▶ 0:17:06Chair Cassidy: The senate committee will please come to order. Education is important. To say that is like why do you even have to say it? You can lift an entire family and the generations that come after out of poverty. It gives the children, grandchildren, everyone else more opportunity than they would otherwise have.
▶ 0:17:29Chair Cassidy: On both sides of the day us we are both interested in how the american people can achieve the american dream and education has the power to do that. But not every child has an equal opportunity for quality education. Which is to say that the status quo isn't working for everyone. We need something a bit different.
▶ 0:17:54Chair Cassidy: As testimony, the scores from the 2024 national assessment of education progress for the lowest we've seen in 30 years. Only one third of high school seniors had a proficient reading level. Nearly 60% of employers say that high school graduates are not job ready. Some of my colleagues will say that we just need to throw more money at it. We tried that. It actually didn't work.
▶ 0:18:24Chair Cassidy: So, during covid, billions, literally billions were given to school systems. Yet these scores stayed low. The idea that this is solely a resource issue defies experience. Who are you going to believe? You're lying eyes? Our eyes tell us it didn't work. School choice is the avenue for expressing innovation that we need to meet a student's need to.
▶ 0:18:54Chair Cassidy: Education is not one-size-fits-all. The status quo overlooks students who fit differently. So, there is a demand for innovative approaches to teaching children with specific and sometimes complex needs. Some public charter schools, some charter and private schools, other private and parochial schools are doing this . Full disclosure, my wife, Dr. laura cassidy, has a public charter school designed to serve children with dyslexia.
▶ 0:19:24Chair Cassidy: The curriculum provides early and necessary interventions to support the students who are struggling to read. Students who at a traditional school just cannot comprehend. But they are bright. If you speak to them as they need to be spoken to, if you will, teach them as they need to be taught to learn, they will achieve their fullest potential. That should be our goal with every child, but it takes innovation.
▶ 0:19:50Chair Cassidy: Other school like the ohio oakmont center and the sale future academy, I wish I had been a teenager at the sale future academy, specializing in meeting at risk students where they are to improve their academic achievement. I am also impressed with the st.
▶ 0:20:07Chair Cassidy: George municipal school unit in maine, providing hands-on learning and trades supporting the local economy, such as book building, one woodworking, metalwork, and other aspects of technology. You can imagine that those of employers would say the high school graduate is job ready, because it's innovation. These types of schools with more tailored education should be accessible to all and school choice does that.
▶ 0:20:34Chair Cassidy: It puts the parent in charge of the child's education, allowing them to choose the educational pathway. The innovation that best speaks to their child's need. By the way, I went to a traditional public high school, all the way down. It worked well. My son went to an inner-city public high school and it has worked extremely well.
▶ 0:21:03Chair Cassidy: The traditional schools work for many students. What we are asking, though, is to give parents a choice if it doesn't. So, if the child is struggling and if there is a teacher there and she has got this great idea, some innovative idea that can meet that struggling child has needs, we should empower her to go out and start that school that meets that niche for those types of students.
▶ 0:21:32Chair Cassidy: Now, sometimes when you begin to speak of this, we just break into kind of know, yes, no, yes. Let's point out the positive impact that school choice has on public schools. When you empower parents with choice, they choose the educational system best for them. Prompting lower performing schools to improve. Healthy competition drives results. It's a win-win. That's been demonstrated in school systems.
▶ 0:22:02Chair Cassidy: Our children deserve the best chance for success. I'm a parent, I'm a grandparent. I want my grandson to have the best opportunity to achieve his potential. But everyone can say that of their children and grandchildren.
▶ 0:22:19Chair Cassidy: I am proud to say that the provisions for my educational choice for children act included in the residence of historic working families tax cuts further enables parents to supplement their child's education. And if they are in a failing school, be able to choose a school that succeeds for that child or to get some afterschool tutoring if that is what they need to increase their opportunities. By the way, this is not partisan. At least not among the people.
▶ 0:22:50Chair Cassidy: The american people want school choice. It's supported by nearly three quarters of k-12 parents. Republicans overwhelmingly support more than half of self identified democrats support as well. It is not about public versus private were teachers versus parents. Not about republicans versus democrats.
▶ 0:23:10Chair Cassidy: It's about giving a parent access to that innovative educational program that is best for a child so that her child can maximize her talents are his talents and achieve their dreams. With that, I recognize senator sanders.
▶ 0:23:25Sen. Sanders: Thank you, Mr. chairman, for holding this hearing. You began your remarks by saying that it is self-evident that education is important. You are right, of course it is. Let's back up but understand that not only is education, but the children of this nation, the future of our country, are also important.
▶ 0:23:47Sen. Sanders: We have to ask why in the richest country in the world we have the highest rates of child poverty of almost any nation on earth. Millions of kids are struggling to get the basic nutrition they need. We have to ask ourselves why in the richest country on earth hour child care system is completely broken and dysfunctional. While millions of people are leaving school, if they are able to go to college, deeply in debt.
▶ 0:24:14Sen. Sanders: Does that sound like a nation that believes in its kids and actually believes in the importance of education? If we believe in the importance of education, why are we paying teachers in some cases 35,000, $40,000 a year. Do you think you will attract the best and brightest question mark it really excited, want to teach kids -- you are paying me $40,000 and I'm graduating $50,000 in debt? Really?
▶ 0:24:41Sen. Sanders: Does that suggest the nation prizes and cherishes the importance of education? I think not. More to the point, in terms of this hearing, the chairman made the point that there was once a time, let's not forget it, when the united states was the best educated country on earth. We led the world and percentage of adults with college degrees. Ok question mark best educated. We are no longer number one.
▶ 0:25:11Sen. Sanders: Today we are in 11th place. Countries all over the world, poorer than us, doing a better job in understanding that their kids need a great education. One of the reasons for that is that our students are woefully unprepared for higher education. Today the U.S. ranks 28 out of 37 developed countries in science, math, and reading.
▶ 0:25:38Sen. Sanders: There are a number of things that we can attribute in terms of strengthening and determining education. I think there's widespread agreement on that. Let me tell you something I believe we should not be doing. We should not be creating a two-tier education system in america. Private schools for the wealthy and well-connected and severely underfunded and under resourced public schools for low income, disabled, and working-class kids .
▶ 0:26:07Sen. Sanders: Unfortunately, that is precisely what the administration and my republican colleagues in congress are doing. The so-called big beautiful bill included provisions for an estimated $51 billion per year, a lot of money, to expand private school vouchers in america, more than the individuals with disabilities and education act and title I combined, the same bill that we recall gave $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1% at a time of massive income and wealth
▶ 0:26:39Sen. Sanders: Inequality. Let me be clear, we should not be taking money out of our nation's public schools in order to give a massive tax break to billionaires. We should not be taking money from public schools and giving it a private schools. They get to pick and choose which students to teach. Private schools that reject students because they have a disability. Private schools reject students because of their religion. Private schools reject students based on the income of their families.
▶ 0:27:10Sen. Sanders: Mr. chairman, it costs an average of $11,600 for a middle school or to attend a private school in america. That is the average. In many private schools it's 30,000, 50,000, or even more per year. Meanwhile, the average private school voucher is just 41 thousand dollars.
▶ 0:27:32Sen. Sanders: You tell me how a working class family making 45,000, $50,000 per year, how are they going to come up with the extra $28,000 they need to send their kid to a private school? Instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires into moving to privatize public schools, we should be doing exactly the opposite. That's not just what bernie sanders believes, it happens to be the view of the american people in state after state.
▶ 0:27:59Sen. Sanders: Since 1967, there have been 18 state ballot initiatives to create private school vouchers. 18. Voters have rejected every single one. Including 65% of the voters in kentucky and 57% of the voters in nebraska in 2024. Today I release a report on the consequences of state voucher programs run by private entities.
▶ 0:28:28Sen. Sanders: It finds that on average, vouchers only cover 39% of private school tuition and that nearly half of private schools that accept vouchers deny admission to students with disabilities or limit how many students with disabilities they serve. It finds that 17% of religious schools charge families extra tuition based on their religious beliefs, among many other things.
▶ 0:28:51Sen. Sanders: In other words, in voucher programs the real quote unquote choice belongs to private schools, not working class families. Incredibly, Mr. chairman, even a student to achievement declines, private schools do not have to show results to parents or the public. They don't have to report test scores, voucher programs don't even require teachers to be credentialed. Studies of the vouchers in louisiana, ohio, and washington, D.C.
▶ 0:29:18Sen. Sanders: Shows students using vouchers perform worse academically, not better. That's unacceptable. Bottom line, in my view we should strengthen and expand public education. The foundation of american democracy. Black, white, rich, poor kids, come together in one room, not privatizing education. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 0:29:43Chair Cassidy: The choice for children's act did not take money away from public schools, to be clear. Now I think, john hugh stead, senator husted, will introduce his witness.
▶ 0:29:57Senator Husted: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I have the honor and opportunity of joining you in celebrating national school choice week with a fellow iowan, witness, and someone I have known for a while and working on education policy in ohio, cris gulacy-worrel. She is a first generation cuban-american will that incredible story to share on the role of education and school choice.
▶ 0:30:27Senator Husted: Specifically the role it played in her life. Ms. gulacy-worrel is a graduate of columbus state university college and malone university in ohio before later getting her masters degree from northwestern. Ms.
▶ 0:30:43Senator Husted: Gulacy-worrel is a dedicated , has dedicated her professional life to improving alternative education options for ohioans, including their time at the ohio department of education and most recently she served as the vice president and part of the founding team for oakmont education, a nationally recognized network of dropout recovery public charter schools serving 5500 nontraditional
▶ 0:31:14Senator Husted: Learners across ohio, iowa, and michigan. I visited one of her schools in cleveland. Oakmont provides a comprehensive academic model with an individualized self-paced program that is responsive to the needs of each students and offers 15 different industrial credentials including skilled trades, community health and wellness, and business and entrepreneurship.
▶ 0:31:39Senator Husted: The training focuses on real-world experience for in demand jobs in essential fields, training that empowers graduates to earn a sustainable living wage in high demand careers without college debt. Thank you, chris, for joining us today. I will just tell you that she genuinely cares about the future of our children, particularly those that come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Thank you for being here today.
▶ 0:32:09Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Thank you. Chairman cassidy, ranking member standards, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Thank you to senator husted for the introduction and being a tireless champion of school choice, first in ohio and melanie national stage. I would also like to thank jenny allen for her guidance through this process. My name is cris gulacy-worrel, founding member and vice president of oakmont education.
▶ 0:32:38Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: My mother fled communist cuba with nothing but the clothes on her back and my father spent his career as an electrician at general motors and they taught me that in america where you start doesn't have to be review and. But my path was not linear. As a teenager, I struggled and learn firsthand what happens when systems fail the young people they are supposed to serve. I know what it feels like to be overlooked, underestimated, and failed. That's exactly why I do this work.
▶ 0:33:06Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: At oakmont we serve over 5500 students across ohio, iowa, and michigan. Over age, under credited, written off. Through our career technical education model they get credentials and engage and work-based learning that connects them directly to employers in their community. Last year we graduated 1309 students and placed over 4500 young people directly into the workforce over the last three years alone.
▶ 0:33:34Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: But oakmont doesn't exist in isolation. We are a part of an education landscape rewriting was possible for students and families across the country, which is what I'm here to talk about, what school choice really is. For far too long we have been told that school choice is about esa or public charter. It's not. What we are really talking about is educational plurality, a system with room for many models and pathways to success.
▶ 0:34:02Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Schools, yes, but educational tech platforms, micro schools, and advocacy organizations and fighting for the families who have been ignored for too long. This space is more diverse than people realize and it is growing every day. As a fellow oh already had the privilege of seeing this national landscape up close, meeting founders come -- founders, visiting schools, watching students transform. States empower these organizations to meet the kids where they are, everyone wins.
▶ 0:34:33Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: The litigant -- leading innovators in this space are sector agnostic and student centered. They don't ask what type of school the child needs, they asked with the child needs and then build it. Putting foster youth on international sailing expeditions with coast guard credentials and something harder to measure, hope. Arizona autism charter schools prove that neurodivergent learners don't just cope but thrive when someone builds a school designed for them.
▶ 0:35:00Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: The chesterton schools network is a network of 70 catholic high schools across the country that are affordable, parent lead, offering families an option that didn't even exist 15 years ago. In the rural schools innovation zone, five texas public districts came together to share career academies so that rural students had the same access to the opportunity as the kids in dallas or houston.
▶ 0:35:26Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: And ai power gaming to connect students to career pathways and beyond. These are the tips of the iceberg. I'm honored to serve as the board chair of freedom to choose schools, a black and brown lead organization cofounded by howard fuller and steve perry. We stand with the people building what they know their communities need. At the end of the day, it is not about which schools the family chooses, it's about having the option to choose at all.
▶ 0:35:57Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: But ties it all together across sectors, states, and models is one thing, students who matter more than systems. The opportunity that we have here is rare. A chance to support and education marketplace that truly supports every child. Not just the ones who fit in the vox. That will never happen if we stay in the silo. No single sector organization or political party can do this alone. The good news is that we don't have to start from scratch.
▶ 0:36:26Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: We have incredible people building solutions for decades. It's time that we joined them and I think it's time. I welcome your questions.
▶ 0:36:42Senator: I will go ahead and begin with the next introduction of our next witness. It's a great pleasure and privilege to introduce my friend, Mr. john kirtley, from the great free state of florida, with a long history and has been a champion advocate for kids that have unique education needs and making sure we are providing real opportunities to serve kids to reach their full potential.
▶ 0:37:06Senator: In fact, florida has been on a journey to reach where we are today, to adopting universal school choice. He has been a large part of that progress. We are not one -- only one of the first states to have universal choice, but we are ranked repeatedly number one in educational freedom.
▶ 0:37:32Senator: He will go into this and why he does this and what drives him and what set him on this journey , but he's been a voice and advocate for this in florida and I'm proud to say that since around 2000 when we were at a 60% graduation rate, this year we are at its highest level ever, with graduation rates, including all of this not one-size-fits-all approach but unique needs-based approach to a 92% graduation rate.
▶ 0:37:58Senator: He has had a large part in developing policies that lead to that success and is currently the chairman of step up for students, a nonprofit that administers 500,000 k-12 scholarships in florida, including our tax credit scholarship. He serves as vice chairman of the american federation for children, a nonprofit that education choice that advocates and serves education choice throughout the country.
▶ 0:38:25Senator: He has served as a keystone force in creating the florida tax credit scholarship, the basis of the educational choice for children act that became law under the trunk working family tax-cut act. He not only serves as a model in our state, but within his own family. His daughter is a teacher, following in that passion, serving in a school right here in the D.C. area. John, thank you for being here today and serving as a witness.
▶ 0:38:55Senator: You may begin your introduction.
▶ 0:38:57John: Thank you's -- Mr.
▶ 0:39:00Kirtley: Good morning. Thank you for the invitation, I appreciate it. It says talk? There we go. In the mid-1990's, the state of florida began a journey that would change the very definition of public education in our state. Until that time, the definition of public education in florida was pretty simple. You raise taxpayer dollars to educate children, give every penny to the school districts.
▶ 0:39:27Kirtley: School districts run all the schools in a fairly uniform manner. Then we assign kids by zip code. That was public education in florida. That remains the definition in many states today. But is that the best definition for today? Think of the miami-dade school district. 300,000 students. Over 150 languages are spoken in those classrooms.
▶ 0:39:53Kirtley: If you drive from say overtown to coral gables, you will see tremendous economic diversity as well. Now, is a one-size-fits-all top-down assign kids by zip code system, is that going to be the best system that ensures success for every single student? Probably not. Fortunately, over the last 30 years, florida has been moving towards a new definition of public education.
▶ 0:40:22Kirtley: Raise taxpayer dollars to educate children, that empower families to direct the dollars to different providers and even different delivery methods that best suit their individual children's learning needs. Florida has fully embraced this new definition. We now have about 3 million kids k-12 whose educations are paid for by the taxpayers. Now over 50% do not attend their zoned district school.
▶ 0:40:50Kirtley: In miami-dade, our largest district, the figure is over 70% . What is really encouraging to me is that the largest category of choice are district run schools of choice. Magnets, open enrollment. Our districts in florida are responding to competition and creating alternatives that families want to choose.
▶ 0:41:16Kirtley: We also have one of the robust -- most robust charter school markets and our leaders in online education in florida. Once again, miami-dade led the way. 2008, alberto cavallo became superintendent. He didn't complain about education choice. Rather he said -- choice is a wave that we are going to ride. Write it, they did.
▶ 0:41:42Kirtley: Miami-dade has created over 100 magnet schools in its district and many are recognized as the best in the country. We also have over 100 50 charter schools in the district and over 400 private schools serving kids on scholarships. Many of them in low income areas.
▶ 0:42:03Kirtley: Florida has made a full transition to this new definition of public education and now in our state, every single k-12 student can, if they want, get an education savings account every year from the taxpayers. They can use the account to pay for private school tuition and other approved educational products and services.
▶ 0:42:30Kirtley: Florida now has half a million children on these esa's and 100,000 of them don't attend school full-time. Their parents are customizing children's education by purchasing educational products and services. As these have grown in florida, our state has become a hotbed of innovation. People creating alternatives to deliver educational services.
▶ 0:42:55Kirtley: Because parents can disaggregate the funds, meaning they don't just have to use it all in one place to get tuition at one school, we are seeing hundreds of really innovative education providers being created in our state. Just one example? A marine biologist started a small business to educate 200 kids, mostly homeschoolers, out in the wild giving science lessons. This new definition is also creating opportunities for public school educators.
▶ 0:43:24Kirtley: Over the last two decades we have seen hundreds of public school educators create their own schools, particularly in low income areas. They can do this because even now, low income parents have purchasing power that is provided to them from the scholarship programs. Another encouraging development? Public school districts are recognizing that they have products and services that scholarship families want to buy .
▶ 0:43:51Kirtley: In the last year, 48 out of 67 school districts in florida have either come on the online platform or are in the process of doing so in order to sell products and services to scholarship families. One of the most critical developments in the floridian journey to this definition of public education was the creation of tax credit scholarships in 2001. The program works just like the federal program that was just past.
▶ 0:44:20Kirtley: It was critical in bringing choice to low income families in florida. As the program grew steadily over the years, it demonstrated how much families value this empowerment. When a lawsuit threatened to shut it down in 2013, 10,000 people traveled to our distant capital of tallahassee to support the program. Thank you very much.
▶ 0:44:46Chair Cassidy: Senator sanders?
▶ 0:44:48Sen. Sanders: I'm happy to introduce marisol garcia, a middle school social studies teacher from phoenix, arizona, who comes from a family of educators and has taught for 20 years. Miss garcia is also the president of the arizona educational association and she works to ensure that all children have access to high-quality education in that all teachers are paid a professional salary. You may proceed with your testimony, miss garcia. Thank you for being here.
▶ 0:45:17Ms. Garcia: Thank you so much. Chairman, ranking member, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify about the arizona experience with ed -- with savings account vouchers and school choice. My name is marisol garcia and I'm a proud eighth-grade social setter -- social studies teacher in phoenix for 20 years and I currently serve as the president of the arizona education association.
▶ 0:45:44Ms. Garcia: In 2020 two arizona lawmakers overrode the will of the voters and enacted the first of the nation universal voucher program, one of the -- one that the trump administration no sites as a national model. Today I want to share with you the consequences of that decision and other experiences as a cautionary tale. First I want to start with some brief history. For three decades arizona has been the center of efforts to weaken public education by breaking the connection between families and neighborhood schools.
▶ 0:46:12Ms. Garcia: In 1994 our legislature adopted an open enrollment policy allowing students to attend public schools outside district boundaries. Combined with rapid charter expansion, this scattered students are far beyond public neighborhood schools, with no meaningful improvement in outcomes. Today arizona has hundreds of school options, but fewer children play on the same sports teams, wait for the same bus, or graduate from the same schools as their neighbors.
▶ 0:46:40Ms. Garcia: Many of you come from close-knit towns and I ask you to consider the role of your neighborhood schools in your development and in making your community stronger and what we lose when these disappear. In 2011, despite disappointing results from early choice policies, lawmakers created their first voucher program, which was limited to a small group of students. It is important to note here that vouchers have never been popular in arizona.
▶ 0:47:07Ms. Garcia: 85% to 95% of students attend public schools. Voters have consistently expressed strong support for pub -- public education. School privatization in our state has been driven by lawmakers and special interests, not by families. In 2018, arizona parents organize a campaign against universal vouchers the past with the voters by a two to one margin only for lawmakers to force universal expansion into the law anyway.
▶ 0:47:35Ms. Garcia: Today our voucher program is a bloated mess, costing three times more than projected. In my testimony today I want to focus on three issues, student outcomes, waste and abuse, and student safety. In november, a rand corporation study found 70% of arizona voucher recipients were already attending private schools or home school programs before they accepted the voucher.
▶ 0:48:01Ms. Garcia: Students with disabilities who once made up a majority of the voucher recipients now only make up 20% of the program. These findings show that vouchers have not had meaningful expanded school choice or prioritized the greatest needs. What we have found is that the arizona program has no income cap, so disproportionately share of funding flows to wealthy families. For low income families, vouchers often only offer the illusion of choice.
▶ 0:48:31Ms. Garcia: Private school tuition in phoenix has exceeded $20,000 per year, leaving families thousands of dollars short. Private schools can reject them for any reason. Increasingly, school choice means schools choose the students, not the other way around. Families of students with disabilities who enrolled in private schools are often disappointed. In our public school we serve every single student. We are better equipped to provide special education language services and wraparound services.
▶ 0:49:00Ms. Garcia: Rural students are also largely excluded from the voucher program. 90% of arizona private schools are in urban areas with limited federal investment in broadband, especially in tribal communities, making online options unrealistic. Meanwhile, vouchers have become an excuse to avoid investing in public schools. Last year we won a lawsuit, an eight year lawsuit over chronic school underfunding. The republicans in our state have already said that they will appeal it.
▶ 0:49:30Ms. Garcia: Roughly $1 billion per year is diverted from public schools in our state to private hands and districts have had to lay off educators in close schools. The arizona superintendent of schools in 2024 announced that the department would automatically approve the $2000 expenditures. The result was for datable. Reports show that taxpayer dollars went to diamond rings, lingerie, and other items.
▶ 0:49:56Ms. Garcia: Our biggest field trip, the last one I took with my students, was a public bus ride to a local library. For voucher families, oftentimes we are paying for ski lift tickets and sea world trips. Arizona has taken a hands-off approach to oversight. Voucher funded schools are not required to conduct background checks or be accredited and administer assessments.
▶ 0:50:19Ms. Garcia: Bad faith operators provide almost no education and still receive tens of millions of dollars. I am deeply concerned that we will hear more stories about students armed by these schools. Every child deserves a great public school. In arizona our experience shows that vouchers are not the way to achieve that goal. I am grateful for this time and invite any questions you may have.
▶ 0:50:50Senator: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I feel like I could be a witness or a question or on it in my whole life. In the 1990's I was living in dayton, ohio on economic development. We were the worst school district in the state. We tried to work with the dayton public school to change things and we couldn't. Then I get to the legislature and my first bill was to create a charter school option.
▶ 0:51:16Senator: And then as speaker of the house we created choice scholarship, starting out based on 4000 students in the worst of the worst schools with 160,000 students in ohio using school choice options for choice scholarship.
▶ 0:51:33Senator: I share these stories because many years later, now that people outside the system have had the chance to create amazing school opportunities like the date early college academy, an amazing school that serves students from the city of dayton , many of them now on tracks to go to college in other seat -- other things, it's a great success story. The greater dayton school was just founded.
▶ 0:52:02Senator: It's an amazing facility doing an -- a wonderful job of educating students. You know what the interesting thing about these schools are question were huge waiting lists. Waiting lists. Give people the choice, create an amazing opportunity for them, guess what happens? Parents decide they want their kids to go to these great schools. It's not just in dayton. I visited recently the st. Mary's school in one of the lower income areas of columbus.
▶ 0:52:31Senator: It serves children from I think 30 different zip codes. All of them low income. There is a waiting list there. They have a health clinic. It's a place where students are getting a great opportunity in life. So, I can tell you that the story in our state is one of success. That doesn't mean it's a magic cure, educating students is heart if they come from a difficult background. There are wonderful public schools I could hold up, I could talk about the amazing things they are doing, too.
▶ 0:53:01Senator: Any educator no matter where they come from, public school, private school, charter school, it's fantastic. We love the ones that innovate. We also know that there are pockets of despair in education that brings me to ask cris gulacy-worrel, who I have known for a long time, you are mostly focused at your charter schools on children who have dropped out? Who are literally not in the system, that no one cares necessarily about them?
▶ 0:53:32Senator: It is no one's job to. But you have created a network of schools to try to help them. Would you tell us a bit more about how your school's work at targeting that dropout population?
▶ 0:53:43Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Thank you for the question, senator. If I may. Our average student is over 18 years of age, reading at a fourth or fifth grade reading level, and has attended three or more high schools before coming to us. Students that are outliers, outside the system.
▶ 0:54:00Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: I think that when we are talking about public districts, any district, any school, we have to remind ourselves quickly that our districts that are failing students were redlined and designed to do so and are functioning as a result of that historical redlining. So many decades ago.
▶ 0:54:19Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: We are seeing school choice from the beginning, when a family can opt to buy a home that is 350 thousand dollars in a "good school district" versus a family that is kind of boxed out of that neighborhood school and the neighborhood school they are given is one of failure and continued failure.
▶ 0:54:39Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: At oakmont education we take not only students who are outside of the continuum of education and who have been failed time and time over, but we have district partnerships because our district partners realize that the continuum of education -- I've never met an educator who wants students to fail, never want one who set I want this kid to not graduate. But we are humans and our systems are taxed to a place were not every student can get what they need in the system they are in.
▶ 0:55:08Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: So, our school exists to make sure that there is a place where we meet students where they are. You are 21 years old, 20 years old, you have four credits? You are not going to sit in a freshman crop classroom with other young people who are 14 and 15. We will meet you where you are. You know? One third of our students are parents themselves. They have jobs in critical decisions to make. So, we make a place that is fully available to them from start to finish, wraparound.
▶ 0:55:38Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Therapists in each building, available people to navigate what is next for them in life. We start with that end in mind. No two kids at oakmont are the same.
▶ 0:55:48Sen. : I'm running out of time, I just want to say this. The amazing thing about what school choice does and what cris is talking about is that every child has a different background, different need, and we can't expect public schools to meet all those needs. They do a great job in many cases, but there are also unique pathways to serve the unique needs of every student, school choice allows for that and in this case, Mr.
▶ 0:56:16Sen. : Chairman, these are students that the system forgot. What oakmont does is try to bring them back in and give them a chance. Thank you.
▶ 0:56:24Chair Cassidy: Senator sanders?
▶ 0:56:28Sen. Sanders: Miss garcia, it is my understanding that 65% of the voters in arizona rejected a ballot initiative in 2018 to fund private school vouchers? That's a pretty overwhelming number. Am I correct in understanding that? Why did state lawmakers override the overwhelming will of the voters of arizona?
▶ 0:56:54Sen. : They've done this several -- Ms. garcia: they've done this special times. There were special interests interested in testing these policies in arizona and politics got involved, they convince each other to vote for it.
▶ 0:57:08Sen. Sanders: Let me ask you another question. My impression is that a lot of young people graduating college for a variety of reasons are not interested in becoming teachers. I remember a couple of years ago I was talking to a superintendent of schools in a rural area of vermont. Their starting salary was something like $38,000 per year.
▶ 0:57:33Sen. Sanders: Are we going to attract the quality young people that we want, often graduating college themselves deeply in debt, with the kinds of salaries we are now paying our teachers? Are we telling the world of a prize education when we are not paying teachers the salaries that they deserve?
▶ 0:57:49Ms. Garcia: It's one of the most heartbreaking things. First generation college graduates, this is far from a practical decision to enter a profession like education. My first year teaching 25 years ago, my salary was $36,000. The average teacher salary 20 years later is $43,000. We have not shown investment. Most teachers across america do not have paid family leave, are unable to afford health care for anyone in their family.
▶ 0:58:21Ms. Garcia: This is not an attractive profession. As a second generation educator, I understand that that -- I understood the job meant 80 hours a week, sacrifices, but as a mother I had no idea that I would not be able to make ends meet or afford a home going into such a treasured profession.
▶ 0:58:39Sen. Sanders: In arizona, which families primarily benefit from the voucher programs? Working class, low income?
▶ 0:58:49Ms. Garcia: No, senator sanders. Data shows that most of the students using it are from high income areas and have already chosen, their family has already made the decision that this was a choice that their family was going to make.
▶ 0:59:03Sen. Sanders: I am concerned that if we put more and more resources into private schools with fewer resources going to public schools, we will end up with a two-tiered system. People on top get a good education, and there will not be the resources for kids at the bottom. Bringing more trouble to more kids, etc.. Is that a fair concern?
▶ 0:59:28Ms. Garcia: This is a reality in arizona right now. Public school parents, public school educators are doing everything we can, holding on as tight as we can to make things best for every student that comes through our doors. Right now when you hear about students going on these fantastic voyages of resources, it's two different experiences for students.
▶ 0:59:54Senator Sanders: How has the rapid expansion of privatization in arizona, and there are states over the country doing this, how has it led to schools losing funding or closing? What impact has the funding of private schools had on public education in arizona?
▶ 1:00:09Ms. Garcia: The voucher program comes directly from our general fund. The same money that would go to paying educators, updating schools and resources, the same money being allocated to the esa culture program. There's no cap on it. It's like turning on a water faucet and letting it go. This year alone it will be $800,000.
▶ 1:00:29Sen. Sanders: Say that again?
▶ 1:00:31Ms. Garcia: $800 million out of the general fund, I'm sorry. Out of the general fund.
▶ 1:00:38Sen. Sanders: Thank you very much garcia. Thank you to all the panelists.
▶ 1:00:50Senator: Thank you, ranking member. Thank you to the chairman for holding this meeting and I'm sincerely grateful that I get to host national school choice week. I'm happy about that because my state, free state of florida, the best in the union, I believe, for school choice, ranked by the american legislative exchange council and heritage foundation is the best state for educational freedom. As Mr.
▶ 1:01:17Senator: Kirtley will remind us, I'm sure, it didn't happen overnight. It took a lot of work and policy decisions, lots of policy tweaking. But it was work from parents, advocates, and state policymakers that transformed florida from a state with poor performance across the board to a leader in education. Starting with the jeb bush administration in 1999, the florida graduation rate at that time was 60%.
▶ 1:01:47Senator: Governor bush was a leader in educational choice and he set the stage for much of what was done in florida. Back then only .4% of k-12 students attended a public charter school. Fewer than 10 students in the whole state received a k-12 scholarship. Fast-forward to today and everything has changed. One in eight students attend a public charter school. 92% of our students are graduating on time.
▶ 1:02:14Senator: 450,000 students are receiving some form of a k-12 scholarship, including the florida tax credit scholarship. In a recent study by the urban institute they found florida tax recipients are more likely to graduate and enroll in a four-year college. To be clear, florida has much more progress to make in improving outcomes, as do all of our states. But for our children, school choice has been an invaluable tool for success no matter their background or needs.
▶ 1:02:43Senator: With that, I would like to ask a few questions of Mr. kirtley. You mentioned that public school districts offer classes and services to florida tax credit scholarship recipients. Despite some characterizations of public versus private.
▶ 1:03:03Senator: I think that this used to be thrown out for decades, but that has really changed and really is a mischaracterization of true school choice and educational alternatives. We know that school choice programs can benefit public schools and are a part of the public school ecosystem.
▶ 1:03:23Senator: Can you offer testimony on the public versus private description and how that might be misguided or mischaracterized in terms of today's model, especially florida?
▶ 1:03:34Mr. Kirtley: The fact that the districts are coming to our online platform to offer classes and services to scholarship students is a perfect example of the blending of the definition of how we are getting away from the us versus them. This is an effort that is only one year old.
▶ 1:03:53Mr. Kirtley: What the districts realized, thanks to the help of a guy named keith jacobs, who works with us, a former public school educator, he went and told the districts -- look, we have 150,000 kids on scholarship who are not enrolled full-time in a school. They have parents who may not be comfortable teaching calculus or physics or chemistry. I could teach history. But I couldn't teach those other things.
▶ 1:04:19Mr. Kirtley: The districts will have classes that have, if they are in person they might have space or if they are online they have unlimited space. Parents with kids on scholarship are interested in purchasing the classes and services. Districts also have activities or clubs, robotics, debate teams, latin club, that scholarship kids who are not enrolled full-time would be eager to participate in and the parents are willing to pay for them.
▶ 1:04:46Mr. Kirtley: So the districts can price the classes as they see fit on our platform and the parents can purchase them. I'm so encouraged that in just a little over a year, 48 out of the 67 districts in florida have recognized this as a great idea for them and are either on our platform already or are in the process of doing so.
▶ 1:05:10Senator: I know you spent 25 years working alongside these administrators and families in coming up with ideas, policies, and it's led to much of the florida success. On trend what we are seeing is experienced public school educators stepping up and founding new schools or creating new learning methods and models. So, it is people who have had a hands-on experience with kids, seeing what works and what doesn't, more importantly.
▶ 1:05:38Senator: Giving parents options I can better serve students whose needs are not being met in the traditional settings. Can you real quickly, because I'm running out of time, share an example of how school choice has empowered educators to lead and innovate in our state?
▶ 1:05:52Mr. Kirtley: I could give you 100 examples, but I will give you one put one. There is an educator in tampa, duane wafer, went to florida a&m. He named his school that he started after a 20 year public education, he named his -- his school colors, florida a&m, used the mascot. The school is called icon prep. They started with maybe 70 kids, k-8 in tampa.
▶ 1:06:25Mr. Kirtley: They now have a k-8 in high school in tampa. It's they were so successful teaching low income kids. They now have a k8 school in jacksonville and now they have one in ohio, because ohio also has a great scholarship program. This never would have happened without choice. This great educator would never have been an educational entrepreneur if low income parents hadn't had the opportunity and purchasing power that school choice gives them.
▶ 1:06:53Sen. : Thank you so much. Senator kim?
▶ 1:06:58Senator Kim: Thank you for the three of you coming on to talk to us. I'm the father of a third and fifth grader. I live and breathe this and I think about a lot. I worry. Jerzy has great schools, but I've been a senator across the state and have seen huge discrepancies between different areas in different regions. It's clear, the challenges that are there. I'm trying to think not just about my own kids but trying to empathize with parents across my state in this country.
▶ 1:07:28Senator Kim: You know, one thing that I just keep coming back to when we have this discussion, on the public school side, they are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, disability, religion, sexual orientation. That's something that can just to be a bedrock for the community.
▶ 1:07:50Senator Kim: Everyone knows that regardless I can get that education and I want to ask the three of you, should every school that receives some type of public funding be held to that same account? Is this something that just needs to be translated across the board? Ms. gulacy-worrel, maybe we can start with you and work down.
▶ 1:08:08Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: So, I'm going to answer it and I don't know if it'll be the way you want me to answer. I have dealt with, I have three children of my own, one is getting ready to graduate college, one is in college studying, one and I school. I think a lot about the different things they needed.
▶ 1:08:31Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: In all my experiences in 24 years of parenting, nearly, I have not encountered a private school that has turned away a student in my professional or personal career in over 25 years. However, I think that taking away -- it's a red herring.
▶ 1:08:50Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: It's a distraction from the real question, which is our kids -- our kids really save in a district school that has been failing them that has a reading proficiency of say 0%, like baltimore? No school should be discriminating on those bases. That's obvious. We shouldn't even have to say those things. I've never seen it happen, I have never experienced it.
▶ 1:09:22Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: However, I think the conversation needs to shift more to practical things like we are actually seeing systemically, which is failure in reading, failure in reading and math proficiency. When kids can read and families have agency, the void doesn't -- the void, when you take away agency, the void is filled with conflict.
▶ 1:09:45Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: I think that we, putting the focus on what we know is happening, trying to fix that? I think that's -- that would be my answer.
▶ 1:09:58Sen. Kim: I appreciate that. I would like to bring in Mr. kirtley?
▶ 1:10:03Mr. Kirtley: It raises an interesting intersection between the diverging rights of lgbtq citizens in the exercise of free religion under the U.S. constitution. Just for clarification, we have 2500 schools in florida that serve skate kids on the scholarship program and there are a handful, handful, that have these kinds of rules.
▶ 1:10:32Mr. Kirtley: Some may say that even a small number is too many. I would agree with them. The challenges, the constitution guarantees that religious organizations, including religious schools, cannot be forced to operate in a way that is contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs. For example, you cannot force the catholic church to hire jewish priests. Or a jewish school to hire muslim teachers.
▶ 1:11:00Sen. Sanders: But they also --
▶ 1:11:02Sen. Kim: They also don't ask take public money.
▶ 1:11:05Mr. Kirtley: True but they say you cannot in the courts been religious programs from public programs, you cannot force a catholic hospital to perform late-term abortions and you cannot exclude them from certain medicaid patients. That's the dilemma.
▶ 1:11:24Mr. Kirtley: Again, but I would focus on is the fact that in florida, you have lgbtq kids using our scholarships to escape bullying in public schools. There was a study done by gilson a few years ago, and advocacy group for lgbtq students showing that these students experienced more bullying by a slight amount in public schools then at religious schools.
▶ 1:11:50Mr. Kirtley: At if I could say one more thing , one of the bravest people I've ever met in my life was a young man in jacksonville who use our scholarship after he had attempted to take his own life because he was bullied in his assigned district school. He used our scholarship to attend a religious school that embraced him and he was willing to talk publicly about that. One of the bravest people I've ever met.
▶ 1:12:11Sen. Kim: Thank you for your thoughts. Mr. chairman, if you don't mind, I asked of all three and could be take a few extra seconds? [laughter] thank you, thank you, Mr. chairman. Miss garcia? You have talked about it tangibly. It's not theoretical you. I wanted to hear your thoughts about this.
▶ 1:12:34Ms. Garcia: Yes, senator kim. Public schools welcome every single student. It doesn't matter. We have documented evidence that students are being turned away or if the school is not able to meet their special needs, they are sent away. We welcome them back to public schools. We welcome everybody.
▶ 1:12:54Ms. Garcia: As a veteran educator, the one thing that will ensure that students do well, beyond our classroom, is if they feel safe, excepted, and more importantly if they have the stability of a public school. In public schools week, and I believe that our public taxpayer money should make sure that every student is accepted and that there is some sort of accountability and transparency that students are treated fairly.
▶ 1:13:21Sen. Kim: Thank you for the extra time, chairman. I appreciate your thoughtful answers. I was not asking the question in a gotcha tight way. I'm sincerely trying to grapple with this. Ms. gulacy-worrel, I agree with you that the fundamental question is about the failure of education, something that both sides of the aisle should recognize. We have failed these generations. I'm worried deeply about my kids generation. That we are not setting them up for success.
▶ 1:13:53Sen. Kim: The question we are trying to grapple with is what comes as we try to improve that? I'm trying to throw that out there. I want to throw that out there, I want to get your question, too, but I want to see -- that we are not gritting a situation of widening the gap between the haves and have-nots.
▶ 1:14:18Sen. Kim: I hope we can continue to engage on and have a substantive, thoughtful conversation on education and not get it caught up in just the argument that so often encapsulates this building, unfortunately. That is something that I commit as a parent to try to do. Thank you, chairman, and hope to be able to continue this dialogue.
▶ 1:14:39Chair Cassidy: Senator kim, what a great statement, what a thoughtful statement. What thoughtful testimony. I'm struck by what you said that there is effective redlining if you do it by zip code. You can call it what you want, but people are choosing -- sir, when you said that schools have become better because now there is competition, that is a good thing. Ms.
▶ 1:15:02Chair Cassidy: Garcia, I except your concern that some kids will not be able to -- particularly have their needs met because the school does not want to accept them. I will flip that a little bit. As I mentioned, my wife has four public charter schools with children with dyslexia. It may be that the school is not equipped for a child with dyslexia, or a child with autism.
▶ 1:15:31Chair Cassidy: The parent could elect to go there, but the parent should have the choice for innovation that meets her child's needs. It's been, I agree, a very robust conversation. And you mentioned -- again, 18-year-old, 19-year-old with a child at home is a far different experience than a freshman in high school, that you meet them where they are.
▶ 1:15:53Chair Cassidy: The demographics -- I'm guessing one of the criticisms of school choice is you end up selecting based upon demographics, social economic class -- socioeconomic class, etc. Your school almost by definition seems to seek out folks who come from the more difficult background. Is that true?
▶ 1:16:11Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: That is true, chairman. It is basically the outliers, kids on the margins, kids that have dropped out and are functionally nowhere. Every kid that drops out -- which is every 26 seconds in america, 1.2 million kids last year. It costs our country over $300,000 over the lifetime. Last year alone, that was almost $400 billion in dropouts.
▶ 1:16:37Chair Cassidy: What is your graduation rate?
▶ 1:16:39Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: We don't have cohorts, but we have placement rates. We want you to be graduated and placed, and then that placement, which is enrolled in college for your or more, that percentage with our students is 87%.
▶ 1:16:55Chair Cassidy: 87% of people you selected for having dropped out?
▶ 1:16:59Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Already dropped out, those kids came to us, and 87% of our students who graduate without our placed--with us are placed. Nobody supports noncollege counties in america-- noncollege-bound youth in america. We only support college-bound youth.
▶ 1:17:20Chair Cassidy: Now -- kids need jobs. There's nothing like a duck to prepare somebody for life. I'm struck, you spoke about the st. George school in maine giving hands-on learning. So, again, what is your school doing differently? When I was in high school long ago we had I think a technical class or something like that.
▶ 1:17:44Chair Cassidy: But it sounds like what you are describing something more than that, something more than just an hour a day, but rather, something more intensive so that a person graduates, they actually have a job.
▶ 1:17:57Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Correct, fully immersed, work-based learning. We approach it with a sector strategy approach, more department of labor. We go to the communities and regions and speak to partners and say there is a disconnect between what education does and what employers want. We bridge the disconnect and we go to the employers and we say what does it look like for an entry-level person --
▶ 1:18:20Chair Cassidy: So how do you get a young person to agree to pursue the path? Ms. gulacy-worrel, you are here -- everybody should be doing career tech. My two sons were college-bound -- my youngest child is doing career tech. Everybody should be doing career tech. Long gone are the days of if you do career tech you are not going to college. Career tech is preparing our students for the real world.
▶ 1:18:48Chair Cassidy: And what better place to potentially fail at something -- I want to do construction, I am out welding, it is cold, I don't like it. Does what, it is not-- guess what, I can feel frilly because it is not costing me anything.
▶ 1:19:03Chair Cassidy: I will give myself more time -- I'm running out of time. Tell me again -- one of the problems Ms. garcia points out, there is evidence of some schools which don't accept those with disabilities. But your scholarship programs, I gather, work for folks with disabilities or unique learning needs. Can you describe that?
▶ 1:19:25Mr. Kirtley: Yes, absolutely.
▶ 1:19:27Chair Cassidy: Is your button on?
▶ 1:19:30Mr. Kirtley: Yes, it is can you hear me?
▶ 1:19:34Mr. Kirtley: We have a program in florida specifically designed for students with unique abilities. They both attend school -- someone attends --some attend school full-time, some part-time, some are homeschooled. If you talk to the parents who use these programs, they will tell you that they have been a lifesaver for the children because their children are unique and they have to find a different environment.
▶ 1:20:04Mr. Kirtley: When we say that the public schools have to take every child with a disability, but not every single public school has to take every single kid with every single disability, giving the parents the flexibility not just to find a different school, but to customize their education with the education savings account to a great degree, really is a lifesaver for them.
▶ 1:20:29Chair Cassidy: Got it. I will one more thing before turning it over to senator -- I feel like senator sanders is presented our choice for children's act. This is a tax credit that goes to scholarship grants and organizations for various learning experiences, giving the parent the power to choose. It does not take away from public education.
▶ 1:20:53Chair Cassidy: Rather, this is something where you can assign a portion of your tax dollars you have to pay to go for the scholarship granting organization. And so, again, just to say we are not trying to supplant funding for public education, we are tying to supplement funding for education. Senator hickenlooper.
▶ 1:21:12Sen. Hickenlooper: Thank you, Mr. chair. Thank you all for being here. I was -- for whatever reason, I've been involved in education my whole life. I had a bad freshman year in college, dropped out, ended up in an alternative school on the northernmost coast of maine, almost in canada, turning an old sardine factory into what they called back then a free school, alternative school.
▶ 1:21:41Sen. Hickenlooper: I just stayed involved when I was in business and mayor of denver. I said during the campaign I would visit every school in denver if I got elected. Later, the person who suggested that to me was volunteering on the staff, a guy named michael bennet. Later he would say if hickenlo oper had better staffing, someone would have told him there were 100 61 schools in denver. My first four years as mayor of denver, I went to school every week and spend two hours.
▶ 1:22:13Sen. Hickenlooper: The most valuable time of all the investments I've made of time in public service. And I think we need an all of the above solution here. To me, one of the most powerful -- when I was governor, a guy came in and told me that 65% of our kids, no matter what we do, are not going to get a four-year degree. We try to the best we can come and we are failing.
▶ 1:22:41Sen. Hickenlooper: Having gone to all these 160 schools, I think it was about 175 by the time I got through because I went to catholic schools, every school, you saw these kids in high school, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, bored silly, sitting there and taking classes they are never going to need, not going to give them a leg up in their lives. This guy came in and said 65% of the kids are never going to get a degree. And you're failing them.
▶ 1:23:13Sen. Hickenlooper: We took -- he and I put together -- we took 50 civic leaders, superintendents of the largest school districts, ceos of the largest corporations, the head of higher education for the state, a bunch of superintendents of schools.
▶ 1:23:30Sen. Hickenlooper: We took 50 people for a full week in switzerland to see what the partnership model looks like and how do we think about taking something so european and translating it into what became the colorado clear wise -- c areer wise. I never left that group. We spent every day going to see exactly how this works.
▶ 1:23:52Sen. Hickenlooper: And it's breathtaking to see what can be done of letting 17-, 18-year-old kids -- when they are in 10th grade, they are working two days a week, three days a week next year. And businesses love it. This is something that this country -- it is like pushing a boulder over a mountain, but there is real value there. Let me start, Ms.
▶ 1:24:16Sen. Hickenlooper: Gulacy-worrel, and your testimony you talk about quick technical education model --career technical education model at oakmont. How do you recruit students and work with their families to navigate this career technical education model, and how are the students connected with employers for training and placement?
▶ 1:24:35Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Thank you, senator. We typically don't need to recruit. We have a lot of partners in districts, we have a lot of word-of-mouth and a lot of relationships with the justice systems and the different areas we are in. And our students are immersed fully.
▶ 1:24:55Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: A week in academics, flipping over a week into work-based actual learning, building homes with habitat.and getting buy-in for the career tech is easy, and our career tech students by and large are attending school significantly more often and regularly without absences because they feel like they have a purpose.
▶ 1:25:18Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: And they are meeting these employers and they feel for the first time after being told what a loser you are, how bad you are, finally being told "I'm not really good at math, but I can really redo this tape measure -- read this tape measure." one of my colleagues says "I don't know math, but I can pour a footer." there is all kinds of math in these real moments.
▶ 1:25:45Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: One of my 16-year-old sons said I'm so bored, there is nothing relevant. That is the reason kids drop out of school, they perceived lack of relevance. We make sure to expose kids to the reality of what the world is that students have already been living. Career tech is a game changer. Everybody should be doing it, we should be doing it earlier, regardless of where kids are going to, college, military, anywhere else.
▶ 1:26:11Sen. Hickenlooper: Let me ask one more question of you, Ms. gulacy-worrel, and Ms. garcia. What do you think schools, including public schools -- what can they do to more fully incorporate work-based learning and opportunities like mentorship? What can we be doing more?
▶ 1:26:32Ms. Garcia: I can say in arizona we have a very expensive career technical education program and much of what you speak of is happening in public schools. This has been replicated. The fact that the students have choices from being able to learn how to be a preschool teacher, all the way how to fix an engine , everything, all this amazing experience is great for students.
▶ 1:26:55Ms. Garcia: I think in our state and I think nationally we have to talk about investing in these programs, and the same flexibility that is being offered to outside programs and companies, we don't have that same luxury, unfortunately. The levels of accountability for us is a little bit higher. But I can say that talking to 10th graders and eighth graders, they love my class. They are enjoying and having a great time.
▶ 1:27:18Ms. Garcia: I think the more we have qualified educators in these situations that are consistent and stay with these community schools, the better rates of return we are able to see there.
▶ 1:27:28Sen. Hickenlooper: Great. You want to add anything?
▶ 1:27:31Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: I just think that we need to, when we are doing career technical education, I think it can be done and should be done in all types of environments, not just public traditionals or public charters. We also need to nod to the experts in the field. When we are having these career technical education courses, we need to have experts of aircraft -- my father was an electrician.
▶ 1:28:00Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: I don't need a 25-year-old person who went to school to be a teacher can which my son is doing, to come and teach electrical traits, because they are not going to be able to do that. I just think that making sure that we are being true to what it is instead of trying to make it what we would want it to be if it were a perfect situation -- I think there is a lot to learn from germany and switzerland and their apprenticeship models, and placement.
▶ 1:28:30Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Getting kids into the jobs, not just learning a skill and doing it in a classroom with 3d printers, but in the field. If you are in health care, you should be in the facility, you should be hearing sounds, having smells, having experiences to see if you can really hack it. Unfortunately, a lot of our students don't qualify to go to their traditional district career tech centers because they don't have the grades, the attendance, the transportation, and those often halfway lists. -- have waitlist.
▶ 1:29:01Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Making it more visible to all is important.
▶ 1:29:03Sen. Hickenlooper: Thanks to all of you. My fellow senator from the south.
▶ 1:29:11Sen. Tuberville: Hey, thanks for being here. One of the reasons I ran for this position is I've been in education all my life, and I wish we didn't have to have this talk about the choose act, school choice. We passed it in my state of alabama. We will see how that works.
▶ 1:29:31Sen. Tuberville: I wish that we had a plan in our country where no child was left behind, and we teach them knowledge, not ideology, k, through the public system. 35 years of coaching, I went to high schools in every state except for alaska. We have some great public schools in this country. We have some rain teachers. We have excellent --we have some great teachers. We have excellent administrators.
▶ 1:30:01Sen. Tuberville: Here is the problem I saw -- it turned into tenure. You can't fire anybody. If I was in coaching and I had somebody who can --couldn't coach, I would get m y ass five. Same thing with teaching. We have got way too many administrators in our country. We have tripled the amount of administrators in this country as compared to teachers.
▶ 1:30:33Sen. Tuberville: Everybody wants to be an administrator, where I guess they want to plan something. That has put us in a tailspin. So what I'm saying is we forced our hand into this school choice. It's been forced, because we've wasted trillions of dollars. Again, I've worked with thousands of kids that come in with 4-point gpas, and they couldn't read and write. They were passed along. We don't want you anymore.
▶ 1:31:03Sen. Tuberville: You are a good athlete, so let somebody else do it. I spent a lot of my own money teaching kids to read. I had a kid one time, what is the most exciting thing cap and you -- "I can read a menu now, I can order a hamburger." if I was a teacher in this country and I saw what was happening to kids in the public system, we should have a run on these buildings appear. That being said, we have a lot of work to do.
▶ 1:31:30Sen. Tuberville: I'm getting ready to hopefully be governor of alabama. We need to change everything. We need to change the education system, k-12. We need to get back to teaching and away from this ideology, fire the bad people who don't do their job, and get back to what is right for this country and help our kids. We are stealing from the american taxpayers. They are not getting their money's worth. Ms.
▶ 1:31:57Sen. Tuberville: Worrel, if you are school choice -- I am in alabama, you tell me, I want to transition from school choice workforce development. How do I do that? How do we understand the significance of making that transition from school choice?
▶ 1:32:22Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: I think, senator, you have an incredible opportunity in alabama to do it right from the beginning. All in -- all of the options that are part of the school choice continuum. It doesn't just have to be schools for dropout students.
▶ 1:32:41Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Should have career technical education and work--based opportunities, and going to employers in those regions where you have schools, which is everywhere, is the first way to start that, and to see what the high-demand careers are coming in alabama --
▶ 1:32:55Sen. Tuberville: What area would you start transforming from school choice to work first availment? --workforce development? Would you wait until the 12th grade, start in the sixth?
▶ 1:33:10Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: If I had a magic wand and could do it, I believe early exposure, a way for kids to start to learn what it looks like, what it feels like, what they want to explore, and then build on that and understand early, elementary schools through middle schools, make it more tangible, weaving into as they go into high school, it should not be in the first time in junior year that they set foot in a major employer. Is just shouldn't be.
▶ 1:33:38Sen. Tuberville: Here's the way I look at it. We gotta a teach these kids to read and write. If you don't read and write before the third grade, you have about had it. You can do it, but it is really, really hard. We got to teach reading and writing early. Math and science and history will come if they can read. You can't do math and history and science if you can't read. That is one of the things I plan on doing. Hopefully we are going to do workforce development -- the k-12 to me is just so obsolete.
▶ 1:34:08Sen. Tuberville: It really is. It's in the stone ages. A lot of kids don't need to go 12 years. They need to go out in the workforce and learn and be an example. Mr. kirtley, I lived 10 years and grunted and coached at the university of miami from 1985 to 1995, won a lot of games. I saw as it transformed.
▶ 1:34:38Sen. Tuberville: There is not a more diverse city in the country. I saw education get better. A lot of these kids come in and they cap speak english, -- they cannot speak english, they come from these third world countries, but they did a great job. How do they do that?
▶ 1:34:51Mr. Kirtley: Thank you for the question, senator. As I mentioned earlier in my testimony, miami-dade is the freest market for k-12 education in this country. Every student in florida, certainly miami-dade, has the ability if they want to have an education savings account to use for tuition to a private school or to buy education services and products to customize their education.
▶ 1:35:17Mr. Kirtley: We have 150 charter schools, we have 400 private schools that kids can attend, and low income kids do attend on our scholarships. But most importantly, as I said earlier, the public district in miami-dade idid not shy away from competition. They didn't complaint, not once, when the superintendent came in in 2008 when choice was coming to the fore.
▶ 1:35:45Mr. Kirtley: He said "I'm not afraid of this, we will create options families want," and they did so. They have 100 magnet schools in miami-dade, and amazing technical education programs in automotive technology, medical technology, where kids will have three levels. Kids can go right into nursing, school and nursing, or go on to college and then med school. They all go to the same public high school together. It's a beautiful thing. Competition works.
▶ 1:36:15Sen. Tuberville: I want to pass this onto my fellow senator -- I want to ask one more question. In my state of alabama and other states, with all the people coming here from other countries, ou schools are beingr overrun. We don't have enough people to teach, the different languages that are coming in.
▶ 1:36:35Sen. Tuberville: You have that because you have people have come from other countries that have grown up in the system that have been educated speaking a different languages from latin america, central america, and those things. How does people that don't have that number of people that can speak the language of these young kids coming -- how do we do that? How do we transition? We put them in a room and just turn on the video? Tell me how that works.
▶ 1:37:01Mr. Kirtley: Senator, I'm not an expert in that area, but I would defer to the people in miami-dade who have been doing it incredibly well for years. Over 150 languages spoken in miami-dade public schools. Obviously they're are not fluent in every language, but they are good at working with esol students and getting them mainstreamed. I would recommend talking to the people in my meeting.
▶ 1:37:28Sen. Tuberville: Ms. garcia, I saw you shaking your head.
▶ 1:37:33Ms. Garcia: In the state of arizona, what we've seen the last few years is a lot of features have been brought in on visas -- a lot of teachers have been brought in on visas to teach students with different languages. We have first- and second-generation teachers who are bilingual and cannot students not only flourish in their original language, but learn english so they are bilingual and have two language is academically.
▶ 1:37:58Sen. Tuberville: Thank you. Senator marshall.
▶ 1:38:01Sen. Marshall: Coach, thank you so much, and welcome to our witnesses today. I'm happy to celebrate school choice week. Coach will appreciate this story. My college track coach told me the first week of track practice, everyone was bragging about how good they were in high school, and coach said, "don't tell me, show me." the republican party shown support for school choice and a working family tax cuts bill.
▶ 1:38:30Sen. Marshall: We have a $1700 tax credit for scholarships, for school choice. We have increased the flexibility with the 529 education funds as well. Those are two examples of republicans doing what we said we were going to do, putting our money where our mouth is as well. Coach, I can't agree with more your philosophy of coaching and teaching. You would think that we were raised by the same parents, we are brothers in so many ways.
▶ 1:38:59Sen. Marshall: And I assume this, but I was educated in a public school system. My wife in the public school system. Our kids went to a public school system. They went to public universities, and we were well prepared. I cannot drag my feet on school choice. I was concerned --I kind of dragged my feet on school choice. I was concerned, how was school choice going to impact urban america, inner-city, and rural america as well? I'm afraid our public school system has let us down.
▶ 1:39:30Sen. Marshall: The education my youngest children got versus my oldest changed. Same grade school, same middle school, same high school, it just changed. I can't say enough, thank you to the dedicated teachers and coaches in public school and the teachers and coaches my kids had. These are a+++ people. I got to deliver their babies, I got to know them. Coached their kids in little league, they coached my kids in little league, on her varsity sports.
▶ 1:40:01Sen. Marshall: I want the public school system to survive. Coach, I look forward to you setting an example in alabama the other states can follow as you break down those barriers, as we try to figure out -- I think it middle school at least that kids should be shown there is great value in the tech skills, that the jobs we have in kansas right now that are paying more than a four-year degree job, whether it is in plumbing or electrician, all those types of things, welding.
▶ 1:40:33Sen. Marshall: We have the world champion welder from southeast kansas. I will challenge coach on that as well. World champion welder as well. Here we are, school choice is upon us, they need the competition. Ms. gulacy, I'm still worried about rural america. Some of these students doing, school choice how did the public schools survive? I'm looking for the win-win opportunity?
▶ 1:41:03Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Senator, thank you for the question. I think if we want to really rise to the occasion we are speaking of and what world-class opportunities for american students, including career technical education, for rural students as well as urban students, we have to address funding and making sure that the funding is available for our rural districts to come together , form consortiums, offer the
▶ 1:41:34Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: World-class career technical education opportunities that they have, just because a choice comes into a rural community doesn't mean that the rural schools close. It should be part of that continuum. If we want to make sure that the opportunities are even for all students, we need to evaluate and make sure that the funding opportunities are there and equal to support students in rural america, because if you take a school and say this school is going to offer all career tech, this school is not, you could have all students want
▶ 1:42:04Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: To go to the other school with a career tech, but there needs to be a continuum of cooperation when you're bringing something new into those communities. We work in rural communities as well as urban communities, and we have not seen a district shutdown as a result of that.
▶ 1:42:23Sen. Marshall: Mr. kirtley, would you add anything and address it from the urban areas that is your expertise? How would you expect the school system to respond to school choice?
▶ 1:42:36Mr. Kirtley: I have personal experience I'm happy to talk about. It's a long time ago, but I graduated from fort lauderdale high school, class of 1981, inner-city high school. Great mix of kids. I had a great education there. What I didn't realize is a lot of my teammates didn't graduate. They had what are called certificates of completion when they walked across the graduation stage, not a diploma.
▶ 1:43:04Mr. Kirtley: When governor bush, jeb bush, instituted his reforms when he was elected governor in 1999, my high school was labeled an f, a failure. But that wasn't to the story. Because the competition, --but that wasn't the end of the story. Because accommodation, because of the dedication of the educators in the county, they turned fort lauderdale high school into a school of choice. It is now a magnet school. It is a prelaw magnet.
▶ 1:43:37Mr. Kirtley: They have a national champion debate team. They are now an a school, and I'm happy to say they still play football, too.
▶ 1:43:43Sen. Marshall: It's always the people that make the difference. My time has expired. Thank you. Education is the backbone of america. Education is what allows us all to achieve our american dream. In the first-generation -- I am a first-generation college student and got to live my dream because the teachers and coaches and family and the generous public education, and we want to share that same goal. We want every student, every child in america have a great education. Thanks so much, coach.
▶ 1:44:12Sen. Tuberville: Thank you, senator marshall. We are going to wrap this up, but I want to give you one, two minutes. 21st century. If you want to make it to the 22nd century maker gets better, where do we start? So with you, Ms. garcia.
▶ 1:44:29Ms. Garcia: Thank you for inviting me. Thank you, senator tuberville, for the question. I like to think of the future and each one of my students and what that could look like and what insured a lot of their success. I've students all over the world. Many of them have joined the military. Some of them are dentists. Some of them are parents buying homes.
▶ 1:44:54Ms. Garcia: One of the things that I think help to them and helps every student is the ability for us to connect with them, see where their strengths are, where their weaknesses are. I, too, coached, was a softball coach. A little different experience, girls softball in eighth grade. Each one of my students needed time and support to make sure they were hitting the goals that they needed.
▶ 1:45:19Ms. Garcia: Unfortunately, my experience in public schools over the last 20 years or so, class sizes grows larger and larger and larger. My first year I had 26 students per class period. Now it is close to 32, 3 which4 means I'm teaching close to, 168th-graders everyday.
▶ 1:45:40Ms. Garcia: I would like tax money to ensuring lower class sizes and ensuring we have tutors to meet the needs of every student, ensuring that kids have before-school and afterschool programs, qualified librarians, nurses, services for all of our students. I believe there was a path to get there as long as parents and educators, as long as policymakers are in the same room together.
▶ 1:46:05Sen. Tuberville: Thank you.
▶ 1:46:07Mr. Kirtley: Thank you, senator. I guess I would say that I hope other states follow the journey we took over the last 30 years. I mentioned earlier that 30 years ago we had a very simple definition of public education. Every dollar went to the districts, districts went all to the schools, assigned kids by zip code. Worked great by me, works great for most kids, doesn't work great for all kids. Now in florida parents can direct the dollars and providers and methods.
▶ 1:46:37Mr. Kirtley: We have gone from 35th out of 38 states back in 1998 to 2019, we were in the top five. Graduation rates have gone from 50% overall, much less for minority kids, to over 90%. That's an incredible change. Choice wasn't the only reason why that happened. What choice was the catalyst -- but choice for the candles that made other reform elements work better and faster --choice was the catalyst that made other reform elements work better and faster.
▶ 1:47:07Mr. Kirtley: I hope other states will challenge the definitions of public education. Is it really the old definition? Try something new, try something innovative, push the power to families, and good things will happen.
▶ 1:47:19Sen. Tuberville: Thank you. I'm with you, choice should make public schools compete and get better. Ms. worrel?
▶ 1:47:26Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: Senator, thank you. I would just really urge us to not be distracted by conversation that I think takes the focus away from students and achievement and literacy. We know that if a kid can't read by fourth grade, they are four times more likely to drop out of high school. We have all the things we need.
▶ 1:47:47Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: I feel like if we lean more into that and listen to parents, listen to students, and be responsive, and not be responsive to the systems, but be responsive to the people we are cast in giving a world-class education's to, which are students. We don't talk to students of the young people, but this is directly impacting what their experiences are like. As we move forward, we are going after all, together and realized -- come together and realize it is a continuum, and not siloed.
▶ 1:48:19Ms. Gulacy-Worrel: All of us are necessary for all students to be able to succeed, and when we start to silo off into our adult little corners of the space, kids suffer. And adults may not seem like they are suffering, but eventually we paid a price for failing students. We are seeing that right now. We will continue to see it unless we change what we are doing. Thank you for the opportunity to be a be here.
▶ 1:48:45Sen. Tuberville: Thank you all for being here. We have a foreign relations committee today, ag committee. There is more important we are doing today. We won't survive as a country because we are going to cheat our kids, and the kids are our future. They are the number one commodity. For any senator was for any senator w wishing to ask additional questions, questions are due today by 5:00 p.m. Thanks for everybody being here today.
▶ 1:49:16Sen. Tuberville: Hopefully this will be shown on the media and people will get something out of this. We have to do something different. What we have been doing is not working. I'm for anything as long as kids can learn. Make our countries longer. Thank all of you for being here. God bless you.
▶ 1:50:03Sen. Tuberville: [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]