One year after the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law, what challenges and opportunities are districts and schools facing? How are districts and schools implementing the legislation and what have been the results? How are state education departments providing technical assistance to identified schools, and is this aspect of the legislation working? What progress is being made to ensure that all teachers in Title 1 schools will be "highly qualified" by the 2005-06 school year? How will districts keep pace with funding demands? This session will give you a better understanding about the No Child Left Behind Act and what is happening nationally during its implementation.

The No Child Left Behind Act: Challenges and Opportunities

Ray McNulty: So all you people had nothing else to do at 3 o’clock on a sunny afternoon on Sunday, but to come and listen to us talk about No Child Left Behind. Sad but true. Good afternoon. I’m Ray McNulty. I’m currently president-elect of ASCD. I’m commissioner of education in the state of Vermont. And at the end of March I’ll be leaving the commissioner’s position to become the program director at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, so I’m going to be heading across country. Thank you for coming.

Tom Houlihan: I’m Tom Houlihan, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, DC. I’ve been in that role almost two years, and prior to that was a principal, a teacher, a superintendent, and worked for Governor Jim Hunt as his senior education adviser for six years. It’s good to be with you. We hope this is a good session. I’ve got to say one thing up front: Promise me this. Promise us this. You will not shoot the messenger. Please do not do that. We’re really here to try to share some information and then to open it up and get to your discussion. So, as long as you don’t shoot us, I think we’ll be all right.

Ray McNulty: That’s accurate. I also would like to get a sense of the crowd and get a sense of how much you know about No Child Left Behind. So, other than Tom, do we have any No Child Left Behind experts in the room? What about, I’ll call them “middlers” who have some sense of the law and are trying to figure out how in all God’s world it can be implemented. How many people know, at a very beginning level, No Child Left Behind? That’s interesting. We have a typical balance. I don’t believe by the way that there are any experts out there on No Child Left Behind, and this session will be a state-level perspective. Tom is the executive director of the Chief State School Officers. He’ll say a little bit about that organization in a minute, but our position and how we talk No Child Left Behind today will be more from a state level perspective — what it’s going to mean at the state level.

We do have some handouts. I would suggest you take notes because we don’t have anywhere near as many handouts and we will have this on the web, so you can take our slides down. And Tom will give you that information at the end.

I’m going to start out by saying again one more important point, that No Child Left Behind really is only impacting right now approximately 4,000 schools across the country. It’s just ramping up. As many of you know, if you have a state that has identified schools in the past — if you have schools that have fallen in need of technical assistance levels — that’s where the law right now is actually having its beginning foothold. It’s about two to three years out that we really expect to see the major impact of No Child Left Behind, and we’ll be talking a little bit about that. Our hope is this: that we can talk to you and give you our presentation in about 30 to 35 minutes, and then we want to engage you in questions and conversation, because I think that’s where we going to find how to move ahead on this. And I’ll talk as well during the presentation a little bit about the negotiation that’s going on with No Child Left Behind. Tom, however, has a much better national perspective.

Tom Houlihan: The Council of Chief State School Officers is an organization in Washington that represents all of the nation’s state school officers. In some states, that’s an elected state superintendent; in others, it’s the commissioner of education. In some states it’s the director. But the bottom line is, we represent those [inaudible], including the state as well as the [inaudible] and all of the primary [inaudible] Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc. The Council of Chief State Officers provide service and technical assistance and, quite frankly, we lobby Congress. And the reason I want to share this slide with you is because we have been very involved from the very beginning as this bill made it’s way through Congress — and I’ll be talking a little bit about that a little bit later. But from the perspective of understanding why things were done the way they were done in the bill and the kind of bipartisan support this bill had, I think you’ll find some of that interesting as we move forward.

I will tell you that we have walked a very fine line when it comes to this legislation. We have been very supportive as an organization of the concept of No Child Left Behind, and have been very vocal in our support throughout the process. We have also been intimately involved in the negotiations with states on plans, etc., etc., and some of the technical assistance issues — and, quite frankly, we have not been as successful as we would like to have been. But the fact is, this bill is here, we’re working on it in DC, and we’ll be talking a little bit more about that from the perspective of the Chief State School Officers and the state education departments and how that impacts on you as we move forward. All right. Ray, you’ll take the next one?

Ray McNulty: I need to share with you that I will provide you with what I consider my perspective, or the Vermont perspective, on this particular law. It’s going to be different from others. And I tell the story about my son Sean. I have twin boys — actually three boys — but growing up in northern Vermont, Sean, when he was very young, was out in the back yard playing and I was watching him, as a good dad, from inside the house. And he had his bat and his ball, and he was tossing the ball up in the air and swinging and attempting to hit the ball by himself. And I watched this for a little while. I watched for about three or four minutes while I became frustrated by watching him because as he was throwing the ball and swinging, he was missing the ball. And I was, as a dad, wanting him to hit it. So I basically, a few minutes into it, said to my wife, I’m going outside and I’m going to take for an ice cream or go downtown. So I went outside and I said, “Sean, come on. I’m going to go to town. We’ll go get an ice cream.” And he looked at me and he said, “Not now, Dad. I’m pitching a no-hitter.”

What happens is sometimes everybody has a different perspective on what they’re looking at. Even sometimes the same words have different meaning. And my perspective — I need to set the stage — is a Vermont perspective. I should say as I point to this particular slide, the bill passed last year. It’s a reauthorization of Title I. The actual law, and it is a law, is really big. It’s about 1,100 pages — and that’s an 1,100-page amendment to the law. The other thing you need to know is that it includes 45 programs. This is not just Title I. We hear a lot of talk about Title I. This law includes homeless education, issues around access to the schools by outside organizations like Boy Scouts, NRA, you name it. It’s a law that includes a very comprehensive look at providing names of children to colleges, universities, the military, etc. It is very prescriptive and takes a massive step in a direction where federal education has never been. Tom will talk a little bit about that as well.

What you do need to know — most programs are focused on high-poverty schools, and the essence of this law is you can’t really argue with its intention. It is intended to ensure that we leave no child behind with respect to academic achievement. It’s the basis of what most schools I know in this country have somewhere in embedded in their vision or mission — to educate every child. And so the intention is very sound and very strong.

Tom Houlihan: As we get into the nuts and bolts of this bill, this legislation, think of it in this perspective: NCLB is often described as a set of conservative strategies to achieve a liberal cause, which is why it passed so overwhelmingly in the House and in the Senate. Large numbers of Republicans, large numbers of Democrats in both the House and the Senate voted for this bill. It has a little bit of something in it for everybody. No matter what your political spectrum is, it has something in there for just about everybody. Then what we find is that a lot of people are unhappy because there are things in there that they don’t like. And there are other people who are unhappy because there are other things in there that they don’t like. But remember that. It set a conservative strategy to achieve a liberal cause.

Let me explain what I mean by that. Things like school choice. Things like supplemental services. All kinds of real consequences. Those are the kinds of conservative strategies many times that you’ll hear many of those folks in that political spectrum make. The liberal idea is that all kids, the all-kids agenda. So what we’ve got is a bill that’s got lots and lots of, I think, paradoxes in it, but at the same time it took that for this legislation to pass in Congress.

So people have said to me, do you think it’s going to go away? I’m going to tell you what I think, based on my experience on the Hill and dealing with it in Washington. I do not think this bill is going to go away. It would not have passed so overwhelmingly in the House and the Senate. And remember something: There’s a different strategy involved and a different set of political dynamics in doing away with legislation as opposed to creating legislation. It’s much more difficult, in many cases, to undo something than it is to start fresh. So keep that in mind as we move forward. I just simply say to you that if you think this is going to go away, it may. But right now I wouldn’t bet on it at all. I think it is here to stay. I think we have to find ways to make this work. We have to find ways to make sure the issues out there are addressed. But it is here, and it is something that we’re all going to have to address as we move forward. And once again, as I make that comment, remember, don’t shoot the messenger.

Ray McNulty: I’ll go over some of the key aspects of this bill, this law. My attorney’s always telling me I need to say it’s law, because it’s the law now, it’s not a bill. As I indicated to you earlier, it greatly expands the federal role in education by including all students. Up until now, Title I dealt with Title I students. Now, this law includes all students, not just Title I students. So that’s a major shift in how the federal government’s role in public education at the state level has changed. We are now the state departments of education scurrying to look at the issues of all students.

It requires annual testing in grades three through eight. Actually three through eight and in high school at grade ten or eleven, one other grade. I’m not sure how many of you in this room were in a state that had that kind of testing. It might be helpful, though, for us as a group to say, how many people had testing every year in grades three through eight in their state? It seems like maybe a fifth or so. Now the federal government is saying, you will test at grades three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and at a high school level. The impact of that statement — and that, by the way, has to begin in 2005 — clearly is this: In a state like Vermont — and I told you I’d give you the Vermont perspective — we tested our students at grades four, eight, and ten. Our curriculum framework is designed around clusters of K-4 standards, 5-8 standards, 9-12 standards.

The reason for that, in many of our schools with had combination, multi-age classrooms. So teachers did a lot of flip-flopping of their curriculum. They had vertical units. They had different pedagogical delivery systems. Now we must have grade-level expectations. So at grade three we have to say, this is what every third grader needs to know with respect to mathematics and reading and writing and at grade four and at grade five. So it really is forcing the states to develop grade-level expectations for every class and aligning an assessment in that way. This is something being moved on to the states where it was not part of our current system. We had a system in place, and as you all now, change is accepted so wonderfully at the state and local level by federal government. If you’re at the state, the locals don’t like it, and if you’re at the federal level [inaudible] it just goes up the line.

States and schools must make adequate yearly progress based on test scores. This AYP issue in the No Child Left Behind law has become the crux of a lot of the conversation, and I don’t believe that there are too many people out there that — in our language in education we use AYP in a very easy way. Nowadays, I think most people on the street even know what AYP is because there’s been so much conversation about it. However, here’s the rub in terms of where this is taking us.

States and schools must make adequate yearly progress based on test scores. We know, as educators, that test scores are not the only indicator of the success of our students. We know that. As a matter of fact, we play games. We do things like this — and I can say this because I did it as a principal and I did it as a superintendent. We tell students, we’re going to be taking a test tomorrow, the state testing program, so please make sure we send notes home to parents — please make sure your children get plenty of rest and eat well the night before. Like it’s only on that time of the year that we should tell them to do that. We know better. Now we’ve got this testing regime that is going to actually identify schools as failing or not based on test data — a very narrow view of what being an educated student is all about.

And by the way, the goal of 100 percent proficiency for all students in reading and math within 12 years — that means everybody. That means everybody — 100 percent. All. No Child Left Behind. All. And I’ll do my political comment now on this particular one. When I read this and I went in to see my chief legal counsel, Bill Reedy, I looked him in the eye and said, what do you think about that? And he said, “We would have a better chance of having everybody play par golf than doing that.” And I think it’s what Tom was saying earlier — what you have to understand, however, is that this has broad support. This is the law. It was passed as the law. That’s the law. I have a duty and a responsibility as a chief state school officer, as an educator, to uphold the law. It’s a tough one for us to take on right now. But that’s exactly what the law says.

It seeks to ensure that all students can read by the end of grade three. I need you to know that in the state of Vermont we have a DRA, developmental reading assessment, and it’s a test where every teacher sits down, is trained to read with every second grader in the state. And it’s been a focus in our state for a long time to make sure that all children are able to read by grade three. Last year, our goal was to hit the 80 percent mark by the year 2004. Last year, had 80 percent of all children in the state of Vermont reading on grade level at the end of grade two.

Now, if you know the metrics of things, the closer you try to get to the 100 percent, it’s a difference that is pretty significant. But this particular law suggests that we need to make sure that they all can read by the end of grade three. It’s a noble cause. I cannot be against that. It’s something we all want. We want this for every child. However, to be penalized for not achieving it is another piece that we to think about. I’m not suggesting that it’s something we can’t achieve, but this is a pretty difficult one. It requires a certified teacher in every classroom by 2005.

The trouble that I have here — other than the fact that we know we’re not getting the kind of teachers that we need, because it’s not the attraction that you think it should be out there, and I’m really honored today to have in the second row up here Harry Wong. If there’s anybody in this country that’s walking the walk and talking the talking the talk about what we’re doing about beginning teachers, he’s doing it. You become a great teacher by teaching, but the entry into the profession is a critical point, and we don’t do a good job at that. We know what we should be doing. I really do believe we know what we should be doing. We’re not doing it. But the fact that the certification is there could be an insurmountable piece for many of us. I know in Vermont we’re having a difficult time with special education teachers, math teachers. I know many cities around this country are fraught with difficulty to do this. You are in violation of the law in 2005.

And we also know this. And this is where there’s something that we need to think about it. Every state sets its only standards for this. So here’s the conundrum that many of us find ourselves in. If you have currently what I would consider to be a very high standard for entry into the profession, you have placed yourself in a difficult situation with respect to the attraction at this point. So you, as a state, have to do something that not many of us like to think about doing. Do we actually lower standards? Is that the option? I must say that in Vermont we made the decision absolutely not. But we need to be better at this point. The issue is, this is pretty significant.

The state of Vermont is not a very large state. We only 103,000 students. We have close to 1,000 of our teachers — 7,500 peoples right now — on what we would call a probationary license. Of the 1,000, 80 percent of them have a teaching license but they’re not licensed in the field they’re teaching in. And then another 20 percent have very little if any experience at all.

We know that the teacher is the biggest influence in that classroom. Somebody said to me the other day, if we took all the money in No Child Left Behind and put it into teacher training, mentoring, all of those issues, we’d have a really good chance of meeting the intention of the law. We know that teachers make the biggest difference. There’s enough money there to pay a pretty good salary to our teachers and to encourage those mentorships. There are other ways to achieve what the intention is rather than testing and punishing schools districts. But this is a worthy goal.

The other problem is that it requires paraprofessionals to have an associate’s degree, or pass a state approved exam. If they are working in a Title I program today, and they do not, you are in compliance. On January 8, 2002, on that day, if they were teaching in a Title I program, you were out of compliance. Obviously, they knew that there was going to be a phase-in. But this is an absolute.

Tom Houlihan: Let me suggest this, Ray, in the interest of time. We have two or three slides on the details of AYP, and I would propose to you that we skip over those and maybe move to the teacher quality issue. And if you want a copy, once again, of the presentation on AYP, you can get all that information. But I think we’ve got so much to cover, and I was watching your faces. The teacher quality thing seems to be very important to you. And, quite frankly, this AYP stuff — you can get down in the morass of that and just stay down in that thing forever trying to understand it. I’m not sure that anybody totally understands it.

Let me make sure that you realize this: This bill puts a lot of responsibility back on the shoulders of state education agencies. For some of you that’s good; for some of you that may not be so good, or whatever. But the reality is that the state departments of education in this country now have an enormous amount of additional responsibility to work with local school systems. First of all, the state education agency has to have a plan approved by May 1. Preliminary plans are already in, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But they have to put together plans for all of this. Everything that we’re talking about they have to put together a plan. That means the state board of education may make some policies and so forth. I’m sure some of you are hearing some of that. Teacher quality folks, higher ed folks, certification issues — all those things have got to be addressed as we move forward with this legislation.

Second, the first level of consequence occurs at the state level. If a state has schools that are not complying, and there are not plans to carry it out, etc., etc., to address these issues, money could actually be taken back at the state level if state education agency folks do not do what is required in the law. So you’re going to see a level of monitoring that you, in many cases, probably have not seen before. Once again, don’t shoot the messenger. They’re doing what the law says they must do, because if they don’t, if a state is out of compliance, there are enormous financial consequences that can occur that ultimately impact down at the school level.

In addition, the state education agency has the responsibility of putting together technical assistance for those schools that are consistently out of compliance with AYP. In some states, that’s already being done. They’re called technical assistance teams, or whatever, but for a large number of your people probably sitting in this room, that’s never been done.

Here’s the point I want to drive home to you: If you’re really interested in this as an educator, no matter what level you are, and you don’t have a clue as to what your state is doing in terms of putting together a plan, you need to find out, and you need to be a partner in helping the states move forward with this. Do not think that state education agencies have all the answers on this. I can assure you they’ve got more questions than you do. We’re just all going down a path that’s very different from anything we’ve seen before. Every time I give a speech on this I encourage the audience to get involved with what’s going on at your state level. There is a team or an advisory group or something in every state related to this bill, and you need to find out what’s going on and to get your two cents worth in — because the final plan that has to be submitted to the Department of Ed with all the details in it is due May 1. And right now states are busily working on putting together those final comprehensive plans as required by this legislation.

So I wanted to make sure you understood what was going on with the state education agencies. And now Ray will talk a little bit about teacher quality.

Ray McNulty: Actually, Tom, maybe you could feel to jump in as well on this particular piece with respect to the money available for teacher quality. Under the area of teacher quality, there’s currently $2.85 billion for teacher quality activities. States are in the process now, actually have put together their proposals to the feds — had to be done by January 31st. All the states are in negotiations now, and by May 31st all states must have an approved application. So all the applications went to Washington on January 31st and then there’s a negotiation period going on now.

Every state had to develop a proposal in their application for meeting teacher quality and how the teacher quality dollars would be used. Teacher quality money consolidates a lot of money that was going into states in pockets and put it together. Many of us remember, because it just was a short time ago, class size reduction money. Class size reduction money and all these other federal grant moneys were all pooled together. This money was consolidated and the funds now may be used for professional development, recruitment, retention, and reducing class size.

I can tell you this, again, from the Vermont perspective. This actually affords us a little better opportunity than the past law. The reason is, Vermont has the smallest class size ratio, teacher-student ratio, in the nation, at 1 to 12. That’s an average. However, when you get money from the federal government that says “Reduce class size,” and you’re at 1 to 12, it makes it complicated, but we found ways to spend it. Now that money, however, is lumped together and now we can focus on mentoring and induction programs and other programs to ensure teacher support. Before, it was only class size reduction.

So there are some benefits to the consolidation, the collapsing of some of these monies. There’s a little more flexibility. We hear the word flexibility a lot from Washington on No Child Left Behind. This is one of those areas that creates some flexibility. If you’re a state that has state department of education — still, after the budget cuts — you need to go to them. You need to find out what’s in their application and talk with them about how they’re expecting to use this money. There is an infusion of additional money into the states under No Child Left Behind. Not as much as you would think is out there. Most of it is in the area of assessment and assessment development, but there is other money that’s out there.

Tom Houlihan: Let me add one thing. The last point here I think is really important for those of you who worry about what are we going to do about principals and superintendents and the leadership issue. And I will tell you, we really pushed this hard in the lobbying effort. And that is that these funds can now be used for professional development opportunities for administrators. And we think that’s very important because states are in a bigger crisis with quality leadership issues as they are in anything else. And these funds can be used for that.

I want to reiterate what Ray just said. You need to find out what’s going on in your states. This is a huge amount of money. Now, if you look at it like, well, it’s not, because we want to do everything we’ve always been doing and then some, as opposed to reviewing and saying this really works or this is what we really need or this where we really need to go, that’s what this flexibility is forcing states to do — and that is to be more focused on the major issues that they’re trying to address. So you need to make sure that you’re very much in tune with what states are planning to do with this money, because there is a significant amount of money in the area of teacher and administrator quality that, if we’re not real careful, may not do what we all want it to do. So I encourage you along those lines. Ray?

Ray McNulty: Continuing on with the teacher quality piece, it requires that all teachers in all Title I schools be highly qualified by 2005/2006, and here’s what they’re saying highly qualified means. Highly qualified means having full state certification or licensure and at least a BA, and in the next one, meet one of the three criteria: academic major and content area — half the states test in the content area, or have a graduate degree or advanced certification in a content area. I could tell you that alignment of your state licensing regs, this poses some problems. We in many states don’t have music teachers that have a music major. They might be a music educator, but they’re not a music major, and in some of those other areas it becomes very complex to try to get the right people.

Tom Houlihan: Let me ask something here, if I can. One thing you need to understand, too … How many of you are in the area of teacher education? One of the things I think you need to be very aware of — as you know the higher ed reauthorization is coming up shortly — is there is a very strong feeling that alternative approaches to certification should very much become a key aspect of what we do to meet the certification needs. Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just telling you what’s out there. It’s what I hear in Congress. I hear it all the time. So when you look through there at the original things that are required for a teacher to be certified, we’re all assuming that that’s going to be done in the current system — a teacher education and teacher certification.

What I’m telling you is, you need to be aware that there’s likely to be a move in every state for lots of alternatives, lots of the word “choice.” Choice doesn’t just apply to K-12 education. Lots of choices, lots of entrepreneurial approaches to get people certified in the classroom. Quick example: I understand right outside of San Francisco or Sacramento a school system there has created its own teacher program and is certifying its own people through its own school system. And evidently, from what we hear, what Congress hears, it’s very successful.

All I’m telling you, once again, is that the teacher certification issue is going to be just as active and just as controversial and just as entrepreneurial as anything in this legislation. Ray?

Ray McNulty: Do we have a question over here? [question inaudible] I’m not surprised to hear conflicting information. That’s one thing we’re able to predict with a high degree of … I seriously mean that. I’ll give you my sense of it. I know in Vermont we have an early education license, which allows a teacher to teach pre-K to grade two. As long as that’s how our state licensing operates, you’re allowed to license to that level. But you’re not allowed then to teach in the third grade because then you’re teaching out of your license, and you are not highly qualified. So it would be what I would consider to be a restrictive endorsement. It would restrict the delivery of service to just those grades. That’s my read, and it would be my licensing officer’s read as well. I know we’ve spent some time on that because of the way our licensing is aligned is as well. Yes? [question inaudible] Is elementary education considered a content area? Tom what do you think about that?

Tom Houlihan: Thank you, Ray. I appreciate that. That is going to be one of those things that is going to be looked at very carefully. The answer is, there is a set of conflicting views on that. On the one hand, there are some who say that if you teach subjects — if an elementary teacher teaches science and math and social studies, they have to be certified in those areas. Here’s the answer to that. The answer is that whenever it’s required in your state to be certified to teach at whatever level it is, the federal government cannot tell you how to do certification, nor do they intend to — I hope.

Ray McNulty: And the only thing to add to that is that a state test — in many states, in Vermont for a while, we had no state testing of teachers. We went through the licensing process. But now you must pass the practice in the general content area, practice one, and then, starting in 2005, if you’re in a content teach area, you must pass practice one and the content area and the licensing requirements of the state. And that’s part of meeting the NCLBA requirements. This way it avoids the issue of a degree in the content area, because we struggle with that, even with particular English teachers, math teachers, getting your degree in math, your content, having a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and then going on to be a teacher. It’s going to be difficult to attract teachers if that becomes the standard. So we’ve included the testing piece to try to provide virtually an easier level of access into teaching.

I’ve got a couple of more pieces here on teacher quality. Submit a plan that establishes measurable objectives for districts and schools to increase the highly qualified teacher piece. That’s why you get to your larger states, where you’re trying to figure out what are they doing with this money that’s coming in — you have to take a look at what the plan is. Many states have established broad-based committees that are setting these plans up, and when you start hitting a point where the district is not meeting AYP, it does not just affect student performance. They look at your levels of teachers, how many teachers are on waivers — all that rolls into it and schools could be heavily penalized for not having a plan to rectify that.

Tom Houlihan: Let me make a couple of other quick points. I really want to make sure we say this. Some of you may disagree with me on this, but I want to wrap this whole discussion up with a couple of things. First, I believe we’ve seen a real change in the real mission of our public schools. And I’m talking about real change, not what we put on paper or what we say in vague generalities. The policymakers of this country have said high-quality for all. And all does mean, in their minds, all. How that’s done is where we’re struggling, and that’s where we’re having lots of disagreements and such tension. I would simply caution you, don’t come down on the side against all kids. Don’t come down on the idea that we can’t meet the needs of all children, because if we do, folks, we lose.

But more important, our kids lose. So whenever I give a presentation, and whenever we talk about No Child Left Behind, the reason we have been supportive of this legislation in concept, and the reason that we’re working our fannies off to try to figure out how to make it work, is because you cannot argue with an all-kids agenda. And I would encourage you to keep that in mind as we move forward.

Basically, I’ve been in this business for 30-some years. Many of you have been in it for so many years. And I’m not criticizing my profession. But the truth of the matter is, our system was not designed to meet the needs of all children. For whatever reason, it just really wasn’t. Now the policymakers are saying, you have to do that. There are real rewards, there are real consequences. People will argue with us all day and all night about all that. AYP is a [inaudible] and I don’t think anyone’s got that sucker figured out. But the bottom line is, the policymakers in this country have framed this issue around all kids, and all means all.

So when we talk about this, when you go back in your communities, when you’re talking about it with your state people and so on and so forth, don’t lose sight. If you’ve got a better way of setting up the system so that all kids do get the kind of education that all deserve, more power to you. But we’re not seeing that across this country, and enough of a wave of success, that we can change this legislation. So I just want to close by saying that. Once again, don’t shoot the messenger, but don’t come down on the wrong side of the intent of the legislation.