	us, that children with disabilities were entitled to an
	education, you started to have to ask some questions. And we
	know what the resistance was. And we know that children were
	being put into programs that weren't designed to help them
	acquire an education.
	But now we have kind of evolved to a period where we think
	we ought to hold the school responsible for what the school can
	accomplish and not punish them for those things that they can't
	accomplish. That is a far different mindset than 1975. So the
	time has come, I think, really for this committee and for
	organizations to start thinking about how you transition to an
	information-based system, which is--most of the things you read
	there in that list of information have nothing to do with the
	performance of these schools or the information that should be
	imparted to communities and parents and teachers and others
	about what is going on in that school.
	And I would hope that in this reauthorization, if we are
	able to get to it, we can jettison reams of federal
	requirements that provide no value-added to the education of
	these children or to our ability to provide a better education,
	hopefully, better tomorrow than we did yesterday. So I think
	this is a fundamental challenge to us. But I don't know how you
	get there if you don't go for the reauthorization.
	Highly-qualified teacher--the first time I said we should
	have a highly-qualified teacher in class, I lost on the House
	floor 434 to one. People said you are not telling us what kind
	of teachers we are going to have in the classroom. I said, gee,
	I thought maybe they would have subject matter competency. We'd
	just start with that. You know, if they are going to teach
	history, that they took a course in history.
	But anyway, we have come a long way since then. We have
	come a long way since then. Growth models--you are right.
	School districts couldn't do a growth model because they didn't
	want an information system because the teachers didn't want an
	information system. And sometimes the schools didn't want an
	information system because they weren't proud of what they were
	doing or they were afraid of of what it would show.
	Well, I think that--hopefully, over the last couple of
	years and a lot of political battles here and the emergence of
	new players in this system and new beliefs about accountability
	that we can now move to a modern, if you will, relationship and
	partnership between the federal government and local school
	districts and those communities. But I will not give up on the
	idea that there is information that provides a level of
	transparency so that parents and communities can make decisions
	about their schools.
	And we should never, ever give up on that because we see
	all across this country where parents have been empowered by
	the really crumby information that is given out today under No
	Child Left Behind. But it is more information than they ever
	had access to before. And that is going to be a real challenge.
	And we should grandfather a pay-as-you-go. We should write a
	new one, get rid of the one that is now obsolete because there
	is no point in having people respond to the Act of 1890.
	Thank you.
	Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. I am hoping that we
	can, as we enact one, we can get rid of several and start
	looking at the reams that Mr. Miller was talking about and make
	this simpler. That is why we very much appreciate your
	testimony today as we try to understand the burden and what
	just seems to be reporting for reporting's sake and not really
	helping to educate children.
	Dr. Roe?
	Mr. Roe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Nelson, I thought you had brought the Health Care Act
	with you over there on the table, looking at the size of it.
	I come from a background of having been a previous mayor of
	a city, having a local school district under me.
	And, Dr. Hatrick, you are to be commended for 20 years.
	That is a tough job. And I think one of the toughest jobs is
	most--I thought doctors were frustrated. The most frustrated
	people I meet now are teachers.
	I had a chance to meet with several teacher groups last
	week in Sevierville, Tennessee. And they are inundated with
	data.
	And, Mr. Miller, I agree with you. If the information is
	worthwhile, it is worth doing. It is worth gathering. But if it
	is not, just to gather data for data's sake and to look at this
	thing that Mr. Nelson brought with him--and I know this is what
	is going on.
	And we just got Race to the Top funds. And I asked the
	teachers--I am talking about the teachers teaching the
	children, not all the clipboard people above them gathering
	data, but the actual people in the classroom. They are very
	frustrated people because they don't have--their time is being
	taken up and time added to their day to do this stuff that, I
	don't see, that adds much value.
	And so, I know as a local mayor that the most frustrating
	thing that I ever dealt with was another unfunded mandate from
	the federal government. And I almost said if it cures cancer
	and it is unfunded, a mandate from the federal government, I
	wouldn't vote for a law here. I am being facetious. But you see
	where I am coming from.
	Dr. Hatrick, when you dealt with that, or you deal with
	that, do you sense that same frustration? For instance, the
	disabilities, a valuable program. But we are providing in your
	district 9 percent of the funding and Lord knows how many
	requirements.
	Mr. Hatrick. Yes, it is a huge frustration for teachers.
	One of the phenomena I see--I actually came in to central
	office work from a high school principalship with the full
	implementation of what was then called Public Law 94142. Now,
	we know it as IDEA now. And, you know, there were reporting
	requirements. There were regulations.
	We all thought that what we were doing for disabled
	children was what we should have been doing for a long, long
	time. We have no complaint about that. But I hear from teachers
	now--I see it every year. I see teachers who leave special
	education classrooms to go into regular education classrooms to
	get away from the burden of the paperwork and the requirements
	that take them away from teaching.
	One of my children was a special education teacher in
	California. And he now works in the central office of the L.A.
	Unified School District recruiting occupational and physical
	therapists for that system. It is 650,000 students, so he can
	have that kind of a niche.
	But one of the things that frustrated him as a special
	education teacher was the amount of paperwork that was imposed
	on the process that he couldn't find a nexus between what he
	was doing and the improvement of instruction. So, yes, it is
	very frustrating.
	I mean, in our district, 1.5 percent of all the funding in
	my district comes from the federal government, 1.5 percent.
	And----
	Mr. Roe. I agree with you.
	Mr. Hatrick. I will stop there.
	Mr. Roe. I was looking how we funded our local schools. The
	city provided almost a third, the county and then the state,
	and, exactly, about 1 percent. I wanted to send the money back.
	I said, ``I am not getting value for all we are filling out
	here for the amount of burden that we are putting on our
	classroom teachers.''
	And it is one thing to use data. Let me give you an
	interview I heard the other. Former D.C. school superintendent
	here said that she had poor families in that were in under-
	performing schools, and she wanted them to get in a better
	school, in a charter school. These folks jumped through every
	hoop that they could and then couldn't get their kids into a
	charter school, which meant that they were left in an under-
	performing school. And they had no option.
	And that is why she was one--and I am a guy who went from
	the first grade--we didn't have a kindergarten when I was in
	school--but the first grade through twelfth and college through
	the public school system. So I am a huge supporter of public
	education. But then what is the option when you have failing
	schools out there and there is no other option left? What do
	you to then?
	Mr. Hatrick. I guess if I knew the answer to that question,
	I would copyright it or patent it and retire. I think we have
	to look at a range of service delivery models for students. I
	believe, frankly, they all ought to be within the framework of
	public education. But I think there are alternatives available
	to us in the world of public education that can meet those
	needs.
	I think we also have to recognize that sometimes we label
	schools as failing when, in fact, they are part of a failing
	community. And the school is, you know, maybe the symptom of
	what is going on in family life and community life and the
	whole social fabric.
	Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time is expired.
	Mr. Roe. I yield back.
	Chairman Kline. Mr. Andrews?
	Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Ms. Haycock, I am sure you talk to a lot of educators on a
	regular basis in your work. If you were to ask those educators
	what they think the biggest problem that ought to be solved in
	their schools is, what would they say?
	Ms. Haycock. That is a very good question. And I do--I
	actually spend most of my time meeting with groups of educators
	and community folks all around the country. I would say the
	vast majority of teachers would say the problem they need the
	most help with is around, sort of, curriculum and resources.
	What we do in this country most often is we hand teachers
	copies of our new standards, and we say, essentially, ``Go
	teach.''
	In most other developed countries, they actually get a
	curriculum. They get really good instructional resources. They
	don't, in other words, have to work hard all day, go home and
	grade lessons and then after they are really tired, make up
	what they are going to teach the next day. So I think the
	biggest need for--expressed by teachers is really around the
	quality of curriculum and instructional support.
	Mr. Andrews. Do you hear them also speak about ways to try
	to engender more parental involvement and more support of home
	environment for the students?
	Ms. Haycock. It certainly depends on what school, what
	community. Most of the schools that we have worked with over
	the years that are doing really well by their students, even
	students who come from very, very difficult circumstances, have
	figured out ways to engage parents. I mean, we know how to do
	that now. And parents are, despite the difficulties of their
	own lives, now real partners with their children--with their
	school and their children's education.
	Mr. Andrews. If you ask teachers to name the top three
	obstacles that they confront at succeeding with all their
	children, would too many rules and regulations to follow make
	the top three for many of the people you ask?
	Ms. Haycock. That is certainly not the--those would not be
	in the top three from teachers, no. That might be in the top
	three from principals, although there would be two others on
	top of it.
	Mr. Andrews. Okay.
	Dr. Wilhoit--Mr. Wilhoit, excuse me. In your testimony, you
	say that states strongly agree with the need to strategically
	collect critical data to support accountability and inform
	policy decisions but strongly oppose data collection for the
	sake of data collection. And I think you will find universal
	agreement with that proposition here.
	And I thank the panel for giving us some very concrete and
	specific suggestions as to what some of those data collections
	just for the sake of data collections might be. And I am sure
	that members on our side would like to work with the chairman
	and the majority to try to take those regulations off the
	books.
	But I want to ask you this question. Many of the data
	reports that are made are made to the Department of Education.
	Do your members favor the abolition of the Department of
	Education?
	Mr. Wilhoit. No, there is no consensus. There are 51 of
	them, and they have 51 different perspectives on this. But
	there is no consensus about that role. I think they find
	certain functions of the Department of Education to be
	extremely helpful. I think they find other functions to be
	frustrating. And so----
	Mr. Andrews. What are the functions that they typically
	find to be helpful?
	Mr. Wilhoit. I think most recently, the effort on the part
	of the federal government to work directly with the states as
	policy is developed. If we are included in those early
	conversations and if we are a part of providing feedback, as
	policies are developed and as programs are implemented, we
	surface a lot of issues that can be avoided and problems that
	could be avoided. And so, I think most recently, they have been
	very pleased with the way that the department is reaching out
	to the states to engage them in that indirect process of
	regulation and policy setting.
	Mr. Andrews. And just, if you could, supplement for the
	record, when you have an opportunity, if any of your 51 members
	favor the abolition of the department, we would just like to
	have that for the record.
	Mr. Wilhoit. Sure.
	Mr. Andrews. Thank you.
	I yield back.
	Chairman Kline. Thank the gentleman.
	Dr. Heck, you are recognized.
	Mr. Heck. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Thanks to the panelists for being here today. I think
	everybody agrees that we need to try to strike that balance
	between regulation, accountability, and transparency and
	meaningful results. We have heard a lot of talk about data
	today. But, in and of itself, that is just it. It is numbers.
	It is facts. And unless it is synthesized into meaningful
	information, collecting data really doesn't mean a whole lot to
	the process.
	My perspective on this is twofold. One is, as a father of a
	13-year-old in the public school system in Southern Nevada, who
	this week is undergoing CRT, Criteria Reference Tests, pre-week
	for the test that he is taking next week, losing 8
	instructional days to both test prep and then actually taking
	the test to meet the requirements of this regulatory burden.
	And also as somebody who has spent a little bit less than half
	his life, 44 of 49 years, in school getting my degree with an
	undergraduate degree in education and thinking that I was going
	to be a teacher; until I did my student teaching and realized,
	similar to what Ms. Haycock said about being able to walk in
	and saying this is what you are teaching today with no
	resources and learning about the regulatory issues that I was
	going to suffer under and decided to go into something less
	stressful and went into medicine.
	So in prepping for today, I heard from a constituent,
	Catherine Unger, who is a speech language pathologist.
	Sometimes forget the ancillary specialties that are also
	involved in educating our youth and concentrate on teachers.
	And her concerns were over the IEP being used as an annual
	progress report and the fact that so much time is spent on
	making it look good on paper, whether or not it really had the
	students' best interests and needs at heart and also the
	disparities in requirements for documenting the therapy and the
	services that they provide, the differences between a special
	education teacher and a speech language pathologist. So a lot
	of discrepancies.
	So my question would be for each member of the panel. If
	you could, make one recommendation on how to strike that
	balance between regulation, accountability, and transparency
	and meaningful results. What would that recommendation be?
	Mr. Hatrick. I think I would recommend hearing from the
	practitioners in the field. I know among superintendents--you
	know, I go back to the fact that my colleague superintendents
	around the country, the vast majority of them are in school
	districts with very limited resources in terms of help. So when
	it comes time to fill out a report, guess who is doing it? The
	superintendent, the clerk of the board, the director of
	instruction--you know, you have a central office of three or
	four people, not three or 400 people.
	I think it would be extremely useful to bring in people
	from the field who represent the various teaching disciplines,
	various size school districts and just take some time to sit
	down and say with USED people, with congressional people,
	``Okay, why are we asking for this? How are we using the
	information once we get it? And what is the impact of providing
	it in the field?''
	Otherwise, I think we keep talking around the big issue.
	And then what we do is we just pile on. We keep adding. We
	never take away. But I think we need to get back down to the
	people who are impacted by this, the speech therapists. You
	know, we partner with schools overseas, American schools
	overseas. And there are people teaching in those schools who
	are special education teachers who tell me they won't come back
	to the States because they don't have the requirements of the
	IEP. They teach children.
	Mr. Nelson. I had a thought on behalf of higher education.
	And that is that I am a huge fan of the peer review process for
	accreditation where we are all asked to look at our
	institutional purposes, our mission. And then we are asked, not
	only whether we fulfill those purposes and that mission, but
	how we can improve on it.
	And we are getting candid and helpful advice from
	professional educators, people who know our world and are
	trying to help us. It allows us to be candid about our faults.
	Any effort I see in federalizing accreditation--and there is
	some movement toward that, many efforts in the last several
	years--undermines this process.
	What I am talking about is efforts by the department to
	pass a regulation that typically states something like this:
	``The accrediting organization is required to assure that
	institutions X, Y, and Z do the following.'' And so, they are
	doing indirectly through the accrediting agencies what they are
	not doing directly with the colleges and for good reason.
	I fear, as I serve on these accreditation teams myself,
	that more and more accrediting agencies are asking this
	question: What does the federal government want, rather than,
	what do these schools need to do to improve the quality of
	their education.
	Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired.
	Mrs. McCarthy?
	Mrs. McCarthy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Nelson, one of the things that, listening to your
	testimony and going through your testimony--over the years, I
	have been extremely active in the best way that we can make
	sure our college campuses are safe. After Virginia Tech, I had
	introduced legislation, which was accepted and put into the
	higher education bill, basically working with the Cleary Act
	and also making sure that students would be notified any time
	there was an emergency on the campus.
	Given the concerns that, basically, all of you are,
	basically,raising about the redundancy in a lot of the
	reporting--and I can understand that. In health care, they are
	doing the same thing. Some of the HEAs campus safety guidelines
	that I fought to get into there--is there an interest in the
	colleges in seeing a--you know, bringing them all together on
	these guidelines into a single, maybe more guidelines related
	to, like, alcohol and substance abuse because that is a safety
	issue on the campus also and consolidate them into, maybe, a
	guidance that draws on the best parts of the reporting
	guidelines. Could something like this be basically accomplished
	in the goal of streamlining the regulations while basically
	also----
	Mr. Nelson. Yes, I haven't----
	Mrs. McCarthy. Following the original----
	Mr. Nelson. I haven't thought about that in particular. But
	I can imagine that such a thing would be possible. I mean, I
	look at the importance of these issues to St. John's College.
	And so, they must be huge to others.
	We spend whole faculty meetings, where we might be talking
	about what is going on in the classroom, to talk about drug and
	alcohol issues, to talk about how we meet the various
	requirements and regulations pertinent to the Americans with
	Disabilities Act and health and safety issues and the like. And
	we bring in counselors and advisers to help us on this.
	We even go through these drills and safety training with
	police and fire to see what kinds of--what our response ought
	to be like, how we would communicate, especially in a world
	where technology has such a play. And one needs to be ahead of
	this, lest the world of communications and blogging gets out
	such bad information, that people act wrongly in all of these
	things.
	So I can imagine that there is a place where we could learn
	together how to streamline and how to think about best
	practices there. But I haven't done that yet. I haven't given
	thought to it. If I come up with something, I would be happy to
	get back to you.
	Mrs. McCarthy. Well, I would because, obviously, hopefully,
	we will go forward on reauthorization. And I think there are
	issues that we need to look at, especially on safety on the
	campuses. You know, unfortunately with the shooting in Arizona,
	one of the universities had signs that the person that did the
	shooting was not well.
	In one way, a week after they suspended him, they actually
	put a program together. So, I mean, things like this are always
	going to come up. But yet, we need to make sure our
	universities and all of our campuses are safe.
	Mr. Nelson. I agree entirely with this. And we have gone to
	seek best practices from other schools in all of these areas.
	We have a psychiatrist on-call. We have several campus
	counselors for a tiny student body.
	We have very tiny classes. And we actually take attendance.
	Failure to show up in class, we see, as a sign that there may
	be a problem. And then we have staff, both students and
	faculty, who will be there and go straight to the student's
	dormitory room or make calls on roommates or downtown in the
	off-campus housing.
	One thing you can do as a small school, giving a lot of
	personal attention, is to attend to the particular needs of
	each of those students. But in doing that, we also build
	cooperative relationships with police and fire and emergency
	services, with the U.S. Naval Academy across the street, with
	the state capitol building, which is also across the street. We
	are rather well-protected or well-targeted with these
	institutions around us.
	Mrs. McCarthy. But as we go forward, I certainly hope that
	you will give us some thought because maybe we can reach out
	and work and how we can do that without the redundancy of more
	regulations and everything else like that.
	Mr. Nelson. Thank you.
	Mrs. McCarthy. Thank you.
	Does anyone else have--I know I was talking about a campus,
	but school grounds now are just as dangerous at times.
	Mr. Wilhoit. I think you could apply this dilemma to
	several aspects of K-12 education. There have been similar
	sorts of horrible incidents that have occurred and systems
	haven't been prepared for them. I think in terms of this
	conversation today, there are a couple of different pathways
	that could be taken in how to deal with that in terms of
	regulations and in terms of oversight.
	Our thought on this would be that that problem should not
	be ignored. It is a responsibility of the institutions to
	respond to it. But the way in which the laws are written and
	the way in which the regulations are developed could lead those
	institutions down a pathway of taking--pay more attention to
	the nature of the plan, the design, the reporting mechanisms
	around that than encouraging each of those institutions to
	build off of a generalized requirement that they address these
	issues, giving greater latitude in terms of how those plans are
	developed.
	Mrs. McCarthy. So basically, you are also talking about
	having the flexibility of working for your campus. Basically,
	it might be different for another kind of campus.
	Mr. Wilhoit. Absolutely. The----
	Chairman Kline. The gentlelady's time has expired.
	Dr. Bucshon?
	Mr. Bucshon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to make a
	few comments just--and thank you, panel, for being here to
	testify today.
	And just to give you--my background is in cardiovascular
	surgery. And we found in health care that--and this seems
	fairly obvious. But just because we think something logically
	should be true, doesn't mean that it is.
	And what I mean by that--our specialty has developed a
	database in cardiovascular surgery that shows us what works and
	what doesn't. We collect that ourselves. And we change practice
	patterns based on that data and not what we think works, but
	what we know works.
	This will lead to a question, by the way. Also, however,
	there is a concept of local standard of care in medicine. And
	what some do well, others may not. And what works for some, may
	not work for others. So in that context, I am pretty much a
	results-driven type of thinker.
	And, Dr. Hatrick, I would like to know, over the course of
	your career in education, regulations obviously have increased
	and not decreased. And the bottom line is it appears to me that
	the results haven't really changed. So if we are continuing to
	do a premise that regulation is what is going to make our
	students better, it seems like to me that, based on my health
	care experience, it is not working.
	And I would like just to see what your comments are. Are
	the students doing better--that is the bottom line--since you
	started your career compared to today?
	Mr. Hatrick. Yes. I don't think there is any doubt students
	are doing better now than they did when I started my career in
	1966. They have more opportunities. We have less dropouts. We
	have more high school completers, more college completers.
	Whether or not they are doing so much better that they can
	compete in the world, which is doing better, is sort of a
	different question. I am not sure, though, that I would attach
	their doing better necessarily to regulation. I would attach it
	more to enablement.
	And I realize that when we enable programs--when we
	admitted disabled children to school who were turned away prior
	to the implementation of 94142--I mean, we basically said we
	just don't have a place for you. We were giving them an
	opportunity they didn't have before. But I do find it hard to
	find the nexus between the reporting we do and the improvement.
	And maybe I am making a fine line. I do agree that it is
	important that the data be collected to prove that we are doing
	what we say we are doing. But it ought to be measured on
	student outcome and student performance. And I hear a lot of
	agreement here. I am encouraged by this committee, quite
	frankly, that there seems to be some agreement across the
	committee about this.
	Mr. Bucshon. Mr. Wilhoit, you have a comment?
	Mr. Wilhoit. Yes. I think you are onto something. And I
	think we in education need to pay a lot of attention to the
	developments in the medical profession over the last several
	years. You can draw that analogy of medical practice many years
	ago and compare it to today.
	And I think the elements of what you are talking about
	could be really transformative in terms of educational
	practice. As I understand it, practitioners are engaged in
	deliberate work in the medical profession in teams. Individuals
	are assuming appropriate roles in that process. And as
	treatment is made, it is collected, and it is reported. There
	is an accumulation of knowledge there from practice that others
	can build on.
	We don't have that in education. We don't have a way to
	bring the wealth of knowledge and learning that is going on in
	one location and transferring it to another. You have a rich
	database for sharing that information, but it is driven by the
	practitioners, not from someone outside. It is driven by best
	practice.
	You are eliminating those procedures that do not work. And
	you are building off of those that are working. And you are
	developing, as a result of that, I think, a profession, a true
	profession or practice there that is not consistent in
	education.
	We are not applied researchers in education. We are
	basically, at the local level, consumers of knowledge rather
	than those that are creating knowledge, as you are in the
	medical profession. So I would love to continue that
	conversation with you. I think you are onto something that
	could provide guidance to the education improvement in the next
	few years, from the medical profession.
	Mr. Bucshon. I yield back my time. Thank you.
	Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman.
	Ms. Hirono?
	Ms. Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	As I listened to the responses of the panel to some of the
	questions asked by my colleagues, it occurs to me that as we
	are looking at reauthorizing ESEA--and you have all talked
	with--you all come from your different perspectives and
	experiences in dealing with educators, do you have--could you
	cite specifically three--it doesn't have to be three--major,
	specific kinds of changes that we should make to ESEA to
	improve ESEA?
	For example, I note that Mr. Wilhoit says that we should
	allow those states that have the capability to measure by
	growth models, that we should allow for the use of growth
	models. To me, that is a very specific kind of change that we
	should contemplate making to ESEA. So why don't we start with
	you, Mr. Wilhoit?
	Mr. Wilhoit. And I would begin by creating this
	environment. It is important, with one slight addition to the
	growth model. Growth is important. It allows us to accumulate
	knowledge in an incremental way and to adjust practice based on
	that growth. It also provides a motivation for local schools to
	improve. But that growth has to be against status.
	That is we need to be working toward those lofty goals that
	we have set for each of our students. And for me, that leads to
	the second piece of this. And that is every student needs to be
	benchmarked against preparation for future life. And that is
	college and career-ready. We need to set lofty standards as a
	guidepost for the states as they move forward.
	So I would include both the ability to make incremental
	progress tied to a much higher set of goals. And the states are
	coming together around those goals for college and career
	readiness, defined in the broadest context.
	Ms. Hirono. What about the other members of the panel?
	Ms. Haycock. Sure. Let me agree with his suggestion that--
	one is, I think everybody on this panel--as everybody on this
	panel knows, one of the most pressing issues on the minds of
	educators and parents across the country right now is the
	quality of our teacher force.
	As Mr. Miller indicated, you took an important step forward
	during the last reauthorization in putting attention on teacher
	quality. But you need to go the next step now and make sure you
	are looking at actual effectiveness of teachers as well as who
	gets access to the strong teachers. It is very, very
	fundamentally important part of the law.
	The second change that I would encourage you to consider is
	to fix the comparability requirements of the law. Currently,
	Title I is based on a fiction. The idea is that districts
	provide equal amounts of dollars to their schools, and then the
	Title I dollars provided by the federal government provide
	extra on top of that. In other words, so you can provide extra
	help to the kids who are living in poverty.
	But the reality is the way those requirements are
	administered allows teacher salaries to be excluded because
	that is the largest portion of the school spending. You have
	essentially eviscerated the impact of that law. And Title I
	dollars, instead of providing extra, are therefore, actually
	subsidizing schools with what should be provided by state and
	local dollars.
	Mr. Hatrick. I think my hope would be that in
	reauthorization, what has become, in my career, a very
	scattered approach by the federal government, would be refined
	and particularized again and that we would get back to some of
	the roots of ESEA, which were to address rural and urban
	poverty. Now, unless--and the unless part is unless the federal
	government intends to put a whole lot more money into public
	education than it now provides--because I think what happens is
	the federal dollars get so spread out, that local school
	districts don't have an opportunity to really make a difference
	in the lives of children.
	I mean, I talk to superintendents across the country who
	say by the time it all washes through, they are spending hours
	and hours and hours reporting on the effective of $32,000 in
	their school district. And I think that is because we have got
	money going where it is not really needed. And I have to say I
	hope none of my folks are listening. My district is probably
	one that could do with less federal dollars if more federal
	dollars would go to where the children really need them.
	And I think then if reporting followed that, if regulation
	followed that, that--you know, yes, it ought to be the business
	of the federal government, where it sends money, to make sure
	that growth is occurring. But it is not, I don't believe, with
	all due respect, the business of the federal government to be
	responsible for growth occurring everywhere.
	That is what we have local school boards for. That is what
	we have public--you know, state education agencies for. So I
	hope ESEA will get back its focus on the kids who are really
	being lost, I mean, who are still being left behind, for all of
	our best efforts. And those are the kids who live in rural and
	urban poverty.
	Ms. Hirono. Well, I----
	Chairman Kline. The gentlelady's time has expired.
	Dr. Foxx?
	Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	I found the testimony here today very, very enlightening.
	And I do have several questions.
	Mr. Hatrick, you mentioned not getting any feedback for all
	the data that is collected. And let me tell you. I was 12 years
	on a school board. I was university administrator for 15 years
	and teacher. And I was a college president for 7 years. So I
	know a little bit about this work. Do you know of any feedback
	that has been received from the Department of Education that is
	useful to a local school district?
	Mr. Hatrick. Well, let me just talk about my district. No,
	I don't think I could point to any data we have received back
	that made us go, ``Aha, we need to change what we are doing,''
	most times because by the time the data makes its way all the
	way up the chain and then all the way back down the chain, we
	are looking at data that is 3 or 4 years old. And I think that
	is another area we really need to look at.
	Are there means of using the power of the Internet and
	electronic reporting to make data available? It is like what
	teachers tell us. You know, when you test once a year and you
	give--you know, you wait 6 weeks or 8 weeks or 3 months to give
	me the results, that doesn't affect my teaching.
	Ms. Foxx. Sure.
	Mr. Nelson, in your testimony, you mentioned there are many
	regulations in place that aren't worth the burden placed on the
	institutions. Could you name any regulations that are worth the
	burden that are placed on your institution?
	Mr. Nelson. I guess, I think that there are a lot of useful
	laws. And some of those regulations--I forget how much--that
	the regulatory burden or the legal mandate behind it--that, I
	think, are good for the college. But if you are referring to
	data that may have come back to us, which was the question of
	the last one, then I don't recall seeing data that was helpful
	generated from outside.
	But I think that there is an awful lot of good in the law
	that has been passed. It is just a question of the cumulative
	effect of all of that and the detrimental effect of having some
	of that come in the form of attempting to intrude into the
	educational mission of the school.
	Ms. Foxx. Let me ask the question in a slightly different
	way then.
	Mr. Nelson. Yes.
	Ms. Foxx. Is there anything that you are doing now that is
	required by federal law that you wouldn't do if the federal law
	didn't exist?
	Mr. Nelson. Well, I guess, I mean, a lot of my time is
	spent fending off a lot of what I think is either coming or has
	been coming under federal law. And so, I referred to the burden
	of this federalizing encroachment in accreditation. There are
	things that we are measuring because they can be measured
	rather than because they are good. And I think those are the
	ones that are the most dangerous. Many other things, I think,
	are probably quite good that we do and that we would continue
	to do if the laws were repealed.
	Ms. Foxx. Mr. Wilhoit, I was in charge of an upward bound
	special services program at a time in my life. And I am very
	familiar with the kind of audits you were talking about for
	Title I, where they come in--somebody would come in. They would
	be paid a lot of money and spend 3 or 4 days going through my
	files just to check to see if all the boxes were checked, which
	didn't tell anybody anything about the effectiveness of the
	program.
	The issue you brought up about teaching not being a
	profession in the sense that we have not used the knowledge
	that has been produced--I have been hearing that for 40 years
	or so, maybe, since I have been in the education profession. Is
	there any area that you can point to where we have, again, used
	feedback, particularly from the federal government to make
	modifications that have been good modifications?
	Mr. Wilhoit. I would separate this. The intent of law,
	federal law, in my mind, is laudable. And those laws are put--
	have been put in place to address real problems. And in many
	cases, those federal laws have caused states to take the right
	action. And I could point to good examples of that over time.
	We get into trouble when we don't implement those laws in
	light of the specific requirements of the law and do not look
	at it from the context of the overall information that needs to
	flow back. And in the process, we begin to drive practice
	toward implementation of those regulations as opposed to the
	real focus on children.
	Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Chairman Kline. The gentlelady's time has expired.
	Mr. Scott?
	Mr. Scott. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Dr. Hatrick, how much of this data is--if we would call it
	data--and how much of it is prose, where you have--somebody
	actually has to compose a paragraph or something in response?
	Is most of what we are talking about things that you can run
	out of a computer?
	Mr. Hatrick. It is a combination, Mr. Scott. Yes, you can.
	I used to catch a lot of grief from my people when I would say,
	well, can't you just push a button and give me that
	information. Because in most cases, you really can't. The part
	of the issue we face is data is there, but different agencies,
	federal and state, want it in different forms. And so, we spend
	a lot of time trying to make the data fit the form. And I think
	there was a suggestion earlier about, you know, some coming
	together to decide, some centralization, to decide that might
	ease that.
	Mr. Scott. Well, let me ask Mr. Wilhoit. You are part of a
	national organization. When rulemaking is going on, are you
	testifying to see if they can't make the rules as simple as
	possible?
	Mr. Wilhoit. We attempt to do so at every opportunity.
	Mr. Scott. Do you also make--try to see if there is some
	kind of conforming software where all the states are using the
	same software so they can push the button that we are talking
	about?
	Mr. Wilhoit. Data systems have emerged out of independent
	actions of local districts and out of individual work on the
	part of states. So we have an interesting dilemma in front of
	us.
	How do the states come together? We have a project underway
	with the higher ed. institutions to standardize our data
	elements.
	Mr. Scott. Are you all working on standardization?
	Mr. Wilhoit. We are all working on that and reporting.
	Mr. Scott. So everybody can report the same?
	Mr. Wilhoit. Yes.
	Mr. Scott. I think you indicated some central point. Are
	you suggesting that we establish within the Department of
	Education some centralized point where all data requests have
	to go through so when the data request is made, it is made in a
	form that is as easy as possible to comply with?
	Mr. Wilhoit. Exactly. And that those data are looked at
	from an institutional perspective, not necessarily from an
	individual program perspective.
	Mr. Scott. Now, if we had such a little office like that,
	would that save money?
	Mr. Wilhoit. Depends on how one puts it in place. If you
	layer it on top of the other elements that you have in place,
	it probably wouldn't. If there is some forethought to this, it
	could save a lot. It could save, on the other end, tremendous
	amount of energy and time at the local level.
	Mr. Scott. And so, if it is done right, it could be
	extremely helpful. And I assume you are going to try to be
	helpful in getting it right for us?
	Mr. Wilhoit. We will, yes.
	Mr. Scott. Part of the data that we request is kind of what
	I call input and some output. Output means did the students
	learn. But if you don't have any input data, okay, they didn't
	learn. Now what? And if it is all input, did you use the right
	number of paper, did you come to the right number of students,
	it doesn't have anything to do with education. How do we get
	the regulations kind of done so that we are actually being
	productive?
	Mr. Wilhoit. It seems to me the issue is what is important
	for federal policymaking to be reported up. And then it gets
	back to this issue of building the knowledge base at the place
	where it makes a difference. And that is primarily at the local
	level. That is where we need to begin to emphasize the sharing
	part of this and the growth, not so much that people are taking
	actions or undertaking procedures for reporting purposes.
	The real issue, it seems to me, is how do you build a
	system where professionals are learning from practice and
	adjusting practice accordingly, not reporting data upward. And
	it seems to me, at the same time, we need to be thoughtful
	about what we learn out of that process for future policymaking
	purposes.
	But again, all of that could be done with a thoughtful
	application of technology and the sharing of that. And you
	wouldn't have to interfere in the lives of folks if we had a
	system where they could push information up and it simply could
	be collected without interrupting lives on a regular basis.
	Mr. Scott. Well, we look forward to you helping us in that
	process.
	Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
	Mr. Kline. I thank the gentleman.
	Mr. Hunter?
	Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	First question is related to the last question. What is so
	complicated about having an open API? Or you would call it an
	advanced program and interface, which means that you can put
	data out in any form you wanted to and have it accessible by
	the state or the feds in their own way so you don't have to do
	it their way. You just put it there. That is what every
	business does.
	McDonald's can tell you how many cheeseburgers were bought
	yesterday at the McDonald's by my house. So what is so
	complicated? I am just not getting it.
	Anybody, please, feel free.
	Mr. Wilhoit. It is complicated because we are trying to
	insert this sort of rational approach on top of a system that
	has emerged over time with high disconnected applications and
	procedures in place. You have to agree on the elements that one
	is going to collect. You have to agree on the standards of
	collection. You have to have systems in place that collect that
	information.
	I think the technology is at a point where we could do
	this. I think it is a matter of working through the human
	element and applying it to the system that is now in place.
	Mr. Hatrick. I think it is also the lack of a common
	definition of what the data is. I mean, McDonald's knows what a
	hamburger is, what a McDonald's hamburger is, which may not be
	the same as a Wendy's hamburger. But they know what their
	hamburger is. And they count those burgers. And they know how
	to prepare them.
	And we don't have those common definitions when it comes to
	educating children. So I think the data we are trying to
	collect is much, much more complex. If you ask me about my
	school bus operation, I can tell you how many miles they drive,
	how many accidents per mile, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
	There is a real shift when you get into the classroom and you
	start trying to figure out the effectiveness of a teacher
	working with a disparate group of students.
	Mr. Hunter. Well, let us move this on then and talk about--
	and, if you would, Mr. Nelson, just let me add this one part
	in. Then how do you do this if you are a rural school? Because
	you have talked about you have the ability and capacity and the
	wherewithal to do all of these things, provide data to
	different people in different ways. But if you are a rural
	school, you are not able to do this. So what do you think the
	impact is on rural schools having to meet all of these
	different standards and different datum definitions that you
	have to have to comply with this data and the feds?
	Please?
	Mr. Nelson, do you want to go ahead and speak on that point
	and then carry out----
	Mr. Nelson. Not on that point.
	Mr. Hunter. Okay.
	Mr. Hatrick. Well, I will speak for the superintendents. As
	president of AASA, most of our members are rural, small
	district superintendents. It is crushing. And I think, frankly,
	it is overwhelming. It leads to people sitting around trying to
	figure out what is being asked and how can we report it and how
	can we get through this and also do all the other things we
	have to do. And that is why, I think, we don't have the
	standardization that we might like to believe exists out there.
	Mr. Hunter. Mr. Wilhoit?
	Mr. Wilhoit. I hear a lot of the rural folks talking about
	a need for them to reduce the tremendous burden on those staff
	people who are pulled in multiple directions carrying out very
	different jobs, being Mr. or Mrs. Everything in terms of those
	rural districts. They are now looking at ways that they could
	come together and share these kinds of resources.
	It is another example of where efficiencies in the system
	could be dealt with rather than each one of those individuals
	maintaining their own system and doing that kind of reporting.
	You could do it through some cooperative kind of work.
	Mr. Hunter. And, Mr. Nelson, you had a comment on the
	first.
	Mr. Nelson. Thank you. I was just going to refer back to
	the question about the use of a common technology to solve some
	of these problems. The question isn't whether the technology is
	available or should be put in place. But it is what it is
	trying--what problem it is trying to address, what data it is
	trying to collect.
	The financial aid program, for example, in this country,
	all the data in higher education must be transmitted
	electronically through a particular system. It seems to me,
	perfectly appropriate. It is working well. We provide the data
	that we think meets the reasonable standards for
	accountability.
	But it is the questions about what is going on in the
	classroom, outcomes that become really difficult. I like the
	analogy to the medical profession. I was a patient where I got
	to see a team working with me in front of me, looking at their
	checklist. What did we do wrong? What did we do right,
	including me in that conversation because medicine is a
	cooperative art.
	And so is education. To include a team of people around who
	know what they are doing with the student present, that is an
	appropriate measure of assessment. You want to know what is
	going on, a process which allows the student to hear from a
	team of faculty that are all teaching that student that year
	what they think of the work, what could be improved. This
	system isn't one that would be dictated by the federal
	government.
	It is something that ought to be in place as a model of
	assessment of student learning at every level of education in
	the country. It is something that we have been doing at St.
	John's for 70 years, since 1937. And it has remarkable affect
	because we have all that information.
	We can look at it. It is all narrative. It is not data
	collection. It is prose. But it is all shared with faculty
	talking to faculty, learning about the student together and the
	student hearing what that is and then responding in kind.
	Mr. Hunter. Okay.
	Chairman Kline. Gentleman's time is expired.
	Ms. Woolsey?
	Mr. Woolsey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Well, when No Child Left Behind was first advanced, my
	question to George Miller, who was our chair of this committee
	at that time, was--and I asked him point blank, ``George, why
	should my schools, who are some of the best in the nation, have
	to be burdened with proving how good they are?'' George was
	very patient with me.
	He said, Lynny--he is one of six people in this world that
	are allowed to call me Lynny. ``Even your schools will learn
	that low-income student populations are lagging behind.'' Well,
	you have to know I didn't believe it. Not my district. So I
	called my superintendents, my school superintendents.
	And after I promised I wasn't going to use the information
	for anything but my own--you know, my own input, to learn from
	them, they confirmed that George was absolutely right. And this
	is before we implemented No Child Left Behind. Now, after the
	implementation of No Child Left Behind, these superintendents
	and educators don't like everything about No Child Left Behind.
	And that is absolutely for sure. But they have all agreed that
	there was a need to acknowledge that there were students being
	left behind.
	So my question to you, Ms. Haycock, is that was then. This
	is now. Are the teachers, educators, administrators--in these
	lower-income schools--are they frustrated about the fact that
	now that we know this, that they are still being expected to
	bridge whether these kids are ready to learn when they enter
	the classroom? And what is your opinion of what we should be
	doing about this?
	Ms. Haycock. Well, certainly, Congresswoman Woolsey, there
	is no educator in America, to my knowledge, who would not
	prefer it if the youngsters who came into our elementary
	schools, especially those from low-income families, had really
	strong early childhood education. We all know that is a smart
	investment. We know it helps kids arrive at school ready to
	learn.
	But if you are asking the question, do educators now resent
	being asked, even when children don't have those support
	services, to still do their best to raise their achievement
	levels, I think there are some who do. But the vast majority
	thinks it now as their responsibility.
	Now, let me be clear here. You put the focus on that when
	you passed the law in 2001. The moment you take it off, their
	attentions will go back. So if you are asking me can we afford,
	now that they know that their low-income youngsters or minority
	youngsters are achieving at lower levels, can we afford to take
	that attention off, the answer is no.
	Mr. Woolsey. So all the way along the panel has talked
	about limited funding. So are teachers and administrators not
	expecting federal support to help the schools bridge that
	difference between what these kids come to school with and what
	they need? Besides, I don't think teachers resent having helped
	these kids. That isn't what I meant.
	Ms. Haycock. Yes.
	Mr. Woolsey. I think they might resent us for demanding
	they do more with less.
	And so, where do you see--so any of the rest of you, where
	do you see us investing appropriately in those with the most
	need?
	Mr. Hatrick. Preschool education, preschool education,
	preschool education.
	Mr. Woolsey. I hear you.
	Mr. Hatrick. If you want a level the playing field for
	children growing up in America, it has to happen before
	kindergarten because once kids arrive in kindergarten, we are
	involved in remediation. And I think there is just sufficient
	evidence out there about the power of Head Start to change
	children's lives.
	My regret is that, you know, even in my county, the Head
	Start program funds the education of 100 children. Now, our
	system funds a similar program--we can't make it quite as rich
	as Head Start--for about 300 more because we know--you know,
	Loudoun 3 years and running, is the wealthiest county in
	America.
	We know that being poor in Loudoun is even harder than
	being poor in some other places because there is this
	assumption that everybody comes to school ready to learn. And
	everybody doesn't. So preschool education, preschool education,
	preschool education.
	Mr. Woolsey. Thank you.
	Chairman Kline. Gentlelady's time has expired.
	Mr. Barletta?
	Mr. Barletta. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Nelson, as the mayor of Hazelton, Pennsylvania for more
	than a decade--and I was a representative of Pennsylvania's
	11th Congressional District--I have had a unique privilege of
	forming strong relationships with local universities and
	community colleges in Northeastern Pennsylvania. But we heard a
	lot about how regulations have burdened schools.
	I know regulatory demands are burdensome, not only for
	university presidents, but also for students, especially those
	who are first generation college students, which make up a good
	percentage of the students in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Can
	you give us an example of how increased federal involvement in
	higher education via heightened regulation requirements has
	implicated students?
	Mr. Nelson. Well, I suppose there are a lot of things we
	administer under the financial aid program that affect the
	students directly. So whether they like it or not, they need
	debt counseling. Whether they like it or not, they need to fill
	out various forms and papers with all of that.
	And so, we have turned into an educational system, not only
	to develop our academic program, but to help people understand
	the financial world that they are living with when they take on
	the debt. That directly affects students. And, frankly, we
	think that it is good for students to learn those things.
	But another one that just--I mean, it happens to be the
	issue of the day on campus yesterday when I asked this question
	of a number of directors of various offices: the census. I
	thought that was once every 10 years. But it turns out there is
	sampling done every year. And that means that somebody has to
	track down these students in their dormitories or off-campus
	housing, get them to fill out the forms, and turn them back in.
	Well, it seems like a simple little thing. But if any of
	you have teenagers or young adults as children, you know that
	that is probably one of the most difficult jobs. And our task
	as a college is to track them down and get them to fill them
	out. But they then have to do that. I mean, it is just a couple
	of simple examples.
	Mr. Barletta. Can you identify any particular rules or
	regulations that make it difficult for schools to innovate or
	work together with each other and/or community partners to help
	increase student academic achievement?
	Mr. Nelson. Yes, I will tell you one that I am really
	worried about. And that is the credit hour regulations that are
	under consideration. There I worry that it may limit the
	ability to have collaborations.
	Any time you put a straightjacket on innovation, you run
	the risk that we can't change quickly and that we can't
	collaborate easily. I don't know a single college or university
	in the country right now that isn't undertaking a conversation
	about the sustainability of the operating model that they have
	been working with up to and through the financial disaster of
	late 2008.
	They need the freedom to adapt quickly, to innovate, and to
	collaborate. And every school will have its own ways of doing
	that. But I think anything that can be done to be careful that
	we don't burden, particularly those programs that affect the
	academic life of the college, would be most welcome in these
	difficult financial times.
	Mr. Barletta. Thank you, Mr. Nelson.
	I yield back the balance of my time.
	Chairman Kline. Thank you.
	Mr. Tierney, you are recognized.
	Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	And thank the witnesses for their testimony today and their
	enlightenment.
	I think we are always knowledgeable about how important it
	is to take a closer look at the requirements that we have out
	there and try to get that balance between making sure that we
	get the data and make sure that the taxpayer gets their value
	and the families get what they deserve, what they have coming
	to them and to get rid of anything that is not necessary, that
	is overly burdensome on that basis. So I know that there is
	some work being done out there.
	And in the Higher Education Opportunity Act, Mr. Nelson, we
	charged the advisory committee on student financial assistance
	to conduct a higher education regulation study to determine
	whether any current or future regulations were duplicative,
	were no longer necessary, were inconsistent with other federal
	laws, were overly burdensome. Do you think that is a good way
	to go about it? Do you think that provision makes sense?
	Mr. Nelson. I am sorry. Do I think what provision?
	Mr. Tierney. That the provision that I am talking about
	charging the advisory committee on student financial assistance
	with conducting a regulation study to determine and identify
	all those regulations they may think are overly burdensome or
	duplicative or whatever.
	Mr. Nelson. I think these are very important studies to
	undertake. I know that it has been a problem for people to
	implement the Section 1106 of that act, which provides for the
	National Research Council of the Academy of Sciences to
	determine amount and scope of federal regulations as well. And
	it seems to me that funding of that might go considerable
	distance along this line.
	And I should say that this committee led the way in asking
	the department--or determining that the department should not
	collect national unit record data. But the department is still
	funding these efforts at a state level. That is a source of
	funding, it seems to me, that could help us get there.
	Mr. Tierney. Good. Well, that is helpful. I mean, I am at a
	loss as to how else we might attack this problem, other than to
	have some qualified entity go out there and identify them so
	that we can then start knocking them down. So I am glad to hear
	you say that we have started along that path in that last
	reauthorization.
	Any other ideas you have?
	Mr. Nelson. Yes, I am sorry. My ears aren't functioning
	fully today. But I, maybe, hear the particulars of that
	question. I apologize.
	Mr. Tierney. Which one? The one I am saying now or the past
	one?
	Mr. Nelson. I heard that.
	Mr. Tierney. Okay.
	Mr. Nelson. So go ahead.
	Mr. Tierney. All right. Any other ideas that you have for
	other ways that we may try to skin this cat, besides having a
	qualified entity go out there and identify them and so that we
	can knock them down, please let us know.
	Mr. Nelson. Yes. Yes. The main thing that I had in mind
	when I suggested in my testimony a kind of pay-go system is for
	every new regulation that may come about, let us take a look
	and see if we can't--even if it can't remove some others. And
	one measure of that might be to look at the burden hours of the
	new regulation and then to see if we can't eliminate an equal
	number or more burden hours of the other.
	Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
	Mr. Wilhoit, I am looking here at this little review on
	that. In 2004, we did take some steps to reduce the paperwork
	burden on states and districts. We included a paperwork
	reduction pilot into the law that would allow the secretary to
	waive up to 4 years of statutory or regulatory requirements,
	except the civil rights requirements, that link to excessive
	paperwork or other non-instructional burdens.
	So I look at that, and I see that no states have applied
	for that yet. Can you share with me why or what the barrier or
	the impediment has been for states to apply for that waiver?
	Mr. Wilhoit. I think that the states at this point are
	operating under this--I think the very fact of the procedure to
	go through to get those is lengthy, complex, and difficult. It
	is almost like applying another set of waivers--or regulations
	to the process.
	And I think the real issue here is we should be thinking
	about a relationship between states and the federal government
	where a waiver is not the avenue for innovation. And we need to
	be thinking about how you build into this strong guidance and
	direction and clear statements from the federal government
	about what must be done, but build into the law an expectation
	that states will learn, grow, and improve through the process.
	I think the very process in itself is very burdensome for a lot
	of folks.
	Mr. Tierney. Do you think the idea of such a pilot is
	worthwhile if we got rid of the burdensome application process?
	Mr. Wilhoit. Yes. And I think even beyond that, if in
	reauthorization, if it occurs, and I think it should, we could
	think about a different kind of relationship where states would
	be expected to come forward with new designs and innovation,
	coming out of the learning that is going on in the states.
	Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
	You know, for any one of you that might want to answer
	this, I am always struck by educators telling me how many
	burdensome requirements they have and tests and things of that
	nature and then throwing it all up on a monthly calendar and
	finding out that so many of them are state regulations on that.
	Mr. Wilhoit. It is true.
	Mr. Tierney. So they are all angry at No Child Left Behind,
	or they are angry at the federal government. Testing for
	Massachusetts--they put up a calendar of tests almost every day
	of the month, and only one of them was a federal test on that.
	What can we do to sort of get the states to also take a look at
	this and try to work together, both the federal level, state
	and the district levels to sort of get these things down? We
	can do our job. But how do we work together cooperatively with
	those other levels of government to make sure it all comes
	down?
	Mr. Wilhoit. There needs to be----
	Mr. Hunter [presiding]. The gentleman's time is expired.
	If you could get that answer to him at a later time or for
	the record.
	Mr. DesJarlais, Dr. DesJarlais is recognized for 5 minutes.
	Mr. DesJarlais. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	The question was asked earlier, what are the top concerns
	of teachers that you have been talking to in your areas. And we
	heard from Ms. Haycock. I wanted to pose that same question,
	what would be the top three concerns that you are hearing from
	teachers.
	Dr. Hatrick, could you start?
	Mr. Hatrick. Well, right now? One of the top concerns we
	are hearing is frozen compensation. Another one has to with
	enlarging class size, as we have less and less money to spend
	on educating children. And probably the third one has to do
	with, you know, kind of, just an overall frustration with the
	reporting requirements that are put on teachers by us locally,
	by the state, and by the federal government.
	Mr. DesJarlais. Okay. Thank you.
	And, Mr. Wilhoit?
	Mr. Wilhoit. I hear them talk about their inability to meet
	the demands that we are putting on them right now and a need
	for a lot more help than we have been giving them. We need to
	redesign their pre-service and their professional development
	opportunities to be much more productive. I hear them talk
	about the need for strong leadership at the building level and
	in the form of a principal who knows instructions, know how to
	bring a team together and work together.
	I hear, on this issue, more concern from the teachers of
	special needs students and those with ESL--students with
	English language needs in terms of burden and intrusion in
	life. I don't hear it as dramatically from mainstream kind of
	instructional people.
	Mr. DesJarlais. Okay.
	And, Mr. Nelson?
	Mr. Nelson. Well, I am hearing the questions at a different
	level altogether. But I would say that the number one concern
	is the work to keep the federal government from trying to
	determine appropriate measures of accountability in the
	educational environment. So what I am really talking about is,
	as a liberal arts college, we are not trying to tell our
	students what they should think. We are trying to give them
	very difficult material to work with so that they can learn to
	ask the appropriate questions and free themselves from
	conventional opinions and from directives from above.
	So the last thing I want to do is encourage any kind of
	system that suggests we are trying to teach to some norm. And
	these things are coming at us because of federal requirements
	through the accrediting agencies who probably have spent more
	time on that than any other. So I will just stop with the one
	for now.
	Mr. DesJarlais. Okay. Thank you.
	And, I think that you touched on several of the concerns
	that I am hearing from the teachers back in my district. As a
	primary care physician, I have the opportunity to talk to
	teachers regularly, both as a patient and to hear their
	concerns when we are just visiting in the exam room.
	And certainly, the frustration I am hearing is that they
	are not able to teach what they were trained to do. Instead,
	they are having to teach to standardized testing. Also, the
	lack of discipline was a very common concern and leadership in
	their principals.
	Mr. Nelson. Yes, yes.
	Mr. DesJarlais. And also, I think that there is just,
	maybe, a general loss of self-esteem and pride in their
	profession because they didn't go into teaching to get rich.
	They went in because they care about educating. And I think
	there is a lot of frustration there.
	So anyway, as we look at the Department of Education now
	passing three decades of service, federal spending on education
	has increased 375 percent since its inception. And yet, our
	achievements in reading, math, and science remain pretty flat.
	So, you know, I find it interesting that my colleague from
	Indiana, Dr. Bucshon's comments, seem to hit home with a lot of
	folks. And I wonder if I could yield about 2 seconds to Dr.
	Bucshon to ask him how much did you rely on federal regulations
	to inspire you to improve cardiothoracic surgery.
	Mr. Bucshon. Thank you. Very minimal. And that is the point
	I was trying to get across, is this was driven within our own
	profession----
	Mr. DesJarlais. Exactly.
	Mr. Bucshon [continuing]. Outside of government because, as
	surgeons, just as educators want to see their students do well,
	we want to see our patients do well so there is pride in the
	profession. And we have taken it on ourselves to internally
	improve what we are doing because ultimately we want better
	outcomes.
	I yield back.
	Mr. DesJarlais. Thank you, Doctor.
	And I will yield back the balance of my time, with that
	lesson.
	Mr. Hunter. Thank you.
	Mr. Bishop is recognized for 5 minutes.
	Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Nelson, first off, congratulations on 20 years as a
	college president.
	Mr. Nelson. Well, thank you.
	Mr. Bishop. Not easy to do.
	And thank you all for your testimony.
	I am going to assume that you are familiar with the
	financial aid implications of H.R. 1 that was passed out of the
	House a week ago Saturday.
	Mr. Nelson. If you tell me what it is, I will probably
	remember that I am familiar with it.
	Mr. Bishop. Okay. It eliminates SCOG, one of the three
	campus-based programs.
	Mr. Nelson. Okay. Thank you.
	Mr. Bishop. It cuts Pell grant maximum by 15 percent.
	Mr. Nelson. Yes.
	Mr. Bishop. So let me ask this question. If the federal
	government were to come to NAICU members and say, we have a
	deal for you, we are going to cut the largest grant program by
	15 percent, we are going to eliminate another grant program
	that has existed since the late 1960s, and 2 years later, we
	are going to phase out the campus-based student loan program,
	but don't worry, we are going to relieve your regulatory
	burden, is that a tradeoff that NAICU members would embrace?
	Mr. Nelson. I don't think there has been any choice but
	that they would choose not to cut the Pell grants, not to cut
	SEOG, not to cut federal work study, subsidized loans. These
	are critical to serving the students' interests in each of our
	schools. And those students' needs have grown in the last 3
	years. So the number of Pell-eligible students at St. John's
	has grown by 30 or 40 percent in just the last year-and-a-half
	because of the family burdens out there.
	Mr. Bishop. Sure. So----
	Mr. Nelson. And we really need these funds to help them
	have the access and opportunity to study.
	Mr. Bishop. I thank you for that. So you would urge the
	Congress to rethink those cuts?
	Mr. Nelson. I would.
	Mr. Bishop. Thank you. You made a comment in your testimony
	about how the regulatory process is intruding, essentially, on
	academic freedom, on what schools teach and who teaches them.
	Are you referring there specifically to a federal intrusion, or
	is it more so an accreditation intrusion or a state intrusion?
	Mr. Nelson. What I see is there have been state intrusions
	of this kind that we have dealt with. And I don't see a
	terrible problem at the state level right now in Maryland. But
	at the federal level, the--there were attempts earlier on to
	have federal regulations control outcomes assessments and to
	try to get us to measure and compare our measurements with
	other schools. Those were beaten back as being heavy-handed and
	intrusive.
	But at the same time, they have moved to pushing that
	weight onto the accrediting agencies. So that question that I
	raised earlier that the accrediting organization is required to
	assure that each of our institutions do the following is a kind
	of federalized approach to that sort of thing.
	Mr. Bishop. Yes.
	Mr. Nelson. So it is coming through the accrediting
	agencies.
	Mr. Bishop. Okay. Because the reason I ask is I used to run
	a college.
	Mr. Nelson. Yes.
	Mr. Bishop. And I found that it was more state regulation,
	that we were--for example, had a limit to the number of courses
	that could be taught by adjunct faculty. That was imposed by
	the state, not by the federal government. We had a limit to the
	number of courses, remedial courses, to which we could assign
	academic credit, again, imposed by the state, not by the
	federal government.
	Mr. Nelson. Yes.
	Mr. Bishop. But, okay, thank you for clarifying that.
	One more question for Dr. Hatrick. You said preschool,
	preschool, preschool, music to my ears since I have been
	married to a woman who runs a preschool program of her own for
	32 years. H.R. 1, the bill I referred to, cuts $1.1 billion out
	of funding for Head Start, would disenfranchise 218,000
	students who would otherwise be eligible for Head Start. Am I
	safe in assuming that you would consider that to be a cut that
	we ought to reconsider?
	Mr. Hatrick. Absolutely.
	Mr. Bishop. Thank you. Appreciate it.
	I yield back the balance of my time.
	Mr. Hunter. Thank you.
	Mr. Walberg, you are recognized.
	Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	And thank you, to the panel, for being here today.
	Just to go through some of the figures that have been laid
	out, I know, at least a couple times already, since 1965,
	American taxpayers invested more than $778 billion on federal
	programs for elementary and secondary education. Reading and
	math assessment scores for 17-year-olds remain largely
	unchanged from 1973 levels. And then I read a recent report
	that indicates the regulations to implement one section of No
	Child Left Behind increase state and local governments' annual
	paperwork burden by over 6.7 million hours at an estimated cost
	of $141 million.
	All of that, to ask this question of any of you, about your
	particular entities. How much in funding does it cost your
	agency, school, college, organization to comply with the rules
	and regulations imposed by the federal government? And, I
	guess, I would say how much staff time is spent on complying
	with No Child Left Behind, IDEA, or other federal programs? And
	then what positive impact has all of that produced, percentage-
	wise, in your program?
	Mr. Hatrick. We estimate, in Loudoun County Public Schools,
	that it takes the equivalent of six full-time professional
	staff to meet all of the reporting requirements for various
	federal--and I would include some state agencies there as well.
	So to the earlier question, I don't know what happens in a
	rural district where there just aren't six staff to devote to
	this.
	I think it gets pushed down to the teacher. I think that is
	the ultimate answer. Where you don't have central office staff
	to provide all this data, the people who wind up providing it
	are the people who are supposed to be teaching the children.
	Mr. Wilhoit. I would like to get more specific numbers to
	you. But if you were to look at most state agencies today, you
	will find that the largest staff allocations are in federal
	food and nutrition, Title I, and IDEA. And, of course, those
	resources are provided as oversight functions from the federal
	government. So that makes the work that those people are
	engaged in very important.
	One, they need not--it pulls them into isolated kinds of
	functions. And it makes it difficult for a commissioner to use
	those resources in other ways.
	Secondly, the demands on state education agencies over the
	last few years have been moving away from compliance to more
	assistance in service role. And it is difficult to do so when
	you have staff locked up in those other functions.
	Ms. Haycock. I, obviously, can't add much detail on the
	cost, because my organization isn't a part of this. But I do
	want to say something about the results, because I think people
	have gotten a false understanding of what has occurred and what
	hasn't.
	Remember, the focus of the Elementary and Secondary
	Education Act is largely on elementary schools, a little bit on
	middle schools, and almost no attention to high schools at all.
	If you look at the data on elementary schools, there have been
	significant improvements. That is especially true in the last
	10 years, where you are seeing sharp improvements for all
	groups and record performance and the narrowest gaps we have
	ever had. But it has been true since the 1970s.
	Where we are losing it, frankly, is in the high schools.
	That is where achievement has been relatively flat. It is up a
	little bit in math, but relatively flat in reading. So it is
	not that these dollars have had no impact. They clearly have.
	We are making----
	Mr. Walberg. Excuse me, just jump in there. But doesn't
	that suggest--I mean, if we are indicating the growth at the
	elementary level and it is not carrying through at the
	secondary level----
	Ms. Haycock. Yes.
	Mr. Walberg [continuing]. Doesn't that make the elementary
	level suspect, with all of the dollars, all of the regulations
	all put in place to try to bring it up, ultimately, if the
	outcome--so Mr. Nelson receives a new student that is capable,
	ready to start the process at the higher ed.?
	Ms. Haycock. It is, I think, not wrong to think that there
	is a problem in our high schools because we are not translating
	the better prepared students we are receiving from elementary
	schools into better prepared students for colleges or for the
	workforce. But that does not mean that we are not making
	significant progress in our elementary schools on every
	measure, both on state assessments and on the national
	assessment of education progress. There are much stronger
	results today than there were 30 years ago.
	So, again, it is not that we know nothing about how to
	improve achievement. We have got, actually, a fairly strong
	record of improving achievement. What we are not doing as well
	at is translating that into growth at the high school level.
	Mr. Hunter. Thank you. The gentleman's time is expired.
	Mr. Kildee, you are recognized.
	Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	Ms. Haycock, the requirement for disaggregated data is a
	mandate of No Child Left Behind. Is this requirement achieving
	what it was intended to do? Is it playing a significant role in
	improving education? Can we make it more useful? And to what
	degree are the sub-groups that this was intended to make sure
	were not neglected, are they gaining from that disaggregated
	data mandate?
	Ms. Haycock. Certainly, the requirement, not just to report
	the data by group, but actually to improve the results by
	group, is probably, without question, the most important
	requirement of No Child Left Behind. There is no question, I
	think, that that attention has grabbed a hold of the attention
	of educators and focused their energy on improving, not just
	the overall average, but of all groups of students. And to take
	that away would be hugely destructive.
	We may want to choose to formulate the requirements
	differently to look both at growth and at status in future
	laws. But to turn back the clock and say, ``No, no, we weren't
	serious about that, we are really going to go back to looking
	at averages,'' would be devastating.
	Your question is, did we make progress? During the last 10
	years, all groups of kids at the elementary level have gone up.
	The groups of kids that were the particular focus of this law
	have gone up somewhat faster than those who were not.
	That means you are making a difference. Is it fast enough?
	Absolutely not. Is it good enough? Absolutely not. Do we have
	to turn it around at the high school level? Absolutely. But one
	thing we know from the history of American education is that
	when we stop focusing on something, we stop making progress.
	Mr. Kildee. So perhaps, or hopefully, 10 years from now, we
	will find out that this did play a significant role in those
	who were being neglected.
	Ms. Haycock. Yes. There is no question we know that now.
	Mr. Kildee. Is there much gaming of the system or attempts
	to game the system when we measure these students?
	Ms. Haycock. Yes. At virtually every level, there have been
	attempts to game the system. And there have been--and, frankly,
	there were imperfections in the law itself that encouraged
	that. There was no incentive, for example, for states to raise
	standards or to have high standards. If they lowered them along
	the way, they made their schools better. Those are the kinds of
	things that, fortunately, the work of the states in developing
	common standards have helped with. But those are the things we
	need to fix this time around as well.
	Mr. Kildee. Well, I certainly appreciate your answer. I
	happen to agree with it. We worked very hard on this. And we
	intended that this really would make a difference for these
	students. And glad to hear at least most schools are trying to
	do it.
	Ms. Haycock. I think that is right.
	Mr. Kildee. And we should make sure that they continue to
	do that. Thank you very much, Ms. Haycock.
	Ms. Haycock. Thank you.
	Mr. Hunter. Mrs. Biggert is recognized for 5 minutes.
	Mrs. Biggert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	I think this question probably goes to Dr. Hatrick and Mr.
	Wilhoit, if I am pronouncing that right. I don't know. But I am
	concerned about the Race to the Top and wanted to know a little
	bit about the burdens that that may be creating.
	And I know, Dr. Hatrick, I don't think that Virginia has
	not applied for Race to the Top. I know that there is a lot of
	information going to all the states. And are you implementing
	some of the things that are in there? Because this is said to
	be the--you know, the precursor to how we will do K-12
	reauthorization. A lot of that will be in there.
	Mr. Hatrick. Are we implementing--I am sorry. I had a
	problem hearing.
	Mrs. Biggert. Some of the states are--actually, even though
	they did not take--or be in the Race to the Top, they were
	awarded the funds for it and all that. But many of them are
	implementing the kinds of ideas that are in there. Is Virginia
	looking at that at all? Or are you just--so you don't have to
	worry about the regulation?
	Mr. Hatrick. No, you know, we try to look at everything
	that is going on. If people have good ideas, we are not at all
	shy about asking to borrow them. And so, I think that, you
	know, probably that has been a positive aspect of Race to the
	Top in that it has provided incentives for people to think
	differently. That said, I am not sure the competitive nature of
	Race to the Top is going to help American education.
	Mrs. Biggert. And so, you did not apply for it?
	Mr. Hatrick. No.
	Mrs. Biggert. Okay.
	Mr. Wilhoit?
	Mr. Wilhoit. There was a tremendous response to Race to the
	Top. I think it was a result of some pent-up energy that
	existed in states, a desire to move in some areas. And it gave
	an avenue to do so.
	With 12 states receiving that money and a number of other
	states who had taken pretty significant action in the states to
	build consensus to get a positive rating and to be competitive,
	in a way, has caused those states to commit themselves to some
	reform initiatives that they are now finding difficulty
	resourcing. And so, I think you will find that continued
	pressure on the states.
	Are those things that should be done? Probably so. And yet,
	I think the dilemma is going to be now that we have stepped
	back, engaged lot of people in a state community around this
	issue, gotten commitments from a lot of districts to move
	forward, they are experiencing some pressures to make sure they
	can resource it in an adequate way. So I think those pressures
	will continue.
	The other pressure on them, I think, for those that were
	funded, right now, is the multiple reporting that is being
	asked of them from--the department has been very cooperative in
	interacting with the states. But we also have reporting from
	OMB and from the attorney general's office, just multiple kinds
	of pressures on folks for accountability purposes.
	Mrs. Biggert. So that makes a lot more. And is there a
	reduction for other reporting if they are working in that?
	Mr. Wilhoit. Not yet.
	Mrs. Biggert. Do you think that this will be used as far as
	the reauthorization of K-12?
	Mr. Wilhoit. The Race to the Top program?
	Mrs. Biggert. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
	Mr. Wilhoit. There is no doubt in my mind that that has
	changed the agenda in the states. In fact, it is kind of
	interesting to watch the attention being paid to the Recovery
	and Reinvestment Act and on Race to the Top and this sort of
	increase and focus on those issues and the guiding principles
	around that program in the four areas of reform. And that
	almost superseded their attention to implementation of No Child
	Left Behind.
	We are at a--brings the issue to the table again about
	reauthorization. We are creating a dynamic environment out
	there where people are chasing reform. And yet, we are
	operating under a system that we created several years ago.
	Mrs. Biggert. Thank you. Thank you.
	And then, Mr. Nelson, it seems like we hear so often that
	kids are going to college and they are not ready and they have
	to have remedial. And there are so many--the numbers are
	actually staggering how many students are having to go through
	remedial education when they get to college. Is there data
	collection for this? Are the universities really, you know,
	looking into this so that they can go back to the states or go
	back to the schools and make sure or see how that can be fixed?
	Mr. Nelson. Sure. I ask high school teachers all the time,
	please teach grammar. We don't get it coming out of our high
	schools now. And it shows. But I think the important thing here
	is that there has been greater access to colleges and
	universities among a broader and wider population. This is a
	good thing. But it often brings with it, therefore, a broader
	group of students, many of whom are less well-prepared.
	Many colleges are responding to this by just sucking it up
	and preparing--and providing those courses, particularly at the
	community college level. Many other schools are sending the
	students to get those courses, post-secondary educational
	courses, to get them. And others are talking with state school
	administrators about how we can work together to have students
	better prepared for higher education.
	Mrs. Biggert. But is there data collection?
	Mr. Hunter. The gentlelady's time is expired.
	If you wouldn't mind getting back to her on the record,
	too.
	Mr. Payne is recognized.
	Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
	Our state lost out on Race to the Top. You remember there
	was some question whether the governor was interested in it,
	and some wrong information was sent. And so, we lost $800,000,
	I think it was, to the dismay of many of us.
	But anyway, prior to No Child Left Behind, accountability
	in education--in the educational system was vague and
	unenforced. States were able to tout students' success while
	hiding actual student performance data and ignoring achievement
	gaps. The disaggregation of data shed great light on the
	growing achievement gaps in this country and called for
	solutions to provide an equal access to quality education for
	all, regardless of economic background, race or ability level.
	Now the national assessment of educational progress, NAEP
	data, showed that the achievement gap in your state of
	Virginia, Dr. Hatrick, has narrowed by race between 2003 and
	2007. Earlier, Ms. Foxx asked if there was anything that you
	are doing now that you wouldn't be doing if it were not
	required by the federal government. Dr. Hatrick, would Virginia
	still be focused on educating all students equally, advantaged
	and disadvantaged, if the required data disaggregation had not
	shed light on the achievement gap?
	And in many instances, as a matter of fact, many school
	systems did not like No Child Left Behind because, even though
	a school system may show that it is sending a large number of
	students to higher education, once you did the disaggregation
	you found that there were really a group of students that were
	definitely being left behind. And it did shed light on this
	situation. So I wonder would Virginia still be focusing--and
	actually, there have been achievement because of the--and I
	wonder whether the achievement would have occurred had it not
	been for the disaggregation that was required by No Child Left
	Behind.
	Mr. Hatrick. Well, Congressman, when I answered the
	question, I wasn't answering for Virginia. I was answering for
	Loudoun County Public Schools. We actually disaggregated and
	reported disaggregated data before No Child Left Behind was a
	law. We realized, because of something I referenced earlier,
	when you are as wealthy and have as high a socioeconomic index
	as we have, children who don't have those same opportunities
	really are in great danger of not succeeding.
	So I think it is very fair to say that probably one of the
	most important change outcomes of the law has been the
	reporting--of disaggregation of data and reporting that. And I
	think it would be fair to say that had the law not been passed,
	practices would not have changed.
	We realized it was too easy--in a place like Loudoun
	County, it was just too easy to be like woebegone. You know?
	And let the overall wonderful performance on average of our
	students mask the issues that we faced. As far as I am
	concerned, that is the signal strength of the law.
	Mr. Payne. Great.
	Anyone else have any comment on that? You all agree?
	Mr. Wilhoit. There is no doubt that No Child Left Behind
	changed the conversation in the country and changed the
	emphasis. And I think in this area, as you think about moving
	forward, you should not abandon this focus on every child and
	adequate transparency in the system in terms of reporting and
	holding folks accountable.
	I think you have an opportunity--now that lots of changes
	have occurred, you have an opportunity to begin to think about
	a new gap definition. And that it is not the difference between
	students in a particular school or within a school district. It
	is the difference between where that student is and where they
	need to be to be successful.
	And I think that is where states have been reflective in
	the last few years about coming to some agreement around what
	students should know and be able to do to have future success.
	And now we can leverage that in terms of reporting actual
	student progress against those targets that we have put in
	place.
	Mr. Payne. Thank you. Thank you very much.
	Mr. Hunter. Thank the gentleman.
	With the witnesses' indulgence, we are going to go through
	one more round of questioning at 3 minutes. And I would like to
	start with the ranking member. Mr. Miller is recognized.
	Mr. Miller. I would hate to leave this hearing with the
	impression that somehow there is not an ongoing effort to try
	to rationalize regulations. It is interesting that other
	administrations by the party--they don't seem to pick up much
	steam.
	I mean, we have already talked about the paperwork
	Reduction Act. Nobody really participated, even though there
	was the promise of long-term relief for short-term intensity of
	reporting, what have you.
	Ed-Flex, 13 governors that came up with nothing, except
	George Bush, who came up with the idea that he was going to
	disaggregate the data for every kid in Texas. Now, the data
	was--the books were cooked a little bit in Houston, but what
	the hell.
	So apparently it can't be left to the party. I know that
	this spring there is a conference on IDEA with the department
	on trying to rationalize and make better the regulations under
	IDEA. And I hope that people will participate in that.
	Just on another point I want to not leave the hearing with
	the question on the unit hour, Mr. Nelson. You know, in 1957, I
	appreciate what Justice Frankfurter said. In 1957, families
	weren't going deep into hock to pay for an education. Most
	families weren't. Middle-class families certainly weren't.
	You know, there was the G.I. bill. But there wasn't the
	Pell grant. There wasn't a loan industry out there at that
	time. We have changed that a little bit here, fortunately.
	But the fact of the matter is I think you have to know we
	are really purchasing something of value with borrowed money,
	either borrowed from the taxpayers or borrowed from the
	families. And you now have an entry of a whole series of
	colleges that come to their creation with a business plan as
	opposed to an education plan, in some instances.
	So when we looked at accreditation last year, we see 12
	units at a $6,000 premium per student, being offered that when
	we go back to the accreditation--we went back to the process
	twice with the inspector general--we see that 12 units was
	offered as graduate work. It was determined it wasn't the
	quality of upper division requirements. In fact, they weren't
	so sure it should have even qualified for lower division.
	But somebody was out $6,000 of their money for that 12
	units in 5 weeks. But they have a plan that says every 5 weeks,
	you have got to roll these students over so you can get the
	units.
	So, you know, you don't want us telling you what to do.
	Well, the university community better start taking
	responsibility for what it is they are presenting to families
	and students who are going into debt and the taxpayer that is
	going into debt to provide his education, what is it that is
	being offered. I am a big fan of the great book series, big
	fan. But what is it that is being offered here in terms of
	value?
	And you could argue the great book is priceless. But it is
	a real serious issue because people--especially when you have a
	completion and attainment rate that is very worrisome where you
	end up with no certificate, no degree, no credential, except
	debt. And that is happening, as we now see these figures--you
	know, because of reporting, we start to see what is happening
	across various segments of the higher education community.
	This is a very worrisome problem because when I went there,
	it was $45 a semester for the whole law school. Okay? That
	wasn't a problem. But it is today. And I just wanted--this
	isn't the place for that discussion. But it is not because we
	are just wandering around looking to stick our nose in people's
	business. But we have people who are ending up with a massive
	amount of debt and no education. And I just want to put that on
	the record.
	Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
	Mr. Hunter. Thank the ranking member.
	And I think when you were paying $45, I wasn't born yet. I
	think it was a long time ago.
	Mr. Miller. Very----
	[Laughter.]
	Mr. Hunter. I would like to ask one last question, going
	back to something that is not very exciting, but data, again.
	When you are looking at data--and I know we are not supposed to
	ask questions we don't know the answer to, as Mr. Andrews would
	probably tell me. So I am getting into hot water here.
	But who, in you all's mind, should be the one to determine
	the standard for the data that is needed or the data about the
	data, the meta-data, if you would? Right?
	Who do you see doing that, the states deciding each for
	themselves and then the federal government having to work
	through whatever standard they recognize? Or would this be
	where there would be a role for the federal government to say,
	hey, here is the standard, here is what we are going to do, we
	are going to bring an SAP or Oracle or whoever, and we are
	going to make sure that everybody's data is just the same and
	we are all asking for the same thing?
	Mr. Hatrick. I think I would go back to the comments I made
	about data quality. I think you have got to get a mixed group.
	It has got to be the practitioners who are going to have to
	provide the data. It has got to be the regulators who know why
	they want the data. And there has to be conversation between--
	communication between those two people.
	Right now, I think a lot of what is happening is somebody
	is talking, and nobody is listening. Or somebody is listening,
	and nobody is talking. I think we have got to get everybody
	around the table and say, first of all, why are we collecting
	this data, what do we--and what will the outcome be. Is the
	outcome to publish a fancy report? Or is the outcome to improve
	education? And that takes the practitioner and the regulator
	working together.
	Mr. Hunter. But technically, though, the data has to be
	standardized in some way. I mean, you would have to have a
	place to--you are going to store it somewhere. It has got to be
	accessed. So who decides what that is?
	Obviously, if you have something--like the NFL has great
	data kept, by the way, because DOD is using the NFL's data
	ability because they have stats on every player from wherever
	back to when they were 3 years old and played Pop Warner,
	right?
	But the way that they do that, it is obviously ruled by the
	NFL. So who decides that? I mean, who--because what you said is
	true, Dr. Hatrick. But who decides what the standardized data
	form is going to be? Is that the state?
	Mr. Hatrick. I think reality will be he who pays gets more
	voice.
	Mr. Nelson. I think it may depend on what the issue is.
	There are all sorts of accountabilities for different laws
	where it would be quite appropriate for that data to be
	collected by the federal government, by the state government.
	But when you are talking about matters of achievement in
	the classroom, it seems to me, that in higher education, it
	would be the accreditors. I think that working together with
	our peers, we have got a pretty good sense of things that work
	and things that don't work. And there is a lot of data that is
	gathered for that purpose. That is where I would put that.
	Mr. Hunter. Thank you.
	Mr. Wilhoit?
	Mr. Wilhoit. The issue of data collection has to--I agree,
	would require coordination among all federal, state, and local.
	But I do think there is a unique responsibility for states to
	come together to bring commonality of reporting from all of
	those local sites. And that requires standard definitions. And
	it requires some sense of agreement around the elements to be
	collected.
	I think the federal government, though, has a
	responsibility to say to the states that in order for you to be
	accountable for the use of resources, we need these kinds of
	data. And it is your responsibility, states, to build this into
	the reporting system. And it is a responsibility for both of us
	to work a system design that would allow that information to
	come up as efficiently and as effectively as possible out of
	the state systems.
	I think there is also this horizontal conversation that
	needs to go on between--among states. It doesn't make sense
	that we all do this separately under different assumptions and
	different definitions. And we are beginning to work together
	across the states to make sure there is more commonality in
	that reporting.
	I think at the federal level, there is a partnership role.
	This is a proposition that needs support in the short-term and
	in the long-term in terms of resourcing. There is this
	federal--as I said, a federal interest in making sure the
	information coming to you is in line with law and is providing
	you the information you need. And so, it needs to be built into
	the system.
	I think there are privacy rights that are a big part of
	this conversation. We need no information coming from beyond
	the district level in terms identifiable information. We need
	systems around FERPA resolved so that we can collect important
	and relevant information, but not in an individualized way from
	individual students, which brings the local community back into
	this conversation.
	But there is a lot of conversation around this, and I think
	something that we would encourage continued interaction so that
	all of us can come together to resolve this issue. We certainly
	need a much better system than we have right now.
	Mr. Hunter. Thank you.
	With that, I would like to thank the witnesses for taking
	time to testify today. And there being no further business, the
	committee stands adjourned.
	[An additional submission of Chairman Kline follows:]

	March 15, 2011.
	Hon. John Kline, Chairman,
	Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of
	Representatives, 2439 Rayburn House Office Building,
	Washington, DC.

	Re: Federal Reporting, Data Collection and Mandates and their Impact on
	Student Achievement
	Dear Chairman Kline: In response to your request during the House
	Education and the Workforce Committee Hearing held on March 1, 2011 on
	federal reporting and data collection requirements, federal mandates
	and their perceived impact on achieving the intended goals of federal
	programs, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), representing
	14,500 local school boards across the nation, is pleased to provide you
	with additional information.
	As you heard from many of the witnesses during the congressional
	hearing, educators, including local school board members, remain
	committed to the goals of providing high quality educational services
	to all students and to fair and accurate accountability measures.
	However, local school board members report that the increasing numbers
	of federal mandates and reporting and data collection requirements are
	too burdensome on local school districts and have little real impact on
	improving teaching or learning.
	In view of your strong interest in examples of such federal
	requirements and mandates, through the use of an informal survey, NSBA
	requested a sample of local school board members to solicit comments
	from their own local program officials regarding current federal
	requirements and their perceived impact on improving student, teacher,
	or principal performance, as applicable.
	This initial informal survey response reflects the views of local
	officials from 62 school districts from urban, rural, and suburban
	areas with a broad range of student enrollments and equally diverse
	populations. Our preliminary review of the informal responses suggests
	great frustration among school district officials regarding many of the
	current federal reporting requirements and mandates. However, even more
	revealing by this informal survey is that when asked what impact these
	federal requirements have on improved performance, their responses
	indicate the following:


	----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Requirement High/good/some impact Little/no impact
	----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Data Collection......................................... 22.9% 76.0%
	Federal Mandates........................................ 48.2% 51.7%
	Reports................................................. 35.3% 64.7%
	----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	We have attached a summary of the specific reports, data collection
	requirements, and federal mandates identified by the respondents and a
	summary of their rationale for eliminating the requirement. Our
	analysis of this data will continue.
	You will note that these requirements are related to specific
	programs such as Title I, have evolved from the last reauthorization of
	the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as the No Child Left
	Behind (NCLB) Act, or are related to Special Education Services under
	the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
	NSBA recognizes that the information we are providng is preliminary
	and anecdotal. However, a review of the specific reporting requirements
	and mandates identified by these local school district program
	officials certainly could be interpreted as a very serious challenge.
	While committed to delivering high-quality educational services, school
	board members are increasingly more concerned as they prepare to face
	significant funding reductions in their operating budgets in the coming
	years.
	Additionally, NSBA continues to advocate for the elimination of
	unnecessary and burdensome data collection and reporting requirements
	and mandates. We urge you and your colleagues to establish the
	following criteria to be met before adopting future data collection and
	reporting requirements:
	1. Data collection requirements should be focused on improved
	student learning and performance.
	2. Data collection requirements should not be duplicative of other
	data requested by the U.S. Department of Education, and to the extent
	feasible, not be duplicative of any data collection required by state
	education agencies (SEA) or local education agencies (LEA).
	3. Data collection requirements should be based in law to preclude
	the expansion of data collection requirements currently mandated by the
	U.S. Department of Education.
	We encourage you to review the summaries of the current federal
	requirements identified as burdensome, as well as their rationale for
	eliminating or modifying such requirements.
	NSBA very much appreciates the opportunity to provide additional
	information regarding federal reporting requirements and mandates. We
	look forward to working with you and your staff in the coming weeks as
	you prepare for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
	Education Act. Questions concerning our survey may be directed to
	Reginald M. Felton, director of federal relations at 703-838-6782, or
	by e-mail, <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="8dffebe8e1f9e2e3cde3feefeca3e2ffea">[email protected]</a>
	Sincerely,
	Michael A. Resnick,
	Associate Executive Director.

	CURRENT FEDERAL DATA COLLECTION OR REPORTING REQUIREMENTS IDENTIFIED AS
	UNNECESSARY OR BURDENSOME BY LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT RESPONDENTS

	A preliminary review of the specific requirements identified as
	being unnecessary or burdensome by individual respondents to the
	informal survey pointing to the kind of reporting requirements that
	should merit further review:
	1. Financial and Personnel Reports related to ARRA, Ed Jobs, and
	SFSF Fund multiple times each year.
	2. Quarterly federal expenditures, including the federal online
	reports related to full time equivalents (FTE).
	3. Reports related to attendance at professional development
	opportunities by paraprofessionals under NCLB.
	4. Reports related to Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under NCLB,
	including school accountability report cards.
	5. Title I Comparability Reports, Title I end-year reports and time
	certification paid with federal funds in whole or in part, and other
	reports regardless of the size of the allocation.
	6. Reports related to Supplemental Education Services and Public
	School Choice under NCLB.
	7. Student Data reports under Carl Perkins Career and Technical
	Program, including reports related to E-Tiger.
	8. E-rate forms such as 470 and 471.
	9. Reports related to Special Education Services that are
	overlapping and duplicative.
	10. Reports related to high school drop-out monitoring,
	particularly for students who have relocated or whose status may have
	changed but unable to confirm.
	11. Reports related to the employment of highly qualified teachers,
	including development plans
	12. Poverty Data collection for private schools under Title I.
	13. Mandates for removing principals when schools are in corrective
	action status under NCLB.
	14. Targeted Assistance School reporting on the Consolidated
	Application
	15. Dietary restrictions that do not take into consideration the
	physical size and age of students
	16. Reports related to Title I parent involvement, including annual
	reviews by parents and site reviews.

	SUMMARY OF RATIONALE OFFERED BY LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT RESPONDENTS
	REGARDING UNNECESSARY OR BURDENSOME REQUIREMENTS

	While the respondents offered specific rational for viewing their
	identified requirements as unnecessary or burdensome on local school
	districts, their major concerns could be grouped into the following
	areas:
	1. Much of the data is duplicative and redundant therefore wasting
	very limited staff resources that could be re-directed to improving
	student performance. Separate federal programs require the collection
	of very similar data but on different cycles requiring costly data
	management support teams and hardware.
	2. Many districts have significantly reduced non-instructional
	personnel resulting in far fewer resources to complete the required
	reports.
	3. The frequency in the collection of the data needs to be
	reassessed. Even when the data are important, quarterly collection of
	data that simply reaffirms the presence of deficiencies cannot be
	corrected on a quarterly basis.
	4. Much of the data collected is based on unreliable and invalid
	student assessments resulting in inaccurate representation of the
	student, school, and school district performance
	5. Much of the data requested is simply unrealistic. For example,
	data regarding the value of professional development on student
	performance requires staff expertise that is not available or
	subjective judgments that cannot be made.
	6. The significant amount of staff time required to complete
	reporting requirements is often inversely related to the amount of the
	grant, since no minimum thresholds are established in terms of award
	and the cost to prepare the required reports.
	7. There is little relationship between the data or reporting
	requirement and improvements in student learning.
	______

	[An additional submission of Mr. Wilhoit follows:]

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	[Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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