Remarks to the AFT QuEST Conference
July 12, 2001

Dear friends and colleagues. Welcome to QuEST 2001. It’s an honor and privilege to speak to you this afternoon and to see so many of you here today. Who, but our AFT teachers, would decide after completing another grueling school year that they’d find rest and relaxation during their vacation months in hotel meeting rooms instead of the beach, in discussion groups instead of the movie house, or talking incessantly about how to improve schools instead of how to improve their backhand? Here you are at QuEST, drinking in new knowledge instead of Pina Coladas, and now, at this moment, you get to hear from me instead of the cruise director.

I’m sure the same goes for the tens of thousands of our colleagues who aren’t here at QuEST but are nevertheless rollicking away their vacations, too, at other professional conferences, or taking courses, or planning and gathering materials for next year’s lessons, all in the interest of constantly adding to what they know and can do for their students.

Of course, too many of our colleagues won’t have the opportunity to take part in professional development this summer. They went straight from the classroom to another full-time job, many of them after also working two jobs during the school year… BECAUSE THEY CAN’T SUPPORT THEIR FAMILIES ON A TEACHER’S SALARY. But just like you, they don’t ever stop thinking like a teacher. I know. I meet them all the time, working in department stores, at airports, as temps in offices, driving taxis – all over – and I can reliably report that they are engaged in their own kind of professional development over the summer. They always tell me how they’re going to incorporate some of their on-the-job summer experience into their classrooms in the fall. Because the classroom is where they really want to be and that’s where their hearts will always be. I often wish that the pundits and politicians who are so quick to criticize us would have to spend at least a week in a classroom on THEIR summer vacations.

Today, I’m going to be making some important proposals for early childhood education – proposals that I feel strongly can help close the achievement gap between poor and middle class students.

But before I get there, I just want to say something about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; which, of course, has a strong bearing on that gap.

Politicians and pundits are fresh on my mind because in the past few months, I have been walking the halls of Congress working on the reauthorization of the Act, particularly Title I of the law, which as you know, is the centerpiece of the federal government’s investment in the education of needy children.

And while the new Title I will not be as good as it should have been, I’m glad to report it will not be as bad as it could have been. And you made the difference. The thousands of letters and e-mails that poured in from parents and teachers to Capitol Hill; the undaunted efforts of our friends in Congress from both sides of the aisle who fought the good fight, sometimes into the wee hours of the night; and the help of our hard-working and very small AFT staff. And now, that same staff is busy figuring out how all of us can begin to deal with the shortcomings to make it work in our schools.

I won’t discuss the details, just what will be most different in the new law: The requirement that states test all children in grades 3-8.

Now, there’s no question that testing, good testing, is an essential part of making sure standards are taken seriously, instruction is continually improved, and parents and the public are kept informed. There’s also no question that testing has prompted many of our states to pay greater attention to the needs of struggling students and even to invest a bit more in them.

But let’s face it. Testing is hardly revolutionary. Our students are already the most tested kids on earth. And if anyone thinks that testing alone will improve performance or close the achievement gap, think again. Testing doesn’t improve achievement; it can only report on it, and, as we’ve seen, not always accurately. Testing can also tell us where help is needed, and if the tests are good enough, and the results are given to teachers in a timely fashion, and used in professional development – which, unfortunately, is rarely the case – tests can also tell us how to HELP students.

Well, we’re going to have to make sure that the tests are good enough and that school staff and students can benefit from their results instead of just being labeled winners or losers.

And while there’s some federal money for testing, it’s a fraction of what is necessary for that many NEW tests, let alone GOOD tests.

We’re continuing to work with the Congress as the bill goes to conference, to find a way to prevent the new testing requirements from undermining, rather than supporting, teaching and learning; to avoid layer upon layer of tests that crowd out time for teaching or learning.

We’re also working on untangling some of the more draconian aspects of the accountability provisions in the new law. Like testing, accountability is necessary and legitimate, and despite some of the abuses we’ve seen, we firmly support it and will continue to work to make sure it is fair. In fact, we’d like to see accountability extended to officials who have the real power over our schools, so maybe they’d do more of the right things more of the time!

But, if anyone thinks that either the most threatening or even the most fair accountability system will close the achievement gap, think again. Accountability definitely helps to focus one’s attention and efforts, but that alone, will not produce better teaching. It’s the help that educators get that improves student achievement: Like high-quality professional development and first-rate curriculum and instructional materials; like being able to implement programs that have been proven to raise our students’ achievement. Like fair discipline policies and their enforcement and quality, alternative settings for violent and chronically disruptive students; and yes, like doing what’s necessary to attract and retain qualified teachers for all our kids, which means providing teachers the professional salaries and working conditions they deserve!

In short, improving student achievement means heeding the most solid evidence available about what really works, and that includes reducing class size!

Now, one of the things we successfully fought off, is any sort of voucher “experiment.” But the law does give states and districts more flexibility, and that means the flexibility either to do the right things – that is, to do “what works,” – or the wrong things.

I’d feel a whole lot better about this new flexibility if states and districts had a good track record, because, frankly, we ourselves have never had any use for the kind of rigidity and regulations that get in the way of doing the best possible job of educating kids. Unfortunately, they don’t have a good track record. We know that when states had more flexibility in the past, they used it to divert federal resources away from the children for whom those resources were intended. So we’re going to have to watch this vigilantly and blow the whistle at the first sign of a problem.

We’d also be more confident about how states and districts will use their flexibility if they were already doing a good job of helping low-performing schools. But, for the most part, they are not. According to a U.S. Department of Education report on Title I, only 47 percent of principals in schools identified as needing improvement said they received any assistance. Even worse, only 30 percent of principals in schools identified as low performing for three years reported receiving help. As the study rather gently concluded, “many states and districts cannot or do not provide low-performing schools with the help they need to turn around performance.”

Well, at least under the new Title I, school staff won’t be the only ones held accountable; states will also be held accountable, and the accountability of districts also will be increased.
* * * *
Now, having said all this, let me turn to what I really want to talk to you about today, about what has haunted me throughout this experience…about what has been lost in the discussion and political machinations…and what is the very purpose and meaning of Title I. From its inception, this was an effort by the federal government to help level the playing field for disadvantaged children in the poorer school districts across the nation.

And what has been lost in the discussion of how to measure progress, how to crack the whip, how to reward and punish…is the vision Lyndon Johnson had about the role and responsibility of the federal government to ensure the right of every American child to a decent quality education by putting its resources into the cracks and crevices of a terribly unequal system – to bring a measure of equity and accountability to the neediest children.

And over the last four decades, the federal investment has helped – and we have the evidence to prove it. The achievement gap has been significantly narrowed; reading and math scores are up; more young people are going on to college; public schools are keeping pace with the explosion of knowledge in this new Information Age. There is much more to learn today, and our teachers are teaching it – our students are learning it.

But, my friends, we also know that the achievement gap is still unacceptably large. And that federal investment over the years has been grossly insufficient to narrow inequities, let alone to solve the problems of poverty.

Yes, what goes undiscussed, what lurks in the shadows…is the specter of poverty…the harm and hurt of it…the Herculean effort poor children and their schools, their teachers have to make to prevail over the conditions of their lives; their unsafe neighborhoods…their lack of health care, their inadequate housing… the substandard wages paid their parents.
Instead, we get as someone said to me recently, the poverty Poster Child…the subject of slogans and million dollar ad campaigns…instead of a candid discussion of what is obvious – not just here in America where it is particularly inexcusable because of our wealth – but across the world; and that is, that poor children need a great deal more than they are getting.

They need more than their parents can give them…in a time when visions of designer clothes and expensive cars are all around them; when respect isn’t given their teachers but corporate CEOs [and movie stars] make many millions of dollars beyond what their entire neighborhood of needy families could use for health care. Love, which poor families often have in abundance, is not enough.

When they see gated communities that shut them out, and they live in neglected streets; when they see private health clubs on TV, and the parks and community centers in their neighborhoods are overcrowded and underfunded like their schools, our kids who are smart and sophisticated – even if they’re not on grade level – know something is wrong and they are affected by it.

Indeed, there is nothing wrong with our kids.

But there is something very wrong with our society.

To our nation’s shame, the United States, the wealthiest nation on earth, has the highest level and degree of childhood poverty in the advanced industrialized world. We did make some progress in the last few years of the Clinton Administration toward reducing child poverty. But, my friends, that now appears to have been only a brief interlude. Instead of directing tax dollars to continuing the battle on behalf of poor children, the President and the Congress instead chose to squander that money over the next decade by giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

As a result, the latest version of Title I, which is, I repeat, the only major federal program specifically designed to address the education of poor children – doesn’t provide the level of resources necessary to compensate for the inequality of educational spending between needy and advantaged children. Title I still doesn’t even provide for all children who are eligible.

Yet, Title I is still expected to level that playing field, to reduce the achievement gap all of us know exists on average between poor and middle-class kids. The mythology extends to the notion that we can achieve equal education through testing, accountability, and flexibility. In other words, that we’ve cured the patient just by making the diagnosis.

So: We will have to continue our fight – and take it to the next level. We’ll continue to fight to make the standards movement work, because it is improving achievement, including the achievement of poor children across the country, thanks largely to the hard work of the people in this room and the dedication and sheer grit of our colleagues – and the kids – out there.

In fact, what schools and educators are producing for disadvantaged students is remarkable, especially in light of how underfunded most schools are in poor districts.

Now, this is not to say that disadvantaged students are doing as well as other students. Clearly, they are not. And it’s not to say that there aren’t any schools failing in their responsibility, because if there weren’t, we in the AFT wouldn’t be working so hard to fix them.

But there’s also no question that the charge that all schools that educate poor children, let alone all our public schools, are failing – is a total myth. The truth is schools are adding even more value – to use the lingo of the day – to needy students than to the rest of our students.

So what, my friends, is going wrong? What is causing the achievement gap to persist? One of the main answers can be found in the 68 percent of a child’s waking hours outside of school versus the 32 percent spent in school. For most poor children, in sharp contrast to most advantaged children, that 68 percent of time outside of school does not produce the kind of learning that supports and extends academic achievement.

Let me quote from the studies done by Doris Entwisle and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins University because they are the premier researchers in this area: “…children from poor and middle-class families make comparable gains during the school year, but while the middle-class children make gains when they are out of school during the summer, poor and disadvantaged children make few gains, or even move backwards academically.”

My friends…it’s time for candor and honesty about poverty and its effects on children in school. Because with all their problems and shortcomings, our schools are making a huge and positive difference, especially for disadvantaged youngsters.

But what they have been unable to do is overcome the fact that the families of poor children can’t afford extra tutoring, computers, museum trips, or summer camp. They live in neighborhoods with few wholesome activities available to children, and not only does academic-type learning stop, but the gains our schools have achieved with them are eroded. And it’s this brutal consequence of poverty – and not our much-maligned public schools – that has to be addressed as a major cause of the achievement gap!

Until the other institutions of our society step up to the plate to enable poor neighborhoods and families – who care every bit as much about their kids as other families – to give their kids the supports for learning outside of school, our schools must once again take up the slack.

So: One great use states and districts can make of the flexibility of funding in Title I is to extend the school day and year in low-performing schools in districts that have high concentrations of poverty, so that the academic gains that our schools are already producing for poor children are accelerated and sustained.

The evidence on behalf of doing so could not be more compelling. In fact, many AFT districts have already negotiated these kinds of arrangements with success. It is doable.

It is also expensive. Federal funds will not go far enough to implement the kind of quality program children need widely enough -- and pay the good union wages we’ll insist on, for staffing it. So, we intend to pull together and fight very hard to secure more federal funding for quality extended days for our kids.

For the summer component especially, other federal, state and local agencies can step up to the plate. For example, those dealing with public health or housing or parks and recreation. Because an extended year for poor children who need it does not mean summer school that’s primarily about drilling for tests. It means rich academic activities that also involve the kinds of cultural, athletic, and other stimulating activities that advantaged children routinely receive in their communities and from their parents because they, unlike poor communities and families, can afford to do so. So yes – we’ll fight to make sure that poor children get what they so richly deserve, as well!

But to close the achievement gap, we need to go even further, and we can. That’s why it’s time to turn, seriously, to early childhood education.

The largest nationally representative study ever conducted on the subject, started a few years ago, by the National Center for Education Statistics, examined the school readiness skills, as well as the health and social skills, of young children right at the onset of kindergarten. The results came out this past year and got very little attention.

The good news is that most youngsters – in fact, the vast majority – are healthy at the onset of kindergarten and have the pre-academic and social skills that are the foundation for solid achievement when they start elementary school. The bad news, which will be no surprise to the educators in this room, is that a small but significant percentage of our young children, primarily poor children, are in poor health, and have neither the pre-literacy or pre-math or social skills that more advantaged youngsters already have at the beginning of kindergarten.

This is not because these youngsters are incapable of acquiring those skills, because, clearly, they are capable. It is because they, unlike more advantaged kids, just haven’t been exposed to the kinds of experiences that produce them.

But the news gets better, much better. The study followed up with the children at the end of their kindergarten year, and by then, the kids who were behind at the beginning of the year had fully caught up academically. Now, given where they were when they started, this means these youngsters made more than a year’s progress in just one school year. So let’s have a warm round of applause for America’s kindergarten teachers!

But, as you’ve probably figured out, at the same time as poor children were making great strides as a result of kindergarten, the other kids were moving, too, as they should be. Moreover, these more advantaged kids also had the benefit of a variety of out-of-school learning experiences. As a result, these youngsters, on average, had acquired more higher-order skills than poor youngsters had, because as terrific a job as our kindergarten teachers did, they couldn’t – how could they? – compensate for what poor youngsters, by virtue of their poverty, couldn’t get outside of school.

Well, once again, the path toward closing the achievement gap becomes clear. For starters, let’s guarantee every child full-day kindergarten, because that is far from the case now in this richest nation on earth!

But I want to go even further than that. It’s time that we really get it right from the start. And so, today, I am proposing that this country make high-quality pre-school education, starting at the age of three, universally available—not compulsory, but accessible and affordable to all—with first priority given to needy children!

A few communities are doing this. But we need a national commitment. And we have a basis on which to do it already.

Head Start will soon be up for reauthorization. We must fully fund it so it not only covers all eligible children, but also provides them with a high-quality program, including the health, social services and parent involvement components now present in Head Start. The evaluations tell us that these components are as important to our children’s success as getting them academically ready, which, as many Head Start officials are the first to admit, still needs beefing up in many Head Start programs.

And then, I am proposing that we use Head Start as the foundation for an early childhood education system that is accessible and affordable to any family that wants to use it! There is hardly a working family in America, whether poor or middle-class, who hasn’t experienced the anxiety of finding quality early childhood education and care for its children. We all know the gut-wrenching stories of families forced to leave their children with relatives or even strangers, knowing that videos will be their child’s primary fare for the day. We all know about families lucky enough to find a decent private pre-school. But we also know many of them have to defer saving for their children’s college education because their pre-school costs are almost as much as a college tuition.

In this richest nation on earth, achieving universal access to early childhood education is doable. Many European countries already do it, and over 90 percent of families participate, with the government paying 70 percent of the overall cost. In France early childhood education for three to five year-olds is totally free. Moreover, their pre-school teachers receive the same rigorous education as their formal school teachers do – and the same salary. The paraprofessionals who work in their program are trained and decently paid, as well. And that’s how we must do it here, too, in order to ensure the quality we are now lacking!

Let me point out that France manages to enjoy both high average achievement and the smallest achievement gap among the advanced industrialized nations. So, can we afford to do as well by our young children as France and other nations do, and still be the richest nation on earth? We can’t afford not to!

In the midst of a teacher shortage, by the way, we can bring qualified teachers back from childcare leave by establishing quality early childhood centers in hard-to-staff schools, and allowing them to enroll their own young children along with neighborhood kids. This was done for a brief time years ago, and it worked. We should do it again.

Here’s a practical, affordable proposal for how to establish a universal program: Cost-sharing. By that I mean, first, leveraging federal, state, and local funds to establish the quality system we need and also to pay the costs for poor families who want to enroll their children in preschool, which should be the first priority for funding. Second, by cost sharing I mean asking families who can pay and who want their children in these quality pre-schools to pay according to a reasonable schedule of sliding-scale fees.

Here are the many worthy things this cost-sharing proposal would accomplish. First, it would make building and running such a system affordable for the nation. Second, it would give poor children the access to high-quality early childhood education that they are now largely denied—the preventive medicine they need to compete. Third, working and middle-class families would get a higher-quality early childhood arrangement at less cost, something they desperately want. And fourth, because the loud call for quality early childhood education is coming from families from all walks of life, then if the call is answered, it could mean that children of all backgrounds would be able to learn together right from the start. Indeed, answering the need that America’s families share in common could go a long way toward repairing America’s sadly frayed social fabric and giving some real meaning to family and civic values. And, what, after all, could be more important than realizing the promise of this great democracy?

My friends, I’ve kept you longer than I should have.

And you’ve been kind enough to stay.

Of course – I know why. You’re here for the same reason I am. Because you believe, as I do, that education is the best passport out of poverty that we have. It opens doors for youngsters no matter where they come from or how their families live. Because you care…you care about our children and their education…you want our schools and our teachers and our paras to get what they need to do the best that can be done for them.

And I’m here to tell you that AFT is on your side every step of the way. Have a great QuEST, get some rest, and have some fun, too. Remember, you’re on vacation!