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5 BEFORE THE WYOMING STATE LEGISLATURE
6 JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE
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10 JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS
VOLUME II
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8:40 a.m., Thursday
12 November 21, 2002
Casper, Wyoming
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 (Meeting proceedings reconvened
3 8:40 a.m., November 21, 2002.)
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: I'm going to go ahead and
5 call our committee to order. We have had some illness on
6 the part of our presenters and so we do have some
7 substitutes but they are people I'm assured can bring us
8 the information.
9 We have -- my cochair will be here this
10 afternoon, cannot be here this morning.
11 We have a member down the hall in management
12 audit who has reviewed this morning's material and will
13 probably be brought back for a vote. He has been briefed
14 and is fairly clear on those pieces. We are expecting
15 Senator Goodenough. That will give us a quorum.
16 I think it is in the best interests of the
17 committee to take the testimony, to work on these pieces.
18 Should we find ourselves in the position that Senator
19 Goodenough is not here, that we need to delay votes until
20 this afternoon, we can do that. But I do think that we
21 need to get these pieces moving forward, and I think there
22 are some input and decisions and thoughtfulness of the
23 committee I would like on the data pieces, and we
24 certainly have some -- enough here to do that.
25 So I would like to start with that piece. I
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1 think we completed yesterday the agenda, which means we
2 can start with that data facilitation piece this morning.
3 You have three -- actually three bills in your packet, but
4 we have some background and data that will be presented on
5 that.
6 So if you would like to begin and introduce
7 yourselves.
8 MR. KING: My name is Steve King, data
9 management supervisor for the Department of Education.
10 Mike Hamilton was scheduled to come up and speak with you
11 this morning, but when he and I met at the house this
12 morning he was not feeling well, and I don't want it, so I
13 talked him out of it and transferred some stuff to my
14 machine and I'm present on his behalf.
15 Sitting next to me is Mark Mathern, the
16 curriculum coordinator in Natrona County School District,
17 and he will cover a good section of this.
18 Last year the legislature created the Data
19 Facilitation Forum as a place to discuss issues about data
20 management between the legislature, the Department, school
21 district representatives, the Department of Audit and
22 several others. And the purpose of that forum was to
23 develop consensus around data management issues and to
24 reduce the data reporting burden on schools and districts
25 and to increase the quality of the data coming to the
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1 Department.
2 The group met five times last spring and summer.
3 You've had some reports from the Data Facilitation Forum
4 and there are a couple of recommendations that came out of
5 there also jointly with the Department.
6 One of those is the issues around
7 standards-based grading. The standards and body of
8 evidence software would allow districts to electronically
9 track and report on student performance on standards, and
10 Mr. Mathern will explain this in detail, about why we need
11 this software and what exactly we need.
12 But before turning it over to Mark, I wanted to
13 point out that there's a summary document on the standards
14 based and body of evidence tracking software which Mary
15 has, similar to that that was presented at the JEC meeting
16 in October, so you've seen some of this in October.
17 And that the body of evidence Wyoming is taking
18 is to avoid high stakes testing in all subjects. It is a
19 decision that's been made previously. While high stakes
20 testing is easier to manage, it is far from being an
21 accurate means of assessing individual student
22 achievement, and that's what we're really trying to get at
23 here.
24 With that, I'll turn it over to Mark to talk
25 about the standards-based grading.
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1 MR. MATHERN: I would like to thank this
2 committee for giving me an opportunity to review with you
3 some of the work that we've done in looking at some kind
4 of system that can help us with tracking standards. I'm
5 going to be referring to a handout that is a slide
6 presentation, and rather than show you the presentation, I
7 thought I would just walk through the slides with you.
8 When our district started out looking at how we
9 were going to address the letter of the law and some of
10 the guidelines from the state Department, we really zeroed
11 in on two components that we saw in the law. One was K-12
12 opportunity to learn and the other one was graduation
13 knowledge and skills. Somehow these two areas need to be
14 tracked. We have to show that students have been given
15 the opportunity to learn and to address the standards, and
16 we also need to show that -- students need to show us that
17 they've taken that opportunity to learn and have the
18 knowledge and skills.
19 When I look at the specific law, the phrase "an
20 opportunity to acquire sufficient knowledge and skills"
21 jumps out at me, as well as a reference to the high school
22 diploma which talks about a transcript based upon
23 proficient performance and advanced performance.
24 Knowing that we have both of those different
25 kinds of performances to identify, we need some kind of
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1 software that will allow us to track whether a child is
2 advanced or is proficient on any particular standard in
3 any particular content area. So we're looking for
4 software that can deal with multiple combinations of our
5 different standards and our different content areas.
6 Another component that is real important in this
7 process is a reference to body of evidence assessments.
8 And in the body of evidence assessments there are three
9 criteria that I think lend to the need for some kind of a
10 statewide look at software.
11 One is that the evidence must be aligned and
12 fair, that there needs to be some sort of process used to
13 determine proficient or advanced, and it cannot be done
14 based on an arbitrary percentage. And it must be
15 comparable across schools and classrooms within the school
16 district, both within a given year and across years.
17 If I could just talk about that for a second,
18 part of what we're trying to avoid is a situation where
19 Johnny who enters classroom A to take Algebra 1 and gets a
20 certain kind of proficiency score because of entering that
21 classroom as opposed to entering the classroom across the
22 hallway, so we're looking for a system that allows us some
23 comparability across both classrooms and schools at least
24 within our district where we have four high schools.
25 So the software must have the ability to receive
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1 multiple assessments or assignments that can be traced
2 back to a given standard. It has to have the ability to
3 decide proficiency without getting bogged down in
4 percentages and has to have the ability to compare data
5 from different sources.
6 The software, then, why the need for the
7 software? The body of evidence means multiple
8 opportunities to provide a preponderance of evidence, so
9 we want to track over a number of years many opportunities
10 that students will have to meet the standards. And those
11 opportunities can occur very early on in a child's
12 education and very late, all the way through his or her
13 senior year. So we want to have that ability to track the
14 achievement over time.
15 Another example is we may be able to actually
16 address certain standards in other classrooms. I will
17 give you an example. We have a technology standard in the
18 vocational area. We may be able to actually assess that
19 standard in a math classroom, for example, and we have to
20 have the ability to track a child's performance on that
21 standard, regardless of which class they're in.
22 Knowing some of these questions and starting to
23 think through some of these questions, a group of people
24 statewide came together and formed a standards and body of
25 evidence tracking team that started looking at these kinds
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1 of questions. You have, I think, before you a document
2 that actually is titled SBET software requirements, and it
3 is numbered pages 9, 10 and 11. These are some of the
4 functional requirements that we see in the software.
5 It seems to me one of the things we need to do
6 for our teachers is we need to make this system as
7 painless as possible, and what I see happening is
8 activities that are actually delivered in the typical
9 classroom being corrected and scored by the classroom
10 teacher, being put into the teacher's electronic grade
11 book and then from that point forward a central office
12 person or technology person can electronically reach into
13 that grade book and pull out specific activities that
14 address the body of evidence.
15 They wouldn't pull out the entire teachers'
16 grade because we know that some of the grade may be based
17 on effort or participation or attendance. We're looking
18 at specifically knowledge and skills in the content area.
19 So we want to be able to pull out that information
20 electrically. We want teachers only to enter that
21 information once, so we don't have a double system sitting
22 on their computer desktop. Those are some of the
23 requirements and some of the functions that are listed in
24 this document.
25 We want it to be intraoperable within the
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1 framework that the state Department is working on for
2 other data. We want it to actually communicate with some
3 of our student information systems that are in place. And
4 given the number of functionalities here, we believe that
5 every district is in the same situation and needing some
6 kind of software, and that's why we're coming before this
7 committee and hopefully before the legislature to ask for
8 some statewide support to create the software or to
9 purchase what may exist.
10 Another component -- and I would be more than
11 happy to answer any questions dealing with functionality
12 requirements.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Would you like those now
14 or would you like to go ahead and complete the whole
15 concept?
16 MR. MATHERN: It is really up to the
17 committee.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, do you have any
19 questions?
20 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: For
23 clarification, we have 2, 3, 4. Is this the same thing?
24 MR. MATHERN: Yes.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman, I
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1 would like to ask one question. In order to allow
2 teachers to work securely from home they need to have
3 obviously a PC of some sort. Is that going to be a
4 requirement for the State to buy PCs for all teachers?
5 MR. MATHERN: That's not in this plan. It
6 really provides the option if they choose to go home and
7 work.
8 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: It is an option.
9 MR. MATHERN: That's how we built the
10 functionality, that teachers could access it from home and
11 also fits with the idea that parents would have the
12 ability to communicate as well and find out student
13 information about how the child is doing from home.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Has there been thought
15 given to -- I believe I read somewhere in here -- but
16 thought given to the predominant systems that districts
17 are working with now in the state, or was there discussion
18 of -- I know when you talk about parent access and so
19 forth, there are a number of districts that have that
20 piece in place.
21 MR. MATHERN: There have been, Senator. I
22 think a number of districts have student information
23 systems in place. Natrona County has a student
24 information system called SASI. When you look at the
25 specific components required for body of evidence as well
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1 as for trying to track the standards, it seems to me a
2 number of the systems come up somewhat short, so we were
3 looking for some kind of statewide support.
4 We think that this will not replace all student
5 information systems because there's a whole demographic
6 piece that deals with students that this would not
7 address. This really is focused specifically on student
8 achievement.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: I guess that leads me to
10 ask you, then, you still believe you can get one entry
11 point for teachers?
12 MR. KING: Let me kind of -- the third
13 piece that we'll talk about later, when the facilitation
14 forum was initially meeting and I think Representative
15 Scott -- Senator Scott and Representative Shivler will
16 correct me if I'm wrong because I wasn't a member of the
17 forum but I was at several of the meetings -- body of
18 evidence was raised as an area districts were saying we're
19 requiring them to be able to track this stuff for
20 graduation and accreditation but software didn't exist to
21 do that.
22 At the same time, when the conversation got
23 around to either buying or finding or doing something to
24 do body of evidence, the issues around duplication of data
25 and burden and entering stuff twice came up and this
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1 started to scale up to be a software package to do
2 everything.
3 And I think the Department is seeing some
4 industry trends and others that we can find something to
5 do this piece and it will work with other software so we
6 can have a systemwide approach that doesn't duplicate data
7 and that's what the second thing will talk about, is
8 dealing with the other things. This is really focusing on
9 standards-based grading, tracking it software, that
10 particular component, but one of the functionalities is it
11 works with -- we have a large investment in PowerSchool,
12 SASI, a lot of other school things and let's not throw
13 that out.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Go ahead.
15 MR. MATHERN: Any other questions dealing
16 with the requirements?
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: What kind of screening
18 have you put these requirements through? Did you take
19 them through your tracking team? Did you take them
20 through the Data Facilitation Group or who composed and
21 who has looked at and who has had input to these pieces?
22 I guess that would be important for the committee to know.
23 MR. MATHERN: The body of evidence team
24 that looked at this is actually listed later on in this
25 handout, and you will see representatives both from
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1 teachers, administrators, central office folks as well as
2 WDE people. It was also reviewed with the Data
3 Facilitation Forum.
4 And really the next step in that process was a
5 release of a request for information from software vendors
6 using this functionality list, and those requests for
7 information are coming back in. I just received probably
8 10 to 15 of them yesterday --
9 MR. KING: Seven vendors have responded.
10 MR. MATHERN: It looks like more. It is
11 this thick. And then we will use this criteria to look at
12 whether these software vendors can or can't meet this
13 functionality list.
14 I actually have -- if you turn to the slide
15 presentation, I think it is page 4, there's a list of the
16 software -- current software vendor responses that came
17 forward to us, and there is a group of people from the
18 body of evidence advisory group that will now take those
19 software responses and apply them to this -- apply the
20 functionality list to the software responses.
21 We felt that the purpose of that group coming
22 together was really to identify the criteria for the
23 software, was to look at any kind of similar work group
24 kinds of issues. For example, all of the schools that use
25 PowerSchool, how they might dialogue with this software
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1 vendor, those that use SASI, et cetera. And then we also
2 talked about leveraging enough power, if you will, from a
3 statewide effort that we can actually get vendors to make
4 changes to their software.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
7 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Will this also
8 allow the State to get all of these 150-some reports or
9 part of this or allow the systems to gather and send it in
10 to the State instead of spending so much time with those
11 kind of things and not teaching?
12 MR. MATHERN: Yes. Whatever reports the
13 State would need dealing with the standards, they should
14 be able to harvest that information out of that. What we
15 know -- at least as I interpret the law dealing with
16 standards, most of the decisions are going to be made at
17 the district level about what is designated as proficient
18 or advanced, and so there may very well be different
19 districts that use this software and create different
20 kinds of cut scores or whatever to determine proficiency.
21 MR. KING: If I'm understanding the
22 question correctly, if you're talking about all data
23 reporting to the Department from school districts, this
24 software is not intended for that. This software is
25 intended just to allow districts to track body of evidence
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1 for the graduation requirements and what's being required
2 for accreditation.
3 The third thing that we're scheduled to talk
4 about does address your question about all of the other
5 data reporting districts have to do to the Department.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: We can talk about how we
8 as a committee want to handle those pieces. They're all
9 data, but they are different.
10 My understanding is that your need for this
11 piece in front of us that tracks standards and body of
12 evidence is somewhat more worked out and somewhat more
13 emergent, that maybe we get that moving first, but the
14 entire piece interacts together.
15 MR. KING: And again, what I heard at the
16 Facilitation Forum is districts are saying that we're
17 requiring for graduation tracking and other things
18 districts to do something that there currently is not
19 software to do.
20 This is -- and the first piece we're looking at
21 is really looking at the build or buy question, is a
22 comprehensive across-the-state look at what we need in
23 order to do that requirement, whether or not there is a
24 package out there that does it, and if so, buy it. If
25 not, then we're in the do we need to build something in
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1 order to allow districts to do something that there
2 currently is not software to do.
3 And it is more of a requirement because it is
4 this year's freshmen, if I'm correct, that have to show
5 proficiency in all of the stuff and districts have to be
6 able to track this body of evidence.
7 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes.
9 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: This is a result
10 of No Child Left Behind?
11 MR. KING: This is a result of current
12 state accreditation and graduation requirements and
13 tracking on the stuff. No Child Left Behind pushes that
14 further because we have to do some of this for No Child
15 Left Behind but we had to do it from state requirements
16 before.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think the other option
18 he pointed out early on is if you wanted to go for a high
19 stakes test that said you pass this test and you graduate
20 or you don't, which a lot of states have done, that is not
21 an approach that Wyoming chose. Wyoming chose an approach
22 that said, you know, basically one test, you shouldn't
23 rise or fall on one test, you should be able to
24 demonstrate skills and knowledge. But then you have to
25 have a way of tracking whether that has happened or not.
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1 And so it is an attempt to make the decision of
2 going that route versus a high stakes test.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: If we did that
4 high test thing I would still be in high school, Madam
5 Chairman.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: There are a number of
7 people who felt for one reason or another that that might
8 not be a good idea. I think also, then, the fact that you
9 may narrow the types of courses students needed to take
10 and they had to tick them off, you know, in order to pass
11 that high stakes test versus being able to demonstrate
12 skills and knowledge over a broader choice of courses or
13 subjects or paths -- so, you know, we could talk all
14 morning about the advantages, but Wyoming sort of said,
15 "No, we're going to come down on the side of knowledge and
16 skills, and if you can demonstrate that, it doesn't matter
17 whether your focus is on the technical side, focus is
18 business, whether your focus is college-bound track, there
19 should be a path for you to graduate." But that becomes
20 burdensome to keep track of.
21 Senator Scott.
22 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I really
23 see four options here. I think if we're going to go with
24 the current system with the body of evidence, we need this
25 computer system and, unfortunately, it is going to be
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1 expensive.
2 If we can't do that, if we can't do it in time,
3 there's a second option that would work, but I think only
4 for a year or two, and that is to say we're going to stick
5 with the body of evidence, but until we can get the
6 software up and running to prove that students have
7 achieved it, we almost have to look at it the other way,
8 that they graduate unless the district can prove that they
9 didn't achieve the body of evidence which would allow
10 you -- might allow you for a smoother implementation,
11 because frankly, it would allow you to make an example out
12 of a few students who were egregious and not achieving the
13 results and as sort of a warning to the others that they
14 might should pay attention. But I don't think that is
15 viable for more than a year or two while you're getting
16 the computer system up to track everybody.
17 The third option is the high stakes test that
18 you were talking about. A number of states have elected
19 for that. I certainly would want to avoid that option.
20 There may be a fourth option in terms of we can
21 retain some kind of a body of evidence system but with a
22 radical simplification that would cut out a lot of the
23 specific -- it is the number of data points we need to
24 track that get us in trouble. If you came back and really
25 limited those, you could perhaps use a modified body of
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1 evidence system where you wouldn't have to build as
2 expensive and fancy a computer system, but that would
3 require rethinking a whole bunch of things here.
4 So I think the computer system here is the way
5 to go and I think it makes sense for the state to either
6 find one and buy it -- and I'm skeptical you're going
7 to -- or build it once for everybody. And I think that's
8 the plans.
9 MR. MATHERN: It is, to build it once.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: And in what we're looking
11 at this morning we really have two pieces that will
12 eventually become one in terms of data systems, but one is
13 probably further along in knowing exactly what we need and
14 how we want to implement so it can be kind of a stage
15 thing so long as it is well coordinated.
16 And pretty soon if people like Business Week and
17 so forth keep coming out with articles that we've dumbed
18 down our standards to meet the requirements, I'm going to
19 need a computer system to answer my e-mail and phone
20 calls. But it really frustrates me when I know the hard
21 work that's gone into it by everyone.
22 Anyway, I will end that subject.
23 MR. MATHERN: Senator, if I could just
24 make one comment on the question about the high stakes
25 test, it seems to me this concept of body of evidence
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1 brings us closest to what is occurring in the classroom
2 every day, and it gives us the ability to track what is in
3 the classroom and still using some statistical
4 requirements like fairness and comparability.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
6 this sounds like what I was wanting to hear. I'm very
7 pleased. I attended the presentation here last week that
8 was talking about this very thing, so --
9 MR. MATHERN: The last piece I have is a
10 list for you in the slide presentation of the people that
11 have been involved, either through some sort of e-mail
12 discussion or attending specific meetings, and you will
13 notice that there's a fairly large representation from
14 throughout the state.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator.
16 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, I
17 appreciate the presentation. I guess I would issue a word
18 of caution that as we choose these words, it seems like
19 we're taking straightforward, simple words and adding
20 syllables on to them and thinking they're more erudite.
21 What's the difference between functionality and funtion,
22 for example? Cut score, is that a word in the Funk &
23 Wagnall or is that a made-up word? It seems like we're
24 introducing a whole bunch of fancy words which don't
25 necessarily have to be utilized for clear understanding of
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1 what we're going after here.
2 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
4 SENATOR SCOTT: It has been my experience
5 that typical bureaucratic process would not pass the high
6 editorial standards of the Riverton Ranger.
7 SENATOR PECK: They sure wouldn't fit into
8 a headline.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: But you've got to get
10 somebody to read what's written.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, any other
12 questions before -- are there questions from the public --
13 are there statements from the public? I want to go ahead
14 and take the other data system testimony before we move
15 forward on the other piece, on any of these pieces, but
16 does -- do those present have any comments?
17 MR. MARION: Scott Marion, Madam Chairman,
18 Department of Education. It is hard for me to listen to
19 all of this body of evidence talk without taking it
20 personally. I just want to clarify a few things and maybe
21 help explain some things that might temper the effect of
22 the 6.2 million.
23 The body of evidence is not simply an assessment
24 system as a way -- while it is most primarily designed as
25 a way to make it more fair to determine whether or not
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1 students have met the graduation standards, one of the
2 positive collateral effects of the body of evidence system
3 is that it has done more in a short time to improve
4 teaching and learning than many other interventions and
5 innovations that we've seen in this state.
6 So it is not just simply an assessment approach
7 to make things more fair, which it is, but it is a way
8 that people have really worked to improve teaching and
9 learning significantly.
10 The other piece related to what Senator Scott
11 said is that we have this body of evidence consortium now
12 where I think every district except one or two that has a
13 high school is a member of this consortium developing
14 common assessments among this group where we have probably
15 75 different assessments in the core content areas. So
16 things are going to look more alike across districts in
17 terms of these.
18 Part of the trouble with tracking is when every
19 district is doing something very differently,
20 incorporating grades and some are not and district
21 assessments and state assessments and different pieces,
22 then the function -- functional requirements -- take off
23 the I T Y -- but the requirements are at least so much
24 greater because you have to incorporate every possible
25 permutation. And as normal districts start using these
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1 more commonly developed assessments I think we will get at
2 some of the simplification that Senator Scott is asking
3 about.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: And this is the result of
5 some of your groups that have been meeting on improving
6 teaching skills and addressing the body of evidence. And
7 they're meeting -- I know they meet after we adjourn. I
8 have been aware of a couple of those meetings. But I
9 assume this is a regular sort of thing that occurs.
10 MR. MARION: I think the body of evidence
11 has 42 districts now, 45 high schools, so we're pretty
12 much all of the way there. They send representatives from
13 each of the core content areas to participate. And now we
14 have blitzkrieg training around the state so more than
15 just the single representatives from each district can
16 train on how to use these, how to score the activities,
17 how to embed them in the curriculum and teach the
18 requisite skills so kids can be successful in these
19 activities.
20 I think it is some of the best professional
21 development I've ever seen in terms of improving teaching
22 and learning, and it will also have that positive effect
23 that Senator Scott is asking for as a way to sort of bring
24 some parameters around all of this potential flexibility.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any other comments?
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1 Gary.
2 MR. MCDOWELL: Gary McDowell, Wyoming
3 Education Association. One of the concerns that teachers
4 all over the state have had from the beginning of the
5 movement of our standards and assessment has been just the
6 difficulty of trying to manage all of the data. And
7 districts have been extremely frustrated with this. A lot
8 of discussion has gone on, a lot of wringing of hands has
9 taken place over the last several years trying to figure
10 out how to do it, how to make this system work.
11 The one piece -- one of the pieces that has been
12 missing is this data management system that will allow
13 people to direct their primary attention in the classroom
14 to teaching, reduce a lot of that additional burden in
15 terms of the data management piece and will result in
16 districts being able to have the kind of quality data that
17 they need to be able to make programmatic decisions.
18 I know that I worked as a social studies
19 coordinator in Cheyenne for a number of years and that was
20 one of the things that we met on over and over again was
21 how do you manage that data, what kind of system can we
22 put in place, and I think this is the direction that we
23 all need to go.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: So I guess the question I
25 have for you -- this whole data piece is going to be a
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1 fairly sizable chunk of money. Before we ask this
2 committee to go to the mat with the legislature and say
3 this is really important, I guess I'm wanting to hear it
4 really is important or it is not in terms of how teachers
5 do their jobs and whether it supports districts in what
6 they're trying to do.
7 Do you think this is what teachers need and want
8 to help them do their job?
9 MR. MCDOWELL: I think this is something
10 that's absolutely essential. It is a way of doing it
11 where there's not that management of paper on top of
12 paper. It simplifies. It gets the data there. It is
13 something that is designed, as I understand it, that will
14 allow people to use their embedded assessments which are
15 good quality performance assessments as opposed to some
16 external test, if you will, which then really gets at the
17 heart of what is good quality instruction, what Scott was
18 referring to. And then from that you can derive the
19 information you need to be making the programmatic
20 decisions that districts have to make.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
23 would like to ask Scott, when he was talking about
24 professionals and how this is going to, you know, improve
25 the teachers' ability to do their job and be a
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1 professional, would you elaborate a little more on that?
2 Why? How? If we're going to argue these things on the
3 floor, we need to know that.
4 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman,
5 Representative McOmie, one of the things we've been
6 struggling with and one of the things that WyCAS has
7 pointed out over the years is that we're doing a pretty
8 good job of teaching kids basic skills, but teaching kids
9 to think more deeply, to teach the higher thinking skills,
10 critical thinking, problem solving, et cetera, is a
11 struggle in many places.
12 Part of that struggle is developing activities,
13 whether they be instructional activities in the classroom
14 or assessment activities, that ask children to solve novel
15 problems, create their own experiments, to structure the
16 base and things like that.
17 It is hard. When we review assessments as part
18 of district accreditation, the real weak link in every
19 district that we've ever reviewed is that the ability
20 created by teachers or groups of teachers within a
21 district tend to be relatively what we call low cognitive
22 demands, knowledge, recall, without asking them to solve
23 problems, to think more critically.
24 Why this became really good professional
25 development is because teacher representatives -- for
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1 instance, we had 40 math teachers working with expert
2 facilitators to write these extended problems, and that
3 was only part of it. So they got good mentoring right
4 there how to write these kind of problems that will ask
5 kids to think deeply.
6 And then when they had to look at how they would
7 score this, they piloted these things, tried them out in
8 the classrooms and brought the actual student work back to
9 another meeting. And they were looking at the student
10 work and they were initially aghast that "My kids can't do
11 this at the level that we think they should be able to do
12 it."
13 And so when you now give them a problem that
14 requires this deep thinking and then you look at the
15 evidence from the student work and it is personal because
16 they're looking at evidence from their own classroom as
17 well as other classrooms around Wyoming, they're saying,
18 "My gosh, these kids can't get to even these higher
19 levels."
20 We've had teachers come to us, 5-, 10-, 20-year
21 veterans: "I need to teach differently. I need to think
22 about my craft differently." And more and more teachers
23 around the state are seeing that. And when they now give
24 kids the opportunities earlier on to solve these kind of
25 problems, to address these more complex real-world tasks,
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1 they now have what we call the opportunity to learn to do
2 that. And we're seeing performance on these kind of deep
3 thinking tests improve.
4 So it is teachers being faced with looking at
5 their own student work with other of their colleagues, so
6 instead of one person trying to create a grade assessment,
7 you get to pool the resources of 40 of their smartest
8 colleagues around the state with expert facilitation, it
9 raises the level of what we can expect from kids.
10 And that's why -- Jim Long has been very
11 involved in it -- anyone else in the room -- Annette has
12 been involved in it and Mark has been very involved in it,
13 if they care to speak to it in terms of professional
14 development effects. That's my take and I've been pretty
15 closely involved.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Before we go to that, I
17 think the piece maybe that is going on that I am somewhat
18 aware of but we don't always see, if you might just fill
19 the committee in, as I understand it, this whole piece
20 began when you started -- when the Department of Education
21 started bringing together and doing some forums on
22 standards and then on body of evidence, and then because
23 the teachers attending that gained so much from each other
24 and from these experiences, the consortium formed, did it,
25 to teach colleagues? How did that evolve? We don't see
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1 that part.
2 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman, two parallel
3 tracks. Early on we started what you're referring to,
4 what is now referred to as the Wyoming Standards-Based
5 Institute. It used to be standards development. We've
6 expanded it to include some of the components from WYOBest
7 that the legislature funded a few years ago. Now it is 15
8 days of instruction through the year, 5 days in the summer
9 and then on-site mentoring for 10 days through the year.
10 And those focused on teaching teachers how to teach in a
11 standards-based environment. It is not dependent upon the
12 high school graduation requirements, per se. It is
13 teaching teachers how to look at standards, design
14 curriculum units and design meaningful assessments to
15 assess their kids.
16 The body of evidence consortium grew out of
17 this. Actually, the germination was in this first meeting
18 we had in Cody about the body of evidence in the summer of
19 2000. We had about a hundred people from around the
20 state. And I had a couple of outside experts who started
21 kicking this around, and this initially started well,
22 maybe it could be a scout and merit badge thing, check
23 off. What would those tasks look like in the merit badge
24 setting. And that became eventually the consortium, was
25 we need to have the tasks that people can check off.
317
1 And it was the interest of the districts who
2 said why should we all develop these rich assessments 48
3 times over as opposed to pooling our resources. And the
4 advantage of then hiring an outside contractor to help
5 facilitate these groups, it keeps it moving through the
6 years. So when the school calendar is getting bogged down
7 in December or May, the people who are getting paid full
8 time to do this keep doing their work.
9 Each district has kicked in for the first phase
10 $5,000 over a two-year period and the Department has
11 matched that amount of money to help support this
12 initiative. So it has been a very good investment on the
13 districts' part. It has been a very good investment on
14 the department's part to get this rich array of activities
15 that people from other states are now looking at our
16 system and our process.
17 So it is two parallel tracks, if you will, but
18 those are the two main professional development elements
19 run out of my unit in the Department. One is a general
20 instruction of how to teach in a standards-based world and
21 the other is more specific to creating and using
22 assessments.
23 Now, as an aside, I'm now convinced more than
24 ever the body of evidence consortium is the best
25 professional development I've ever seen, even better than
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1 this thing I still am proud of, standards-based schools
2 institute. Because the body of evidence -- these folks
3 are creating stuff that's real to them. They have to
4 think about using this so that kids who are going to
5 graduate in 2006 -- so it is everything we know about
6 learning theories, meaningful, relevant, high level and it
7 is pushing them and helping them with these outside
8 experts. That's the meaningful list.
9 I could talk about this all day.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: That's all right. I think
11 it is important that the committee has enough background
12 to support it on the floor and know how it has evolved.
13 Dr. Bohling.
14 DR. BOHLING: Annette Bohling, Department
15 of Education. What I think I would like to do is see if I
16 could simplify this as to really what the issue is. I
17 don't think anyone disagrees that this is needed, that
18 there needs to be a system and a way, a vehicle for
19 tracking the standards, and I think we all agree on that.
20 I think the real issue is -- if I could just
21 boil it into a nutshell for this committee and I think
22 what you're going to be faced with with the full
23 legislature is not about whether this is needed, it is
24 going to be about whose responsibility is it to do this.
25 It has always been the districts' responsibility to track
319
1 student performance, so the issue that you're going to be
2 faced with is do you want to take that responsibility from
3 the districts and put it on the state?
4 Quite honestly -- and I'm not speaking for or
5 against, but what I am saying is we have always walked a
6 fine line at the Department as to what we impose on the
7 districts or the position that we take with them, and, for
8 example, in the body of evidence consortium, we at the
9 beginning were hesitant to try to take the lead because we
10 knew it was a responsibility of districts.
11 As time progressed, we kind of got a better
12 relationship and it was not such a new idea, so we took
13 the lead in that effort, even though we knew it is a
14 district responsibility to track the body of evidence and
15 to develop their own system, which it says in rule and
16 reg.
17 So I just wanted to mention that the issue that
18 we're all talking about here about whether or not it is
19 needed or whether it is good or whether it would reduce
20 paperwork or so on is really not the issue. I think we're
21 all in agreement that it would.
22 The real issue is are we going to take that
23 responsibility from the districts and put it on the State
24 to track the student performance on the standards. That's
25 really the issue.
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1 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman
2 and Miss Bohling, I think that issue is past now with No
3 Child Left Behind, isn't it? I mean, that is the State's
4 responsibility to respond to the government on that, isn't
5 it, I mean the federal government?
6 DR. BOHLING: Madam Chairman, actually, No
7 Child Left Behind is not the impetus behind this. We
8 already have what we need for No Child Left Behind and
9 that is the state assessment where we have a system that
10 lets us know if a child is proficient or not proficient.
11 That is what No Child Left Behind requires.
12 This is a different issue. This is tracking
13 student performance for graduation, and it really has
14 nothing to do with the requirements of No Child Left
15 Behind as far as whether or not subgroups or groups of
16 students are meeting the standards in reading, writing and
17 math. This is actually a requirement because of the
18 graduation requirements for individual students, not
19 groups of students.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
21 as we all know, you know, the federal government is adept
22 at expanding their programs and I think all of us
23 understand at some point No Child Left Behind will become
24 more expansive also and successful. And we all hope that
25 it is.
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1 So I suggest -- you know, I don't have this fear
2 that the State hold all this information. We're a small
3 state, 450,000 people. There's school districts in the
4 East that are twice that big. I have no fear that the
5 state holds all of that. We have the local control mantra
6 and that what we're doing here shouldn't be up to the
7 State, but it is. The State is putting the money out for
8 this, so I think it is important that this is done at the
9 state level.
10 And I think one of the things that came out in
11 the facilitation group -- and there's several members
12 here -- and that was a great group, by the way. It
13 brought us together and I certainly understand the
14 districts' problems better and I think they understand our
15 position a little better. But I think one of the things
16 that came out that is important is that, you know, this
17 information doesn't have to be secret. It is certainly
18 not -- no one is going to be held to the grindstone for
19 it. We are just trying to get information.
20 And I think one of the things that came out, you
21 know, I think one of our mantras was the road to success
22 is paved with good information and we all need it. And I
23 know this program is expensive, but I think, you know, it
24 is not going to be nearly as expensive as what is going to
25 happen if we don't do it.
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1 So I think we really need to look seriously at
2 this. If we don't implement this program at this point it
3 is going to cost us far more money down the road. We as a
4 legislature are always asking for information. In my
5 first four years in the legislature, I would ask three or
6 four districts for information and I would get the
7 information, but it wouldn't be the same thing and that's
8 bad information. So I really couldn't make a good
9 decision on this.
10 I would like to do away with this problem that
11 the State is the overseer, they're going to punish us for
12 the wrong information, and say, "Look, we're going to give
13 the State the same information and at that point we can
14 all progress and be successful." This is what I got out
15 of that and I hope the other folks did too.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Mathern.
17 MR. MATHERN: Madam Chairman, one
18 component, too, and I don't know if I stressed it enough,
19 is this entire group of people really came together and
20 approached the State Department of Education to help us
21 with this, and it really bubbled up, if you will, from the
22 districts saying, "We need some help. We need some
23 facilitation statewide." Never once did I feel like the
24 concept of a common set of software was imposed from the
25 Department of Education. It really was the other way to
323
1 say, "Please help us. We have some common interests
2 here," and those common interests really go across all
3 districts.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Would it be most
5 opportune, then, to look at the second data piece so we
6 understand the statewide education data systems so --
7 MR. KING: Mike's original plan was to
8 look at this, talk about the bill, look at the next
9 pieces, but I'm getting the feeling that it probably does
10 make sense to talk about the three together and then come
11 back and look at -- and let me skip. Mike was going to
12 talk about the advisory group's piece, but I think the
13 data system piece may make more sense. And that's this
14 SIF.
15 When the Data Facilitation Forum was meeting and
16 talking about the body of evidence issues, one of the
17 things that kept coming up was that this particular
18 package needs also to deal with grade book, needs to deal
19 with demographics, in other words, which kids are in which
20 groups. That stuff is in the student management system in
21 districts and also needs to be able to report to the state
22 for school improvement and program evaluation purposes.
23 So there was a lot of interconnectedness.
24 And as the forum was talking about a lot of this
25 stuff, the concept of building or buying a central state
324
1 system to manage body of evidence started to grow to be a
2 central state software package to do everything for school
3 districts in the state, whether it was school lunch,
4 finance, HR, transportation, the works.
5 And I started to get nervous, me personally,
6 about having the State in that position. But one of the
7 things that I don't think anybody on the committee was
8 aware of is an effort that vendors had been involved in,
9 started in '99, when Microsoft brought a bunch of school
10 district people together and essentially were asking them
11 in a focus group what Microsoft could do for school
12 education. And what the school districts were complaining
13 about were they have all of these different packages and
14 they don't talk to each other.
15 What Microsoft started was what is called the
16 Schools Interoperability Framework. This has moved away
17 from Microsoft so this is independent and at least
18 facilitated and managed by the software industry
19 association.
20 And it is vendors getting together and talking
21 about how to get education software to talk to each other
22 so that if I have a school management package, whether it
23 is PowerSchool or MacSchool or SASI or whatever, and I
24 have a school lunch package that's managing school lunch
25 cafeteria things, when a kid registers up front in the
325
1 office with the school management package, that my school
2 lunch package knows about it. I don't have to re-enter
3 the school's name and that he's enrolled and all of that.
4 And the same with the school library.
5 The vendors have been looking on this for the
6 last couple years and that's one of the things that's a
7 requirement in our SBET functionality is that it work in
8 the SIF world. And the reason for that is it means we
9 don't have to throw out all of the investment that school
10 districts have in this stuff, but there's a set of
11 standards growing up for them to be able to work together
12 and share data so that somebody can enter data once and
13 all of the other software that needs to know about it
14 knows about it. And these set of standards are all built
15 and manage different access levels. The security, the
16 control, all of that stuff is already in place.
17 The third proposal and the one that this SIF
18 operability thing talks about -- I don't remember which
19 bill it is -- that we're looking at is really to take this
20 next year and do a real good specification and analysis of
21 what we would need to build a statewide system where we
22 can all get what we need out of the system.
23 Everything that we're talking about in the
24 standards-based grading thing, the vast majority of that
25 never comes to the State Department of Education. We
326
1 never see it. This is districts needing to make decisions
2 about which kids in their district are proficient on each
3 of the standards and whether or not to give them a
4 diploma.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: That's the first one.
6 MR. KING: That's the first one.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: Most of that never comes
8 to the State.
9 MR. KING: The Department never sees it.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: School districts need it
11 and schools districts if a child moves from one district
12 to another need that.
13 MR. KING: Right. When a Department comes
14 out to do accreditation, we look to see the districts have
15 it, but the data doesn't come to the Department. Some of
16 No Child Left Behind and a couple of those other pieces
17 for program evaluation, for school evaluation, we need
18 some aggregate information -- what's the percent of kids
19 showing proficiency by the different groups, but all of
20 the individual stuff doesn't necessarily have to come to
21 the Department.
22 But that doesn't mean that there's still a major
23 burden on districts to have to be able to manage that
24 stuff and be able to show that that's going on. SIF is
25 one potential thing that could allow all of us to get what
327
1 we need to, so a teacher can enter the stuff to -- what
2 they need to to manage kids, make the decisions about
3 graduation and from that extract the program evaluation
4 information that the Department needs.
5 I don't want to propose SIF as a solution
6 because I don't think we understand the problem full
7 enough yet to really be at this point proposing a
8 solution. But I think it is definitely an option out
9 there that a lot of the discussion about building a single
10 software thing is proposing a solution before the problem
11 is really defined.
12 So the other piece in here that's the -- which
13 one is this, 193 -- yeah, the statewide education data
14 system is really taking the next year to really get our
15 arms around what needs to come to the Department and what
16 do the districts need and how do these need to work
17 together and take a look at SIF, the Schools
18 Interoperability Framework, and make sure if that's the
19 solution we want, that it works for all of these. I think
20 it probably will as far as cost is probably the best
21 approach and see exactly what we need to do to implement
22 that.
23 Now, the standards-based grading is pulled out
24 because we really can't wait another year to really start
25 trying to find something that's going to solve districts
328
1 being able to track kids' proficiency in all of the
2 different standards. WyCAS, rather, only does reading,
3 writing and mathematics right now. It is not across all
4 studies. Doesn't do social studies. We will have to add
5 science for No Child Left Behind. We still don't do
6 foreign language, don't do career and tech ed. All of
7 those other things still have to be tracked by districts
8 in body of evidence.
9 The statewide data system is really to get our
10 arms around will this work, what exactly do we need to do
11 to do what Representative McOmie asked about, all of the
12 reporting to the Department and try and get all of these
13 systems coordinated so we can enter in once and it is
14 exchanged where it needs to be and managed as much as
15 possibly electronically so we're not having to run a
16 report in one system and hand copy stuff into another
17 report or rekeying stuff into another report and sending
18 that to the Department.
19 Because this is an industry-led effort, the
20 vendors are behind this and we have a set of standards out
21 there, it is going to be much more flexible and it allows
22 districts to do best of breed kind of things. Natrona has
23 SASI as their system. Other districts have PowerSchool,
24 other districts have MacSchool and they've made those
25 choices because that's what works best for their
329
1 particular district.
2 And it is not that we throw that out. They need
3 to make those choices for the local needs, but there's a
4 common piece of that that we can share and we don't need
5 to build a state system that doesn't work for anybody in
6 order to satisfy some data-sharing needs, which is a small
7 piece of what districts need information systems for. And
8 so that's what that third state system is talking about
9 and why we're really looking at that study.
10 The standards-based grading is a piece of that
11 and will fit into it. But what I think we really need to
12 take next year to do is get our arms around what exactly
13 it is going to take to build this.
14 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, what grade
15 level do you start gathering and inputting information on
16 each student? Do you start at first grade or is this only
17 in high school or juniors and seniors or what?
18 MR. KING: Excuse me. Madam Chairman, if
19 you're talking about registering kids into school, student
20 management needs to know which kids are there, which
21 classes they're taking, who their teachers are, these
22 kinds of things; lunch packages, which kids are getting
23 lunch and being able to track that. And so information
24 starts with kids as soon as they get into the system.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: And that's the SIF?
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1 MR. KING: The Data Facilitation Forum
2 started with standards-based training. And all of this
3 other data that we have to manage if we're going to build
4 a system for this and have the State pay for it, why don't
5 we expand it and build a central, big, large system at the
6 state for everybody?
7 And my personal belief is PowerSchool,
8 MacSchool, those guys have invested I don't know how many
9 millions of dollars over how long and they don't do it
10 all. To expect the State to do it and have it by next
11 year is probably a little unreasonable.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, other questions
13 on the piece?
14 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
15 what kind of a buy-in are the districts going to have on
16 this? By that I mean, you know, you just mentioned you
17 have all of these different systems. Probably there's
18 going to have to be something that will make the Apple
19 system compatible with the other system.
20 Are the districts going to be -- is that
21 particular district going to have to buy into that or will
22 that be all of this software package, all included in it?
23 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, Representative
24 McOmie, one of the -- the way -- and again, if we go down
25 the SIF road, I'm not -- I think so, but if we go down
331
1 that road, there's a small piece of software that a
2 particular software vendor would need which SIF calls an
3 agent that knows how to talk to the larger SIF system.
4 Currently PowerSchool, NCS which is the SASI, Chancery
5 which does MacSchool are all SIF members and all currently
6 are working on making their software SIF compatible.
7 I'm not sure about Software Unlimited which is a
8 vendor that does finance for finance systems and
9 accounting and is a company out of South Dakota that does,
10 probably -- what, about 32 of our districts in the state
11 are running Software Unlimited for their finance stuff.
12 And SIF, again, because it is a new effort is
13 still defining some of what data gets exchanged, but the
14 SIF thing is really focusing on what kind of information
15 does a software -- a student management package need to
16 know about. There's a group that's looking at standards
17 tracking, grade book, curriculum resources, opportunity to
18 learn stuff, and that standards body which the Department
19 of Education has recently joined so we can help define
20 some of those things -- but that standards body is
21 defining what are those kind of standard data objects that
22 get exchanged, how the individual software vendors manage
23 that in their own systems to be able to generate this, SIF
24 has transferred back to the individual vendors.
25 One of the things that we have to push, and I
332
1 think SIF is pushing and from the Department we want to
2 push, is the effort on the vendors that we want to be able
3 to play in the SIF world. If vendors hear that enough
4 from districts, they will make their software do that. It
5 is a way they can make their software -- they can write an
6 interface once to one standard and not 15 times. Right
7 now the problem is there's four different packages that do
8 school lunch. If PowerSchool wants to interact with
9 school lunch vendors, they've got to write four different
10 interfaces. And at the same time Chancery doing MacSchool
11 has to write four and SASI has to write four different
12 interfaces.
13 So the vendors are seeing this as a way to save
14 money and get a consistent mechanism for doing data
15 exchange and market their special features. The vendors
16 right now are coming to the table and talking about the
17 Schools Interoperability Framework.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
19 how far away are we from that?
20 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, I was, again,
21 in Dallas last week at a SIF meeting talking to other
22 states. Pennsylvania is looking to do something similar
23 to what we're talking about here with going to state -- a
24 statewide effort with SIF. There is a regional service
25 center currently running in Pennsylvania that is doing
333
1 some student management things with the Schools
2 Interoperability Framework for 38 districts in
3 Pennsylvania.
4 And I talked with a consultant in -- from the
5 state of Idaho where the state of Idaho is look at doing
6 something and he was interested in looking at the SIF
7 stuff.
8 One of the issues with SIF right now -- and I
9 want to be clear and why I'm somewhat leery about this --
10 SIF's focus initially was on the exchange of information
11 that's needed within a school building, so it is the
12 school management to the library to school lunch and some
13 of those pieces.
14 The data that needs to come up to a district and
15 some of the objects -- the instructional services working
16 groups are looking at which is tracking standards,
17 tracking grade book, tracking those kinds of things are
18 coming later. So some of the data definitions for what
19 we're talking about and what we need don't currently
20 exist. I believe they will be there before we could do it
21 if we were trying to do it on our own.
22 But that is one of the things that we have to be
23 a little bit cautious about SIF stuff. I don't want to be
24 pushing what we used to refer to as vaporware. The specs
25 are starting to come out, the drafts are starting to be in
334
1 place, but some of the vendors have not lined up behind
2 all of this stuff yet, and it is going to take some making
3 sure that the market is there behind them. I think
4 there's enough momentum behind here that I think we can be
5 there, but there may be some pieces that are not there.
6 But there are -- the infrastructure all works
7 and there are several cases that we can show. I do have a
8 commitment from the executive director of SIF that if you
9 wanted he would be willing to come and be able to show --
10 I've seen several places where they set up a little
11 network with a couple laptops, I register the kids here
12 and they show up on the lunch system there and be able to
13 demonstrate those pieces. Those are in place.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Just a follow-up,
15 are you talking about a year or two? Best guess. I know
16 you don't know.
17 MR. KING: What we're talking about in
18 here and what's in the draft 193 is to take next year,
19 really study what exactly we need, what software districts
20 currently have and is it SIF compatible so we can get our
21 arms around what software needs to be modified and to do
22 potentially a couple of pilots, so in a couple districts
23 that want to, have some stuff set up, a server at the
24 Department to be able to demonstrate some data exchanges
25 from districts to the Department as it needs to be, and
335
1 really cost out what infrastructure needs to be built in
2 order to do all of this stuff, and do some marketing
3 talking with districts, you know, to make sure we do have
4 what you're talking about, the buy-in, and really build
5 the business case for that so that we can come back to you
6 in the following legislature session with a full plan
7 saying if we're going to do this, this is how we're going
8 to do it and this is what it will cost to do. And that's
9 what 193 talks about.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
11 know that somebody on the floor is going to get up and say
12 what are the districts spending to help with this project,
13 and it sounds like they're going to be spending a lot of
14 money they would ordinarily be doing for software and
15 upgrades, so they're going to be involved with some of
16 their own dollars. That's going to be a question. It
17 always comes up. And I wanted to be able to say some of
18 the things you've just said.
19 MR. KING: Representative McOmie, I think
20 that's correct. And I think one of the nice things about
21 taking the SIF approach as opposed to the state approach,
22 districts don't have to throw away all the investment
23 they've got, all the training they've done on staff.
24 That's a key piece to any of these things. We have a lot
25 of teachers in districts trained so they know how to use
336
1 their systems. We don't want to throw that away.
2 And my guess is if we ended up coming up with a
3 state system there will be features districts want and
4 they'll end up running parallel in a lot of cases in order
5 to get at those other features.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any other questions?
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
8 this was one of our discussions, obviously, in the
9 facilitation group, if in fact we find some districts that
10 say, "Well, you know, your system doesn't work," we can't
11 very well tell them to buy another system. I think the
12 State would be responsible for buying that. Then you get
13 into some pretty heavy money, especially if you've got
14 eight or ten districts like that.
15 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, Representative
16 Shivler, I think that's correct. And I think that's
17 really why we need to take this next year and really take
18 a look at what districts have, what does work, what
19 doesn't work, where do we need to make changes and what do
20 we need to invest to get this all to work. Who is up to
21 speed now and who is not?
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Do we basically
23 have the three systems now, the MacSchool and PowerSchool
24 and SASI?
25 MR. KING: I don't know offhand but those
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1 account for the majority of the districts. That is
2 something I know Mike has because -- the guy who was
3 supposed to be sitting here -- because we surveyed some of
4 that, but I'm not sure off the top of my head. That would
5 cover the vast majority of the districts.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, would it
7 be fair to summarize your attitude on this is that if it
8 can work that there's a major payoff in terms of making
9 the world simpler for everybody and more efficient for
10 everybody, that there are still some issues out there such
11 that it is not clear whether it is going to work or not,
12 but that you think the probability is that it will is high
13 enough to warrant spending a couple hundred thousand and a
14 year's time, giving it a chance, because the payoff could
15 be major? Is that a fair statement?
16 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, Senator Scott,
17 that is a fair statement. And even if there is data that
18 the Department of Education needs that SIF does not define
19 objects for, which is a potential, all of the
20 infrastructure for SIF, how the data gets exchanged, all
21 of the securities mechanisms, all what they refer to as
22 the choreography for how the machines talk to each other
23 and who can exchange what and when and verify it got there
24 and all of the rest of that, I think our investment to do
25 a couple modifications and build a couple agents to do
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1 some special extracts for the Department -- for example,
2 we could build on some of all of this other stuff that we
3 know works. We can see that. That's been demonstrated
4 over and over and over to simplify things.
5 And that's -- in my world when you're talking
6 about data exchanges, you go from passing paper forms back
7 and forth to a fully electronic system, there's a whole
8 slew of other layers that get in there to complicate the
9 system. When you talk about who can have access to seeing
10 the stuff, access to what, what kinds of changes, how did
11 it get written, how do we know it got from here to there,
12 it gets really, really complicated fast. And if we can
13 build on an existing, demonstrated open standard thing
14 that multiple vendors are supporting I think we will be
15 better off in the long run.
16 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, I think as
17 we look at this we need to make an honest assessment as to
18 the benefits of centralization versus decentralization.
19 And while Wyoming is the least populous and the smallest,
20 all of the districts, even if we generate one sheet of
21 paper for each of our 85,000 students, we've got a stack
22 of paper ten feet tall. You're talking about getting your
23 arms around it.
24 Tell me how -- what's the state Department going
25 to do with all of this data when it gets in there to make
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1 it truly relevant and useful?
2 MR. KING: Excellent questions. Madam
3 Chairman, my position is an interesting one, I guess.
4 I've been doing data coordination for the Department for
5 almost 14 years now. And again, most of the data that we
6 get on kids never sees the Department of Education. Local
7 school districts, local teachers, local school buildings
8 get that stuff to provide services, figure out what a
9 kid's needs are, figure out what best instruction to
10 provide, what resources to do, what services to provide
11 and to be able to take a look at their programs.
12 There are times, and WyCAS is probably a good
13 example, where we have standards in place, our content and
14 knowledge skills, baskets of goods and services that
15 districts have to monitor where kids are to make those
16 instructional decisions.
17 At the same time the Department has to, both for
18 federal needs and for your purposes, do program
19 evaluation, be accountable for the money, make sure that
20 we're getting good results for the investment that we're
21 getting, and as much as possible, we would like to use
22 information that exists and to use it multiple times so
23 we're not investing a lot in doing single purposes.
24 So if we can tap into systems that schools and
25 districts are using to manage themselves and at the same
340
1 time answer program evaluation purposes and not ask
2 districts to go back and collect special purpose type of
3 things, we've saved money and we also get better data.
4 When districts are using it for their own
5 purposes, they care more about it. I don't mean that in a
6 negative way, but when the Department comes in or anybody
7 comes in asking for something and somebody doesn't need
8 that for their own purposes and it is not useful to them,
9 they don't put as much effort and care into it.
10 So if we can tap in what they're using for their
11 own purposes and try and get that stuff coordinated and
12 clean so we're all doing it consistently, we both benefit.
13 They have more burden and more data and we can make better
14 decisions.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: A lot of the data that
16 we're talking about here is data required to operate our
17 school finance system.
18 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, there is a good
19 chunk we need for operating a school finance system but it
20 is not all. I mean, there's a -- I think we've done a
21 fairly good job at the Department coordinating department
22 needs and making sure that when we're collecting stuff we
23 collect it once and try and use it as many times as we
24 can.
25 And we've tried to promote and putting more
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1 effort -- and what came out of the facilitation forum --
2 to put more of an effort to have others, whether it is
3 newspapers, the federal government or others come to the
4 Department first when we need to report things on behalf
5 of the school districts instead of going to the school
6 districts for everything.
7 But not all of it is the school funding system.
8 But we have a lot of federal programs we need to manage
9 data on. We have special ed, voc ed. You've heard over
10 the last day information that we need to do -- run those
11 programs and not all of that is for funding.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: If I heard you correctly,
13 the bulk of any student data and the bulk of a SIF system
14 would be used at the local level?
15 MR. KING: That would be a fair statement,
16 yes, Madam Chairman.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: And that the State, then,
18 for reporting purposes or management purposes has the
19 ability then without districts having to enter again
20 hopefully the ability to extract a significant number of
21 pieces that we would need?
22 MR. KING: That would be correct, Madam
23 Chairman.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: All right. You have one
25 other request. Is that best done by going through each of
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1 the bills or is there separate information on that?
2 MR. KING: There isn't separate
3 information on this one. This one, basically, again, grew
4 out of the Facilitation Forum. One that a lot of the
5 members of the forum talked about was the real advantage
6 of having a place and a group that could talk about these
7 data issues and share concerns up and downstream.
8 The Department had been fairly unstaffed in our
9 data management stuff and we've grown a lot in the last
10 year. Thank you. You've given us a couple extra
11 positions and we are getting some more. But one of the
12 things that has always been a problem is we get a request
13 from whoever -- whether it is MAP contractor, special ed
14 folks -- you know, and we have to go collect information
15 from districts and really have not had a chance to have
16 the discussion about what's the best way to get that, how
17 best to define it.
18 You can have quality data that's valid and
19 reliable and consistent and uniformly defined. You can
20 have timely data that gets back to you fairly quickly.
21 And you can have data that's low-cost, low burden. For
22 the most part you can pick two of those three. But
23 anytime you want to get it faster, it is going to increase
24 the cost and the burden or it is going to impact the
25 quality.
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1 And there are trade-offs that we have had about
2 what we collect and how best to answer this and what is
3 already available and useful to districts that may be a
4 fairly reasonable proxy, may be considerably cheaper, may
5 be a better quality but it is not exactly what I'm asking
6 for. And that kind of discussion -- we really haven't had
7 a place or a formal place to have that kind of discussion
8 between the people that are asking the questions and the
9 people that have to supply the data.
10 And so these advisory groups that are kind of in
11 the third one is to help kind of formalize and support a
12 mechanism for keeping that conversation open so that when
13 we get a request, we have a chance to talk to schools and
14 districts in that particular area and people who know it
15 on the ground, what do they have and what's the impact
16 going to be if we do this.
17 Let me give you a good example. In the school
18 MAP model funding, the original funding model had an
19 adjustment for teacher seniority. And the MAP consultants
20 when they were trying to get their arms around it took a
21 look at existing data and went to the Wyoming Education
22 Association and got salary schedule placement, the
23 training and experience grade stuff. And it is a fairly
24 reasonable proxy for the level of experience the teachers
25 have, but a lot of what came back from schools and
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1 districts is that it is not perfect, it is not exactly
2 what they wanted.
3 We had to go back in later years and actually
4 gather the real experience of teachers, and districts had
5 to go digging back through their books and figure out what
6 the prior experience of teachers was. That burden was
7 considerably higher and there was a lot of cost involved
8 in doing that.
9 So we traded off quality for cost and burden on
10 districts as opposed to this existing proxy that existed
11 that might have been close but wasn't close enough. And
12 we collected, you know, one set of data for a while and
13 now we've done the other and we've got this kind of
14 trade-off.
15 We're going through that same issue right now
16 with administrative seniority and classified seniority and
17 asking districts to go back and gather all of this
18 historical stuff.
19 We need a place to have that conversation about
20 what is good enough, what is, you know, a fairly
21 reasonable proxy from existing data.
22 Another example would probably be class size.
23 We've had lots of conversations about people want class
24 size. And I don't have counts of individual kids in
25 classes at the Department of Education. I do have how
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1 many kids are at a school and I do have an FTE count of
2 instructional staff, so I can give you a pupil/teacher
3 ratio.
4 But individual districts, those teachers have
5 prep time and that prep time doesn't come into this
6 pupil/teacher ratio, so prep time is going to make the
7 pupil -- teacher ratio overrepresented, smaller than the
8 actual class sizes, if we're trying to get class sizes,
9 but it is existing data. Districts don't have to do
10 anything else for us to get the pupil/teacher ratios
11 because they're fairly comparable and reliable.
12 Is pupil/teacher ratio a proxy for class size
13 even though it is not class size? We need a place for
14 those types of conversations and this is what we're
15 getting at, is providing some support so we can meet with
16 districts, with district staff and have those types of
17 conversations.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
19 one of the things I think certainly enlightened me in the
20 facilitation meetings we had was the volume of information
21 we asked from our districts. I don't know if the
22 legislature is aware of how much volume they have to give.
23 You know, when we go into session I guess we probably
24 double it.
25 And I think this came out of the facilitation
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1 informational advisory system, and I think that's an
2 important area because if we can get this implemented,
3 then we would have the input, what kind of information
4 would we really need, we could go to this committee and
5 how can we get this from the districts rather than calling
6 the districts and saying, "Look, we have a big bill
7 tomorrow. Can you tell me what the class size is in
8 Natrona County and what's the class size in Teton County?"
9 And that puts a big burden on it and, as you said, it is
10 not always accurate for one thing because we're asking for
11 it two days in advance.
12 So I think this is really an important segment
13 here and I hope we can follow through with this -- I guess
14 it is going to be a committee -- an advisory committee.
15 And if we do that, I think it will sure take some of the
16 burden off of the districts and also give them input so
17 they don't think we're treating them unfairly when we ask
18 for information.
19 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, following
20 up on what Representative Shivler said, one thing we hear
21 is districts complaining about the burden of 150 reports
22 they have to submit to federal and state agencies. You're
23 confident that SIF and this related group of bills is
24 going to lighten that burden or are we just going to heap
25 one more on top of it and maybe that will be the straw
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1 that breaks the camel's back?
2 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, I've heard the
3 150. Yes, I have 150 numbered pieces of paper. There are
4 38 of those that are required annual collections that come
5 back to the Department. Some of those are just numbered
6 forms so we can refer to them and they're just useful.
7 Some of them are to be kept in districts and to be looked
8 at when we go out and do on-site monitoring. Some of them
9 are grant applications, and then of course the grant
10 report at the end of the thing but districts opt into
11 doing those. If you don't apply for the grant, you don't
12 have to fill out the application and you're not
13 responsible for doing the report on the back side.
14 But there is someplace, yes, that again this
15 heightens the burden. And let me give you an example. We
16 were looking at right now we're getting aggregate October
17 1 collections about kids in district, counts of kids by
18 grade, counts of kids by sex, counts of kids eligible for
19 free lunch, special ed, a whole slew of those things. And
20 we get most of those in an aggregate form. We just get
21 counts.
22 In a paper world that's less burden than having
23 to send me that ten-foot stack that's got a piece of paper
24 for every single kid. It is less burden for districts and
25 it is less burden for the Department to fill in a form
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1 that has a cell for 9th grade Hispanic females and you
2 give me the number. In an electronic world that's more
3 burden because if I have all of the individual records,
4 for me to send you 10,000 individual records as opposed to
5 one, there's next to nothing to that.
6 There is the potential with SIF and some of
7 these others, we get more detail at the Department but it
8 is at the level available in the districts so they don't
9 have to do anything to it to report it to us. And we have
10 more detail like that -- when we get some special question
11 that comes in that's looking at 9th grade Hispanic females
12 and another thing, I have the data, we run it and we don't
13 have to go back to the districts to collect it again.
14 And that's where this kind of system can save
15 some effort. We looked at -- we had to do some reporting
16 for the National Center -- for NAEP, sending Weststat
17 (phonetic), the contractor doing NAEP, a list of 4th, 8th
18 11th graders in the state so they could do the sample.
19 The districts had to report individually 4, 8 and 11
20 graders at the same time they're reporting to the
21 Department aggregate counts of all kids by grade, race and
22 sex and the free lunch count and the at risk, who is LEP
23 and all of those things.
24 We gave districts the option that if they wanted
25 to report every kid in the district to us, which was an
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1 extract from their student management system, we would do
2 all of the others. There were five different reports we
3 eliminated for those districts that opted into this and we
4 had five that opted into doing that this time but it was
5 really short notice so that doesn't surprise me.
6 So there were some districts that opted in to
7 send us a list of the kids and demographics and did the
8 various cuts and knocked five reports off their system.
9 If they have a student management system, it is a much
10 easier report for them to generate.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
12 you know, there's another issue, too. Senator Peck
13 mentioned 180 or 150 reports. I mean, that's the tip of
14 the iceberg now. I mean, you know, we're getting requests
15 from colleges, getting requests from students, from
16 federal agencies, other state agencies. I mean, you know,
17 all kinds of things are coming in.
18 I think in the future, God willing, we will
19 probably lead the nation in education. We're certainly
20 leading the nation in education. We're headed there.
21 When it comes to Wyoming is the place to educate, we're
22 going to be asked for more and more and more information.
23 I think at this point we should try to get that in line so
24 it doesn't go back to a district responsibility.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, we need to walk
350
1 through these bills. As you can see, they've kind of got
2 three different purposes, but they're three related
3 purposes. They can be treated individually. They can be
4 combined. I think we need to give some consideration to
5 how we want to treat them. And we are approaching our
6 hour-and-a-half to two-hour break. I am wondering if we
7 should take that break at this point. I will get -- see
8 if our other committee member can join us for the
9 discussion of the individual bills and then we will
10 reconvene.
11 So let's take a ten-minute break and then we
12 will come back and address what we would like to do with
13 this data issue.
14 (Recess taken 10:15 a.m. until 10:30 a.m.)
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: We will start by going
16 through the bills. We are going to have Representative
17 Lockhart join us.
18 Dave, would you like to walk us through these
19 bills or would you like the gentlemen --
20 MR. NELSON: I would be happy to, Madam
21 Chairman.
22 The first one -- and all of these pieces were
23 included in your packet. Does everybody have a copy of
24 192, 93 and 94?
25 I will start with 192. And this particular one
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1 deals with the body of evidence part of the recommendation
2 from the Data Facility Group. And briefly -- it is not
3 long and I'll just go through it.
4 Essentially what it does is it requires the
5 state Department to work in coordination with the
6 Standards and Body of Evidence Tracking Advisory Group,
7 which is the group that Mr. Mathern was representing, and
8 the specification and hardware requirements for the body
9 of evidence student performance tracking system -- to work
10 with them in developing an RFP that would go out and see
11 what is necessary to assemble a statewide software data
12 requirement. And essentially that's what Section A
13 states.
14 The important thing is the date on line 8 of
15 page 2 which is to have it operational by school year
16 '04-'05.
17 Subsection B requires the state Department to
18 purchase necessary hardware for districts that are not
19 capable of using any type of software that would be
20 acquired under this process, and it would also require the
21 state Department to provide necessary training of district
22 personnel on use of the software.
23 The appropriation is on page 3, Subsection C,
24 6.2 million.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Did Mr. Mathern leave us?
352
1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
2 are you wanting to walk through all of the bills and then
3 we'll talk about them?
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think that would be
5 best. Why don't you continue?
6 MR. NELSON: The next bill I will refer to
7 is 193, and this is for the SIF proposal that Steve King
8 presented to you. Essentially what it does is it begins
9 the process of development. It establishes a design team
10 in Subsection A. The membership is specified on page 2,
11 lines 4 through 20. That would be work with the state
12 Department in coming together with recommendations for a
13 comprehensive statewide education recommendation for the
14 legislature.
15 Subsection B, which begins at the bottom of page
16 2 and continues on the top of page 3, puts together the
17 specifications for the system.
18 Subsection C specifies the RFP minimum criteria,
19 and those continue on over to the top of page 4.
20 Subsection D specifies that the design team --
21 how they work with the state superintendent in developing
22 the RFP and in reviewing and evaluating RFPs that have
23 been submitted to the state superintendent.
24 And then by December 31, '03, the state
25 superintendent reports back to this committee on a
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1 proposed system that would be assembled, recommendations
2 would be forwarded to the '04 legislature, and the
3 implementation date is for the '05-'06 school year.
4 Section 2 provides for a $200,000 appropriation
5 to assist with design team expenses, consulting work that
6 they may need and staffing.
7 The final bill is 194 and this is the advisory
8 group that would work with the state Department in sorting
9 out education data issues. $36,000 is appropriated to the
10 Department to fund these groups.
11 Subsection A describes how the use of these
12 groups would fit into the state department's data efforts,
13 requires establishment of these advisory groups fairly
14 rapidly, by April 1, '03. They are temporary. The state
15 superintendent under the proposal would come back and
16 report to the committee on how this process worked on
17 continued use of the advisory groups and that sort of
18 thing.
19 In addition to the School Data Advisory Group
20 which is currently set up by statute and is functioning on
21 school finance sort of issues, the other areas that are
22 added are specified at the bottom of page 2: Student data
23 demographics, number two is certified and classified
24 personnel issues, and the third one is technology data
25 issues.
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1 And I think that's pretty much the contents of
2 that bill.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think Representative
4 Lockhart may need the handouts. When I retrieved him from
5 the other place, I guess for you two gentlemen,
6 Representative Lockhart had a question of myself as we
7 were walking down here that I would prefer you answer and
8 that is -- perhaps you would like to word it, but it is
9 very relevant to some of what you gave us, but I think he
10 needs to hear the work you've done.
11 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
12 I apologize for not being here for a lot of your earlier
13 discussion, but it is clear that we need to find a system
14 where we can track progress of individual students and
15 this 6 million bucks is to do that.
16 My question to Irene, those that have watched
17 the integration of a complex system, we've always got a
18 concern are they going to work. And I would like to have
19 a little discussion about probabilities of this getting in
20 place so that we meet the -- meet our requirements of
21 knowing the individual student progress and from all of
22 the systems. It is a huge endeavor. So that's kind of
23 open-ended question of what are we going to get for the
24 6.2 million?
25 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, let me try and
355
1 respond, and it may help a little to talk about where the
2 6.2 came from. The timing on this standards-based grading
3 tracking software stuff is the Department put together
4 this proposal and request for information. And we have
5 gotten back seven proposals from various vendors. Mike
6 Hamilton essentially pulled one out of the pile, kind of
7 looked through it, looked like it would do most of what
8 we're asking for, and their proposal was $5 million for a
9 statewide thing.
10 That is not really -- we haven't really looked
11 at that. We haven't looked at a state purchase and
12 whether or not we could really consolidate pricing if that
13 would come down or other things, but we've at least found
14 one that looks like it will do it. And then he added
15 money for training and staff development on top of that.
16 I think that's a high end.
17 The plan is right now we're reviewing these
18 proposals. We will have a better idea about which ones
19 will work at your December meeting. This cost, I think,
20 is an upper-end expenditure, but we will have a better
21 feel for that in December.
22 But to get back at your question, we had a lot
23 of conversation in here before about the Schools
24 Interoperability Framework which is a vendor-driven effort
25 to have education software in various areas work together.
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1 There's an information services working group that's part
2 of the SIF standards setting body that is looking at
3 standards tracking, in other words, how do you define
4 standards and standards benchmarks, all of that kind of
5 stuff, and have software be able to share it; what kind of
6 information would need to be shared; curriculum and
7 instruction things that tie to those standards, and how
8 can we share and define those objects; and then the
9 assessment and assignments piece that a grade book thing
10 would track, what those objects look like.
11 The draft spec for those standards is due out at
12 the end of December, but what essentially it means is that
13 the industry is starting to find some common ways of
14 sharing that stuff that's not just Wyoming specific but it
15 is pretty general, everybody is going to have to deal with
16 it, and any vendor that's developing software to track
17 efforts in a standards-based world is going to have to
18 wrestle with these issues and it is going to make their
19 life easier to pick and use a standard that an open group
20 has developed.
21 So I'm feeling fairly confident that if we get
22 something that follows those standards and specs, we are
23 going to have something that will work in that arena.
24 MR. MATHERN: Madam Chairman.
25 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
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1 just a follow-on, this sort of standard acceptance by our
2 nation, is that driven because No Child Left Behind, they
3 know they're going to have to have this? Is that where
4 the drive for the standards is coming from?
5 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, I'm expressing
6 my opinion some here. I don't know that I'm speaking for
7 the Department. I think in 1983 when A Nation at Risk
8 came out is really where the effort to push towards
9 standards started and shift in focus from are you spending
10 the money the way we told you to what are we getting for
11 the money. It has been a long time coming, but I think it
12 is reflected in the Supreme Court decision in that we need
13 to set what is the basket of goods and services and your
14 efforts in implementing that to essentially say we're
15 going to let districts define how they're going to get
16 there, but we want to set consistently what the bar is,
17 districts can go above that, but we're going to set state
18 standards.
19 And then we need to have districts show us that
20 kids are performing and meeting those standards. The
21 curriculum and instruction piece is a district thing but
22 being able to show proficiency against a common set of
23 standards, that effort has been going on for a long time.
24 This is not anything new, but we're at the point now where
25 we've established the standards, put some of the
358
1 assessments in place and we're now really at the point
2 where we're really talking about individual kids and can
3 you show me you're proficient on this number concept or
4 statistics and probability standard.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Mathern.
6 MR. MATHERN: Madam Chairman,
7 Representative Lockhart, I think one of the ways we can
8 assure that these companies will do what we need them to
9 do, I think connects to the functionality list, if you
10 will, that we referred to earlier.
11 And there are quite a number of functions that
12 we determined when a group of curriculum directors, a
13 number of teachers, school superintendents came together
14 to look at and interpret the law as well as the
15 regulations from the state Department.
16 In addition to that work, the work that was done
17 with discussion about what is body of evidence also fits
18 in, and I think part of what will happen when the RFP goes
19 out is the process of actually testing each of these
20 functions against what the vendor says they can do. I
21 know every salesman I talk to say they can do this. The
22 question is can they really and can you show me the
23 evidence that actually yields each of these functions. So
24 I think that will be a really key, important piece here.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: So I guess the question
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1 that that raises, then, if we were to move the bill
2 forward and the bill were to pass, what happens if one of
3 you discovers along the process of the year after we
4 adjourn and go home that this is not working, that you
5 have some questions that it is going to meet these pieces,
6 which I think is the looming question Representative
7 Lockhart is asking. We've often, you know, tracked down
8 that path too many times. We started out with every
9 department buying their own system and people modifying
10 and nothing talked to each other and we don't want to
11 invest in that again.
12 MR. MATHERN: Madam Chairman, if I could
13 just comment on that. I think part of this is evolving.
14 I don't think we could have had this conversation three
15 years ago. Much like in our own district when we first
16 discussed SASI, this concept of body of evidence didn't
17 exist and yet now we need something to attach to SASI to
18 make it work.
19 It seems to me in the RFP we would have some
20 kind of an agreement that if we went with the specific
21 vendor that there would be some kind of collaborative
22 components built in so when we run into a void, if you
23 will, of a certain component that we need, it is built in
24 this understanding that their programers would work with
25 us to develop that missing piece. I think that's going to
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1 be crucial for the RFP.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Up to and including you
3 could stop the process, I would assume?
4 MR. KING: Madam Chairman, again, I'm not
5 the purchasing end of things, but I think that's going to
6 be a critical piece in whatever contract we end up writing
7 with whoever is the award winner, yeah, that those
8 components are going to have to be in that contract and in
9 the RFP.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, looking at
12 the 192, the student performance data system bill, first
13 question I have is the membership of the Standards and
14 Body of Evidence Tracking Advisory Group, is that pretty
15 representative of district people? Who all is on that?
16 MR. KING: If you look at your
17 presentation slides, the last three slides, pages 5 and 6
18 list who is currently on the standards and body of
19 evidence committee that's helping us develop the
20 standards.
21 SENATOR SCOTT: You've got the
22 superintendent from Riverton and somebody from Campbell
23 County and Johnson County, so it is a pretty broad group
24 representative of the school districts.
25 MR. MATHERN: Yes.
361
1 SENATOR SCOTT: And I question that
2 because I'm looking for a group that would -- could be
3 asked to approve the contract before the state Department
4 is authorized to sign it. Would that be an appropriate
5 group for such a function?
6 MR. KING: That could well be. The
7 alternative is if we get these other advisory things
8 together, that we have the Student Data Advisory Committee
9 be in that role.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, it seems
11 to me -- I want to just try an idea out on the committee.
12 It seems to me that this thing is worth doing in spite of
13 the 6.1, $6.2 million appropriation price tag. That if
14 we're going to go down the route we've gone down, I think
15 you have to build the data system.
16 I am concerned that since it is really work
17 being done for the districts at the request of the
18 districts that they ought to have -- or a representative
19 group ought to have final approval on the contract as well
20 as the State Department of Education so we're sure it is
21 something the districts want.
22 And it seems to me that we ought to give them
23 that final approval and that we ought to fund it through
24 per-ADM assessment on the districts rather than a general
25 fund appropriation.
362
1 That means the districts have to put up the
2 money which means they'll take it more seriously. But
3 since we're running a cost-based system with strict
4 scrutiny, we would have to turn around and give them the
5 money. And it is a one-time thing, although there
6 probably will ultimately be a follow-on for maintenance
7 and training.
8 What I'm going to suggest is we give them this
9 mechanism, so the districts and the Department as well
10 each has to approve before you go out to the contract,
11 fund it for assessment and then put in the regional cost
12 of living bill because that's a one-year duration thing, a
13 one-time performance data requirement, line item which
14 would be the way I calculated it about $72 an ADM, so that
15 it would go out to the districts and be available to be
16 assessed against to pay for this thing. And we could
17 adjust those numbers as we have better numbers next time.
18 It is a little bit of a roundabout way of doing
19 things, but it does get rid of that general fund
20 appropriation, shifts it over to a foundation fund. State
21 still has got to pay it one way or another, let's be
22 straight about that, but it does give the districts a
23 greater measure of control of a product that's really
24 being developed for their needs responsive to what we've
25 asked them to do in the graduation standards but really
363
1 for their needs.
2 And I throw it out as a suggestion that I think
3 might make the bills easier to pass and would give the
4 districts a little more measure of control of the product,
5 a little more ownership and therefore a little more likely
6 to make it work.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: I guess, you know -- and
8 Senator Scott, I appreciate your mentioning this before,
9 that you were considering the thought. As I've tried to
10 mull this over a thought crosses my mind that I'll just
11 throw out for the committee, is not -- there are several
12 losers on that regional cost of living adjustment bill
13 that were not losers before and they go beyond Teton.
14 They go to other districts that have -- we heard from
15 Campbell County. You will hear from my district. We have
16 higher costs of living.
17 So there are people not interested in seeing
18 that bill pass and now if we attach another important
19 piece to this -- you know, you could take the philosophy
20 one will carry the other. But you could also take the
21 philosophy that you could take this system down for the
22 other piece.
23 I tend to think -- and anybody is guessing. The
24 districts in Sheridan told us this was very important to
25 them, it was time saving, it was crucial. We heard
364
1 Mr. McDowell's statements this morning. I tend to think
2 that it can rise or fall on its own merits. I do think it
3 is important enough. I could be misguessing the entire
4 legislature.
5 Representative McOmie.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
7 had -- I support what I -- I think this is something we
8 really need, but I had a couple things, and one of them,
9 that the money is coming from the general fund, I don't
10 think it should. I think the money should come from the
11 school foundation fund somehow.
12 And my other note that I jotted down is if the
13 total amount is not required, the balance should be
14 reverted back to whatever fund it came from. And that was
15 going to be the only thing wrong with Charlie's
16 suggestion, once it is there, it is there, whether it
17 costs that much or not. And how do we assess, then, the
18 amount needed for the training and that type of thing,
19 because where we put a million, million two from the rough
20 proposal in here, I thought it was a little high, so
21 that's why I put that other amount, my other comment about
22 reverting back to where it came from.
23 I like the way it is going to measure the kids,
24 not just WyCAS. I think the WyCAS really is a major
25 achievement. There's some people that can take tests,
365
1 some people that can't take tests, as I said earlier. If
2 there's demands on the general fund if it stays there that
3 I think are more important, this could wait, I would have
4 to vote no on the bill, and I think there's going to be
5 some real severe demands on the general fund.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Go ahead,
8 Charlie. Answer that.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: I think you could
10 perfectly well do it all in this bill as opposed to
11 reaching into the regional cost bill. You're concerned
12 about putting some things there. I think one way or
13 another it ought to come out of the foundation program as
14 opposed to the general fund, since that is what it is.
15 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman, I
16 was just going to make the statement, I think, you know,
17 Charlie was mentioning that the districts would have more
18 of a stake in this. I think certainly through this
19 advisory committee we're setting up they would have a
20 stake in it, but I would guess in the design process they
21 would have input on it and I think they have a stake in it
22 now inasmuch as they want to simplify it. I don't think
23 we have to use money as a bait to give them a stake.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Robinson
25 and Representative Lockhart.
366
1 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Madam Chairman,
2 I guess what I'm thinking about it is we're looking to put
3 together something that's cohesive and when I think about
4 taking the money and parsing it out, you know, based on
5 students and then having it come back through the
6 districts just for the purpose of having them have some
7 ownership in it, to me it seems like we're fragmenting
8 what we're trying to put together as a unit, and also that
9 would require more administration which would take even a
10 small amount of money out of what the purpose for the
11 money is in paying for the system. The districts would
12 have to spend some time and effort and that all costs
13 money to just turn it around and put it back.
14 And I don't know that that makes sense in my
15 view. Unless Senator Scott has some other way to explain
16 it to me it just doesn't make sense to me to have it as a
17 whole, break it up and send it back to put it back
18 together again.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: Did you have a comment?
20 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: No.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative McOmie, did
22 I sense that your feeling was it needs to come out of
23 the -- not out of the general fund, it needs to come out
24 of the school foundation fund?
25 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: For me to be able
367
1 to support the bill, and early on in the session, I would
2 need the money to come from the schools. It is for the
3 schools. I think that's where it should come from. I
4 don't think that's where it should come from. We might
5 end up taking money from the general fund to fund
6 education as it is.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, having
8 heard the consensus of the committee, I would make several
9 motions on 192 that would be a much milder thing than I
10 suggested earlier.
11 On page 3, line 3, I would --
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Before we do that, would
13 you move the bill?
14 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: We need to move
15 the bill.
16 SENATOR SCOTT: I will move the bill,
17 Madam Chairman, reserving the right to move that we
18 consolidate the bills at a later time.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: I would certainly grant
20 that latitude.
21 Is there a second?.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Second.
23 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, page 3,
24 line 3, delete general fund and insert the proper line
25 which would be general school foundation, would it not,
368
1 Dave?
2 MR. NELSON: Right.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: And, Madam Chairman, it is
4 all going to come out of the same pot ultimately, but
5 since it is school I think it really ought to be labeled
6 foundation program.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. There's a motion to
8 change that from the general fund to the school foundation
9 program.
10 Is there a second?
11 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Second.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Moved and seconded.
13 All those in favor, aye.
14 Opposed.
15 That carries.
16 Are there additional changes that you would like
17 to make?
18 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, page 2,
19 line 13 -- page 2, line 12, delete the word "and" and
20 insert a comma.
21 On page 2, line 13, after "section" insert "and
22 is approved by the SBET Advisory Group," so that before
23 they go negotiate the final contract, the state Department
24 has to have approval from that advisory group. That's to
25 make sure that the districts really are buying into the
369
1 final proposal.
2 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: That's been moved and
4 seconded.
5 Dave and Mary, I will just ask, to my knowledge,
6 limited knowledge, of the purchasing agreements and so
7 forth and how they function, as long as this is work that
8 precedes the purchasing, I don't think that there is any
9 piece of that that gives us a problem, is there?
10 MR. NELSON: No, Madam Chairman.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Sometimes we do that, but
12 when it gets into the mechanics of who signs, who
13 purchases, how that authority goes, I have to ask the
14 question.
15 Yes.
16 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
17 isn't it the information systems working group, just on
18 the acronym?
19 MR. NELSON: It is the -- I believe, Madam
20 Chairman, to clarify what Senator Scott is talking about,
21 the one that's referenced on page 1, lines 12 through 13,
22 isn't it?
23 SENATOR SCOTT: Yeah.
24 MR. NELSON: Standards and Body of
25 Evidence Tracking Advisory Group, SBET.
370
1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Gentleman who are closely
2 involved with this, would you agree that's the appropriate
3 group with the most amount of knowledge in this area?
4 MR. MATHERN: It is, Madam Chairman.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there another group we
6 should consider versus that group or is that --
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
8 may I ask a question?
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Mr. Marion
11 mentioned before, is that the same as the 45 -- is
12 everyone involved in that, all 48 districts?
13 MR. KING: The standards-based grading
14 group is listed on pages 5 and 6 of the presentation thing
15 and it is not the same as Scott's body of evidence
16 consortium.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: That's different?
18 MR. KING: Yes, it is.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: But this group is the
20 technical group that has worked with this piece?
21 MR. KING: That's been working on the
22 actual technical part of tracking standards.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: But all districts
24 do have input into this group, or can have?
25 MR. MATHERN: Can, yes.
371
1 MR. KING: Could, yes.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Lockhart.
3 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: That's my
4 clarification. I wanted the technical group as opposed to
5 the broadest group because this is a technical
6 integration.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, it is a
8 technical group but it does include some principals and
9 teachers as well as the technicians, but we've been
10 working on the technical aspects of it so they're pretty
11 familiar with it. And there was a degree of
12 self-selection in this group, wasn't there?
13 MR. MATHERN: Yes, there was.
14 SENATOR SCOTT: So you have some people
15 really interested in the subject and following the
16 technology and you don't have every district formally
17 represented because that would be unwieldy, but you've got
18 enough of them that it ought to be pretty representative.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: So there is a motion and a
20 second that we insert on line 13 of -- we delete some and
21 and we insert on line 13 "and is approved by the SBET
22 group prior to the purchase."
23 All of those in favor, aye.
24 Opposed.
25 That motion carries.
372
1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Are you done?
4 SENATOR SCOTT: Yes, I'm done.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Before we do that,
6 I would like to -- we've got some school board people and
7 some administrators out here. I would like to -- if
8 there's anybody who would like to speak now or forever
9 hold your peace, do it, please.
10 Nobody is going to --
11 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Can they talk
12 later?
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: No, I want names.
14 Anybody out here can't come testify against the bill.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: We heard in Sheridan
16 extensive support for this so I'm assuming that is still
17 there. I will presume that silence is a lack of objection
18 and a means of support, but if I'm wrong in that, correct
19 me.
20 Did you have a comment?
21 MR. LONG: Madam Chairman, Jim Long from
22 Natrona County. This is a critical part. Where the money
23 comes from will always be a debate but this is a critical
24 part needed for the system to move forward.
25 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, Mr. Long
373
1 is the superintendent of schools of Natrona County.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Before we move forward,
3 Committee, on either a vote on this bill or the other two
4 bills, were there sentiments on whether we wish to combine
5 these three bills or proceed on them individually and take
6 votes on them individually? And I guess we can vote on
7 them individually. We could vote to combine them later.
8 Senator Scott.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I would
10 think, you know, we're at risk if we bring too many bills.
11 I would think that 193 and 194, the information advisory
12 assistance and the statewide education data could clearly
13 be combined. I'm of two minds about the other one. The
14 size of the appropriation puts the bill at some risk and
15 it is a separate issue really relating to what we've done
16 in graduation standards.
17 If the appropriation were smaller I think I
18 would recommend combining them and I think with a larger
19 appropriation I would recommend combining them. I don't
20 know how the rest of the committee feels. It is going to
21 be a tactical matter in the legislature.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I hate to lose
23 one because of the other. I think you're right, the size
24 of the appropriation is significant.
25 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
374
1 I would keep them separate until we get through the
2 organizational issues on both the Senate and House as to
3 who the chairs are going to be and then as far as they may
4 find a strategy that makes sense to put them together,
5 keep them separate. This committee is going to be
6 reconstituted by the time -- before the session. I would
7 leave them separate.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, are you ready
9 to take roll call on 192?
10 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
11 would like to combine them. We're talking 92 and 94,
12 right?
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, Senator Scott.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: We have 192 which is the
16 $6 million appropriation on the body of evidence and then
17 my suggestion is we leave that separate and combine 193
18 and 194.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Okay.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: So we would be doing roll
21 call on 192 if everyone has had their opportunity to amend
22 on it.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Call for the
24 question.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Dave, would you --
375
1 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
2 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
3 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
4 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
5 MR. NELSON: Senator Scott.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
7 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
8 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
9 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
11 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
12 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
13 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
15 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
17 Then if we move on to 193 which is the piece
18 referred to as the SIF, S I F, system, and it asks for
19 basically a $20,000 appropriation and a group named on
20 page 2 to begin the work to be sure that we could do an
21 overall integrated data system for the districts and the
22 state that would move forward, but this is the year of
23 examination, basically, that they're asking for in greater
24 detail and a year of working with the vendors and
25 development pieces.
376
1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, in
2 visiting with my good friend Representative Shivler, those
3 bills are different and I think I have to agree with
4 Representative Lockhart's take on it.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Which is? To keep them
6 separate?
7 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Separate bills,
8 yes.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. Could I have a
10 motion on 193, please?
11 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: I will move the
12 bill.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Is there a second?
14 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Second.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: That would be a motion to
16 move 193 forward and I assume -- then I will ask, can we
17 leave the latitude of combining those bills to a later
18 committee if we wish to reconsider that?
19 MR. NELSON: Sure, Madam Chairman.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. Are there
21 amendments -- was there a motion? There was a motion and
22 a second. Are there amendments?
23 Then I guess we need roll call on 193.
24 SENATOR SCOTT: Whoa, whoa, whoa, Madam
25 Chairman. I'm now confused. If we take final roll call
377
1 at this point we've moved to introduce the bill and we
2 can't then subsequently combine that.
3 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, we have done
4 this before. We have forwarded concepts, usually it is in
5 the discretion of the Chairman at the house of
6 introduction and how we proceed from there has been our
7 history. We've combined.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Dave, you have to speak
9 up. I can't hear you.
10 MR. NELSON: We have combined them in the
11 past. We have forwarded by roll call vote drafts and the
12 cochairs have elected which house and how -- what shape
13 they're to be presented in.
14 SENATOR SCOTT: So you think we can go
15 ahead and combine them --
16 MR. NELSON: Exactly, as long as we let it
17 be known to the committee at the December meeting.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: So there is an
19 understanding we're trying to leave that latitude.
20 SENATOR SCOTT: Because, Madam Chairman, I
21 do think it would make a lot of sense to combine 193 and
22 194, although it would require some rewriting.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay.
24 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, thinking
25 how things work in the legislature, is there any problem
378
1 with our saying they're effective immediately as opposed
2 to the end of the year, fiscal year?
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, Senator Scott.
5 SENATOR SCOTT: In answer to that, the one
6 on the statewide education data system, you have something
7 in the state of Wyoming that we're trying to influence
8 here with the SIF network and I think there's a need to
9 have the immediate effective date on this bill.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: I guess the advantage of
11 the effective immediately would be to go ahead and get
12 some of these committees in place, get started working so
13 they do not -- if you don't start them until July with the
14 actual appointments, they crunch down awfully hard
15 timewise on the fall schedule for them to have good work
16 ready for us to act on.
17 And it is not something that I think is going to
18 incur an additional expense. It isn't like immediate
19 rules and regs have to be done and that's when we, in
20 fact, as I understand it, incur additional expense.
21 Representative Robinson.
22 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Madam Chairman,
23 on 194 it requires that the council be established no
24 later than April 1st which would require it to go into
25 effect immediately.
379
1 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Question on 193. Page 2,
4 lines 8 through 10, two members employed by school
5 district technology director, selected by the individual
6 professional organization. Is it clear what organization
7 we're talking about there? Is there just one
8 organization?
9 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, there is an
10 association of district technology directors and they meet
11 fairly regularly. That's a group that is in place. It is
12 not a statutory group, but there is a group from which
13 those names would come. But if you were looking for a
14 formal statutory -- something like your association of
15 school administrators, they're not formal in that sense.
16 But there is a group.
17 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, a concern of
18 the drafting part of it, the reason it was worded that way
19 is because there was a thought there was more than one
20 organization out there and this gave them latitude to get
21 representation of that element in there. And not knowing
22 which one to specify, we used this language that would
23 broaden it up a little bit.
24 And we've done this in the past a little bit
25 when we reach these kind of issues.
380
1 SENATOR SCOTT: Well, and that's, I guess,
2 what led to my concern, Madam Chairman. You say that
3 these people are going to be selected by the individual
4 professional organization. If you have two organizations
5 that could claim such status, which one gets to select and
6 who decides that because the final decision here the way
7 it is written is made by the individual's professional
8 organization. I think we have a thing that might cause us
9 some just mechanical difficulty if we get a dispute.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Let me ask Mary Kay, is
11 the organization of technology directors for the
12 districts -- does that include everyone?
13 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, I don't know if
14 it would include everyone.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: But everyone would have an
16 opportunity to belong to it if they chose?
17 MS. HILL: Certainly.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: And then other technology
19 directors might belong to other professional
20 organizations?
21 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, I'm not aware
22 of any -- given the fact you've only got 48 to begin with,
23 I'm not aware of any splinter groups from the school
24 technology directors.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: They're not a rebellious
381
1 group. They probably have to unify just to fight what
2 they're fighting.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I'm going
4 to suggest that we have two members employed by school
5 districts' technology directors appointed by the state
6 superintendent of public instruction on the advice of
7 the -- what did you call it -- school districts technology
8 directors association.
9 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, I can't even
10 give you the official name, but if you're looking for
11 language, it would be from among district directors of
12 technology.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I want to
14 have the actual appointment made by the state
15 superintendent so that it is clear who makes the decision
16 in case there is a dispute, but I want it done from the
17 technology directors and on the advice of their statewide
18 organization so it accomplishes basically what this
19 language does.
20 Madam Chairman, question for Dave Nelson. Is
21 that sufficiently clear for you so you can draft it?
22 MR. NELSON: Yes.
23 SENATOR SCOTT: I would so move.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion. Is
25 there a second?
382
1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Second.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Motion and second.
3 Any further discussion?
4 All in favor, aye.
5 Opposed.
6 That motion carries.
7 Are there any other amendments to 193 or changes
8 that you wish to make?
9 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Call for the
10 question.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Nelson, would you poll
12 the committee with the understanding there is a latitude
13 to combine later 193 and 194?
14 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
15 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
16 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
17 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
18 MR. NELSON: Senator Scott.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
20 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
21 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
22 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
24 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
25 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
383
1 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
2 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
3 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
5 Then we have 194. Could I have a motion on 194,
6 please?
7 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: So move.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Second?
9 SENATOR PECK: Second.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Thank you.
11 Are there amendments or changes you wish to make
12 to 194?
13 Any additional discussion?
14 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
16 SENATOR SCOTT: You know, when we get to
17 the Appropriations Committee they're going to say, "Why do
18 we need 36,000. Why can't it be done from the existing
19 budget of the Department?" Would we be better off taking
20 it out now or let them do it during the session? You know
21 it is going to cause a problem.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: I'm going to make one
23 comment and then I'm going to let the Department speak for
24 themselves, but we did the Data Facilitation Group and we
25 put $100,000 into that piece and we appropriated it to the
384
1 LSO and we served the expenses of the facilitator, we
2 served the expenses of the persons attending, et cetera.
3 But I will tell you right now that the
4 Department -- there would not have been a data
5 facilitation group with any substance to it had the
6 Department not put in two to three months worth of work to
7 bring back pieces each time, the major pieces of the work
8 of this group each time, and that was not a funded piece.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Amen.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: And, you know, I
11 appreciate the work of the facilitator, but I also want
12 you to recognize where a significant amount of that other
13 work came from.
14 So I will climb off that podium. I guess I
15 would ask the Department to defend their need for this.
16 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I'm going to ask
17 a silly question from Mr. Nelson. Was there any money
18 left over from that 100,000?
19 MR. NELSON: Yes.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: How much?
21 MR. NELSON: We don't have all of the
22 bills in. Not much. It came in right close to a hundred
23 grand.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: And that would revert?
25 MR. NELSON: Yes.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN. What happens with that?
2 MR. NELSON: It goes back to the general
3 fund automatically.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: And that is held in the
5 fund so it is not in the Department at this point?
6 MR. NELSON: It is in the legislative
7 budget.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: I would ask if there's any
9 comment from the Department why you need 36,000 if you're
10 expected to do this.
11 MS. HILL: Madam Chairman, I spoke with
12 Mike. Actually, Mike would be able to do a good job of
13 defending that and was prepared to do so when we talked
14 about this earlier this week because I had that very
15 question knowing that the legislature would wonder out of
16 a huge department budget why 36,000 would need to come
17 out.
18 But what Mike indicates is the actual cost of
19 setting up the meetings and moving forward and covering
20 the travel expenses for those people involved, even though
21 many of them are district people and those expenses come
22 out of the district budget for that travel, that that
23 $36,000 would be needed just to cover the costs of running
24 the meeting.
25 It doesn't necessarily involve the additional
386
1 staff time or additional contract work for the Department.
2 But that is kind of a minimal expense that really isn't
3 any other place in the department's budget.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: And you know, some of
5 those data people are district but some of them are
6 also -- as I recall, they were school board individuals
7 and so forth where we do want the opportunity for some of
8 the general public or elected public to be represented.
9 MS. HILL: Which, Madam Chairman, is an
10 important point. When citizens are participating in these
11 kinds of boards for whom their travel expenses would not
12 be covered by a district or some other professional
13 organization, the Department does pick up those travel
14 expenses, if a citizen who is volunteering their time
15 isn't also making the contribution of travel expenses. So
16 that does occur.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman, I
18 think this bill is certainly an important component of
19 this process. I don't think we should quibble over
20 $36,000 right now. Let's pass it on. If they want to
21 kill it later, let them kill it.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: We may have that fight
23 yet.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I won't. You
25 will.
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1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: That's what I was
2 going to say.
3 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
4 we're always trying to track how much cost goes into
5 education. This tends to be education stuff. There might
6 be an argument that as opposed to general fund money that
7 it should come from the school foundation fund and I think
8 we can do that in our December meeting. I thought of it
9 late before we got into moving the bills, but it strikes
10 me that if we're really going to try to accumulate all of
11 the costs that get into education, all of these things
12 maybe ought to be in there.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I thought
14 about making that motion on this bill and the previous one
15 but these are appropriations for functions that typically
16 have been state Department functions. The one we did move
17 to the state foundation program is something we were
18 really doing for the districts which is where we funded
19 typically out of the foundation program. These have
20 typically been funded out of the general fund. So that's,
21 Madam Chairman, the explanation of why I didn't make that
22 motion on the previous bill.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: And, Senator Scott, I
24 think that's probably the case. In defense of both pieces
25 of thought, I will make the note that the State has put in
388
1 about $40 million in the development of technology to the
2 districts which we have funded over and above and outside
3 of the funding that you note has gone to schools.
4 As I've gone to national meetings across the
5 nation, whether it is ECS or others, and talked, that is
6 pieces that in other states have come out of district
7 budgets for a large part or it has certainly been
8 considered school financing. But we have traditionally
9 done that.
10 Further discussion.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: Page 2, line 8, "On or
14 before December 31, state superintendent shall report..."
15 Madam Chairman, if the purpose of that report is to
16 surface issues that might need legislation in the budget
17 session, which I would think would be the purpose of that
18 report, it would strike me that maybe we ought to change
19 that date to November 30th so the committee would have
20 enough time to develop legislation before you got to the
21 budget session.
22 I think if you go as late as the end of the
23 year, yes, it gives the Department more time for the
24 report, but it also means probably as a practical matter
25 there may or may not be another Joint Education Committee
389
1 meeting and I think that timing is a little bit of a
2 problem.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
4 agree with Senator Scott, but budget sessions usually
5 don't start until February.
6 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, this is
7 true, but you often don't have a Joint Education Committee
8 meeting in January. The LSO likes to get those things
9 done a little more ahead of time and you may need a little
10 extra time.
11 I would urge us unless there's a real strong
12 reason from the department's point of view -- urge us to
13 change that date to November 30th. I will so move.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion.
15 Is there a second?
16 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I will second.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Gentlemen, from your
18 perspective do you have any --
19 MR. KING: As far as reporting what's come
20 out of the advisory groups, I don't see any problem with
21 that November --
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: That would change
23 December 31st on line 8 to November 30th.
24 All those in favor, aye.
25 Opposed.
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1 That motion carries.
2 Anything further?
3 Then, Dave, would you take the roll call on that
4 as amended?
5 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
6 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
7 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
8 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
9 MR. NELSON: Senator Scott.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
11 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
12 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
13 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
15 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
16 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
17 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
19 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
21 I would ask, not having had the opportunity to
22 talk with Scott or Linda with the number of things we've
23 had stacked up, does your report have a breaking point?
24 And our options would be to go to lunch at this point,
25 take an hour and come back or to work for half an hour,
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1 take a break for our traditional 12:00 to 1:00 lunch hour.
2 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman, Mary and I
3 were just talking about it. The accountability part of
4 the statewide accountability design team I think is a
5 relatively short piece. The assessment system one might
6 take a little bit longer. I think we could do the
7 accountability piece before -- certainly in a half an
8 hour. I don't foresee any problems with that.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. I would be in
10 favor --
11 MS. STOWERS: Mine can be very short also.
12 It is a report. I have it written out as well. So if
13 Scott gives me a little bit of time before lunch we can
14 get mine taken care of. We've done this before and so I
15 could get mine done before lunch.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: All right. I think we'll
17 do that because I know there are some pieces that are kind
18 of coordinating with the return of 1:00 at lunchtime and
19 so forth. So we will work on that.
20 Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation and
21 your hard work.
22 MR. MATHERN: Thank you. Appreciate your
23 time.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Are you set?
25 MS. STOWERS: And Scott said we could go
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1 first, if that's okay with you, Madam Chairman.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: That would be just fine.
3 MS. STOWERS: My name is Linda Stowers and
4 I'm the director of the Professional Teaching Standards
5 Board. And with me today is board chair Emily King, the
6 elementary coordinator here in Natrona County, so I asked
7 if she would like to join me in this presentation.
8 What I have for you is a handout that basically
9 talks about what under No Child Left Behind the
10 requirements are for teacher testing. As you know, we had
11 not had teacher testing in the state of Wyoming. The
12 federal legislation basically requires us to do that.
13 There is also --
14 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: What kind of
15 testing? I missed that.
16 MS. STOWERS: Teacher. There is also
17 under our -- Statute 21-2-802 gives us the authority to
18 either set standards, give a test, or both, and so we
19 don't need any legislation that requires the test.
20 What happens under No Child Left Behind is
21 outlined here in the background. There's specific
22 requirements for definition of highly qualified teachers.
23 Basically there's two classes. There's those individuals
24 that are new to the profession or those that are just
25 coming out of colleges and those that are not new to the
393
1 profession.
2 The testing requirement really hits on the not
3 new to the profession and basically I've laid out here
4 what the two definitions are. They hold a Bachelor's
5 degree for elementary as well as they have to pass a test
6 in the areas of reading, writing, math and other areas of
7 basic elementary curriculum.
8 The individuals not new to the profession in
9 middle school and secondary, they also have to have a
10 Bachelor's degree, which we already require for all of our
11 teachers anyway, and then they also have to have a high
12 level of competency in each subject area in which they
13 teach, either by passing a rigorous test or a major in
14 that subject area, which we require for secondary teachers
15 now, a major in their subject area.
16 So what the board has determined to meet the
17 initial requirements for teacher testing is that they
18 looked at their -- there are basically two testing
19 companies in the nation that work with teacher tests. One
20 is National Education Services, NES, which is one where
21 states use that to develop their own test and then give it
22 that way. Or there's the national test which used to be
23 the old NTE which is now Praxis II which is by Educational
24 Testing Services.
25 In looking at those the board determined for our
394
1 cost, so there isn't any cost to the state, we would go
2 with the Educational Testing Services and with that the
3 board determined that when you require regulations for
4 anyone you have to at least do it across the board. You
5 can't select one group without the other.
6 So their determination was that the first thing
7 we would look at is principles of learning and teaching
8 for grades K-5, 6-9 and 7-12. That would apply to all new
9 teachers coming into the field from Wyoming. At the
10 bottom of the page there I've kind of given you a little
11 bit of breakout of what those tests are. It is 45
12 multiple-choice questions, 6 constructed response
13 questions, two hours for the test and it is $50 per test
14 for the individuals.
15 It tests knowledge, educational psychology,
16 human growth and development, classroom management,
17 instructional design and delivery techniques, evaluation
18 and assessment. The contents are based on organizing
19 content knowledge of student learning, creating
20 environment for student learning, teaching for student
21 learning and student professionalism.
22 The other tests we're looking for are the
23 elementary education knowledge content test which covers
24 basically the core subject areas as related back to the
25 law.
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1 And the other one is the middle school content
2 knowledge test, which, again, is one that deals with the
3 four subject areas. One of the reasons why at this point
4 we're going with the middle school content knowledge test
5 that covers all four areas is typically with a middle
6 school we have elementary teachers coming in that work
7 with middle school and we have secondary teachers coming
8 in that work with the middle school. The secondary
9 teachers come in with a major in a subject area. The
10 elementary teacher does not.
11 But this test will then test the knowledge at
12 the middle level in those subject areas, so then it would
13 also give districts the flexibility to continue to utilize
14 their teachers in a fashion that is part of the middle
15 school philosophy.
16 So that's where we're at at this point. The
17 process and timeline, we have a date set with ETS to come
18 in December 12th and 13th. We have 10 to 12 individuals
19 which are our board members, University of Wyoming
20 individuals that are coming in to look at those tests to
21 make a selection as to which one best meets our current
22 standards for teachers, and then from there we will do a
23 validation or a standards setting study which comprises of
24 a panel of teachers that have ten years or less experience
25 to come in and actually take the test and then they see
396
1 the answers as well, but they also are -- then ETS does a
2 report for us that basically shows what that cut score or
3 range of cut scores that should be -- and that gets back
4 to the new language I think somebody was talking about,
5 but the score that the state should probably set as a
6 minimum for individuals to meet to be certified in the
7 state of Wyoming.
8 And that we're hoping to be able to do in the
9 summer of 2003 so that we can have test implementation in
10 the fall of 2003.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. If you have two
12 testing companies, essentially, in the United States who
13 do testing for teachers, what are you doing about
14 reciprocity in terms of -- or are the testing companies
15 going to make out very well by each state requesting them
16 to take this test again?
17 MS. STOWERS: That's a good question.
18 What we're looking at at this point, if we have a state --
19 for instance, there are basically six states going with
20 NES and that's the one where they develop their own
21 test -- California, Texas, Colorado, Arizona and
22 Connecticut -- and there's one other state and I can't
23 remember which one it is. Anyway, there's basically six
24 states that have done that.
25 Most of the others are doing the Praxis II
397
1 series, Praxis I and II series, which the Praxis II is
2 what I've outlined to you. If they're using the same test
3 we would be able to reciprocally use that score.
4 For an example, Nebraska doesn't require right
5 now teacher testing, but all of the institutions in
6 Nebraska are giving the Principles of Learning and
7 Teaching and, for instance, we get a lot of our students
8 from Chadron so if their cut score then meets ours under
9 that test, then they would not have to take the test
10 again.
11 We also have a process in our rules that I'm
12 hoping the federal legislation will allow us to continue
13 to do, and that's for individuals that have experience in
14 another state and a current certificate from that state
15 and at least three years out of the last six that are
16 current, that we would not require them to do the testing
17 as we don't require them to do specific parts of our
18 standards. We feel that if they're current in the school,
19 they've gone through a teacher preparation program, that
20 they probably have the same kind of knowledge we would
21 require. So that's what we would hope to do with
22 reciprocity with those individuals.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: And since there are only
24 six states looking at the other test, is your board going
25 to make an effort to do when they get that test developed
398
1 a comparator so that we would have reciprocity with those
2 states?
3 MS. KING: I would say yes.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: I don't think that we
5 would have any need to intensify any problems we've got or
6 to cost teachers more to get --
7 MS. STOWERS: And that was part of what
8 the board also looked at. We could sit there and have
9 board tests in the middle of school, we could have a
10 subject test for each secondary element, but there was a
11 cost factor they looked at. When you start adding the 35
12 up plus the fee we require for them, it gets to be cost
13 prohibitive. And the fact we're looking at a shortage of
14 teachers, we don't want to make it any more cost
15 prohibitive than it will be.
16 There are opportunities for people to take these
17 tests around the nation. They can take them -- there's
18 testing centers, you know, around the nation. We will
19 have to set up our own testing centers here in the state,
20 but ETS works with us on that. And the cost to the state
21 is minimal, plus we can use Title II money out of No Child
22 Left Behind to help defray some of those costs.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
24 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, on your
25 briefing sheet you say test implementation fall of 2003,
399
1 what effect is that going to have on new teachers that are
2 hired to begin with the fall semester?
3 MS. STOWERS: What we've looked at is most
4 of the processes that other testing states have done.
5 They've given a letter of authorization or whatever for
6 those individuals to go ahead and start working in a
7 district until they can take the test. In other words,
8 ETS really doesn't do a teacher testing in the summertime,
9 and we know with school districts -- and I've talked to
10 superintendents -- that that may be a problem for us and
11 we may have to work out something with ETS and come out
12 with some money to have an August test. Otherwise the
13 next testing would be October.
14 So those individuals would still meet our basic
15 requirements of completing a program and having met all of
16 our standards. They would just need to take the test in
17 October. So we could issue a letter of authorization that
18 says they can go ahead and work until they have the
19 opportunity to take the test.
20 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, it strikes
21 me this is going to be a piece that just isn't going to
22 work long term because, as I understand it from what you
23 said, this is going to be an every-year phenomenon, that
24 they don't give the testing at times that mesh with when
25 school districts are making their employment decisions.
400
1 MS. STOWERS: Well, and typically when
2 individuals take these tests are usually at the end of
3 their teaching -- end of their college preparation and
4 they're given and most colleges require them to even give
5 them as part of graduation in the spring of the year.
6 So the only body that we would be looking at
7 would be those individuals that may be coming in from
8 another state and if they didn't meet the three years
9 requirement we may have to do an authorization with them.
10 But most students that are going through teacher
11 preparation at this point are taking those tests, usually
12 in the spring, sometimes even in the winter kind of thing.
13 So I wouldn't see that it would be a huge amount of
14 individuals in August.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: I guess then that brings
16 me to ask about some of our nontraditional routes of
17 preparation that have been so successful. What position
18 are we putting them in?
19 MS. STOWERS: Basically those individuals
20 that are coming through the nontraditional route would
21 meet the same requirements but they would be the same --
22 they would take the test at a time that is conducive to
23 taking it. For instance, those in the Professional
24 Development School in Cheyenne that are working on
25 portfolio or something like that, then the recommendation
401
1 would be to have them take it in the spring or take it
2 sometime throughout the year. They don't have to wait
3 until the end of the time. They can take it at any time
4 through the school year.
5 So those individuals that are working on it,
6 working towards it would have the opportunity to take it.
7 The individuals that may have a problem would be those
8 that the districts, again, would hire at -- you know, like
9 in August. They couldn't find somebody so they were doing
10 a temporary permit. Those individuals would be put on the
11 temporary permit. And the way the definition is now in
12 the nonregulatory guidelines from Title II says that those
13 individuals going through an alternative route are
14 considered highly qualified because, they're, one, a
15 teacher of record and they have a period of time to do it.
16 So it wouldn't have a huge impact on them.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Peck.
18 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, you were
19 explaining no waivers. That's not entirely the case.
20 Second, what happens if a teacher takes the test
21 and they accept a passing grade at 70 and he gets a 69?
22 Can he retake it?
23 MS. STOWERS: Yes, he can retake it.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Timing?
25 MS. STOWERS: Timing on the test is they
402
1 have to wait at least six months, ETS' requirement is they
2 wait at least six months to retake the test if they needed
3 to retake it.
4 In the meantime what districts could use and how
5 we've been doing it previously is that those individuals
6 could actually continue working under a long-term
7 substitute and the district could use their teaching kind
8 of thing to pay them and -- or a district could choose not
9 to have them in the classroom and that would be a district
10 decision there.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Let me be clear on it,
12 they could continue to hold their position? I mean, you
13 know, if we put too many contingencies on someone
14 attempting to come in, then, you know, you don't buy
15 houses and sign leases and do stuff when everything is up
16 in the air.
17 So they can continue their employment?
18 MS. STOWERS: Yes, the districts could
19 continue to use them in the qualification that they would
20 meet the substitute requirements. And school districts --
21 some school districts have a sliding scale.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: Where does that place
23 their benefits and all of those pieces?
24 MS. STOWERS: That is up to the district
25 and where the district puts them in that respect.
403
1 COCHAIR DEVIN: And would another option
2 be for your board to place a marginal -- in other words,
3 if they get a 69 instead of a 70 -- I suppose if they got
4 a 25 we would have big questions whether they belong
5 there, but, you know, if you're talking about a marginal
6 piece, are we putting people at peril of losing their
7 benefits and et cetera, et cetera, because we don't have a
8 temporary piece until they can take the test again?
9 MS. STOWERS: And that may be something we
10 would have to look at. Scott was just telling me, because
11 I haven't gone through this -- he said we could probably
12 when we develop the standards put one or two below that
13 could be built into the standards when we do the standards
14 setting.
15 I also know that there is an opportunity for
16 us -- and I don't know that the federal government will do
17 anything about it -- for us to do kind of a one-year hold
18 harmless to see how it all works and to do a kind of year
19 of trying it out. And I know Utah, Hawaii and Idaho are
20 in the same boat we are in the fact they didn't have
21 testing before and they're doing that with the hold
22 harmless so that would be a way that we could do it and
23 see if there's bugs that we can work out.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Having been down the road
25 before with the bugs, I think that might be a good idea.
404
1 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Could we call it
2 something besides a hold harmless?
3 MS. STOWERS: Poor choice of words.
4 Sorry.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
6 read here that everything says you have to have a
7 Bachelor's degree, and some states don't have that
8 requirement, same as professional engineers or licensed
9 land surveyors, if you can pass the test and you've been
10 in the business working a long time. And I'm especially
11 coming at this from vocational education. Is that a
12 requirement in our statute or is that a requirement in the
13 federal law, or just what?
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: It has been a requirement
15 in our statutes and I guess it has come into question in
16 particularly those areas of, you know, for example,
17 computers. This is not the traditional role that some
18 real experts in computers are taking at this point in time
19 to get a Bachelor's degree.
20 There's been a lot of question raised whether we
21 should continue to maintain that as a requirement versus
22 another competency hurdle. And that is a part of our
23 statute, though. And it is something I frequently receive
24 letters on for people who have left chemistry and
25 engineering and other things and often they have a
405
1 Bachelor's, but I think that the piece of vocational is a
2 whole other area. And particularly our small areas may
3 face some of that. I do get communications on that.
4 MS. STOWERS: Senator, I may also respond
5 to that that we do this also in federal legislation now
6 with the Bachelor's degree, but it does not at this point
7 affect our vocational teachers, and we do have a permit
8 that doesn't require the Bachelor's degree. It requires
9 at least two years of experience in the area that they're
10 working in.
11 For example, some electricians that have been
12 working in schools and so forth, they haven't used the two
13 years and they're working on professional development in
14 conjunction with the schools so it doesn't leave them out
15 and does give them the opportunity to work in the schools.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: I hadn't even
17 thought about the computer thing. That's probably really
18 important.
19 Thank you.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: I guess another area that
21 this committee has had some questions on in the past, and
22 I do in my mind, and we keep getting bantered from this
23 direction and that direction about numbers of uncertified
24 teachers.
25 And basically we set the standards for what
406
1 constitutes certification or not, but why -- you know, it
2 is still unclear to me and many others, I think, why we
3 make such a differentiation between middle school and
4 junior high, you know, because if you get gifted a child,
5 lo and behold, you have to take them infancy through
6 teenage years. Sometimes you think you're not going to
7 make it. But having been through several of those,
8 there's not significant difference there in those middle
9 school/junior high years and yet we call someone
10 uncertified if they move from junior high to middle school
11 or vice versa and they can be teaching the very same
12 subjects.
13 It kind of really escapes logic and I wonder if
14 we need to continue that or if we can find some middle
15 ground that would let qualified people teach children and
16 not let unqualified -- not let people who really shouldn't
17 be around children do that.
18 MR. MARION: Follow-up question and maybe
19 they'll answer first.
20 MS. KING: They're very different programs
21 and we're always open to the possibility of figuring out a
22 better way to do things. But the program in a middle
23 school looks very different than a program in a
24 traditional junior high school.
25 Junior high school is very much like a high
407
1 school. A middle school is very much -- it has got a
2 completely different way that they approach the children
3 and the way that they bring kids into smaller groups and
4 the teachers need specialized training to work in a middle
5 school. So if a school calls itself a middle school,
6 honestly their teachers need to have that kind of training
7 to understand how to use that philosophy.
8 But like I said, you're right, they're teaching
9 very similar kinds of things. Traditionally we have a lot
10 of elementary teachers that want to move up into the
11 secondary levels and their certification runs K-6. Many
12 of our secondary teachers who have moved into junior high
13 have a 7-12 certification. Even though they're teaching
14 the same thing, it is the difference in the philosophy and
15 the way they work with children. Did I answer that well?
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: But I guess then doesn't
17 the middle school have the design and configuration that
18 the district gives it? I mean, we don't put rules on what
19 it has to look like. Even our high schools look
20 different. I mean, they're kind of like what the district
21 and the board decides they should look like.
22 MS. KING: However, most middle schools do
23 have some constants that are very similar in the way
24 they're put together. They tend to take the children and
25 isolate them into pods, small family type of groups and
408
1 they work in an integrated setting which is very different
2 than a junior high.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
4 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I'm just
5 trying to understand that. You've got, I can see, three
6 different designs I know of in the state. You can have a
7 K-8 elementary. Is that teacher required to have
8 different certification than somebody, say, a seventh
9 grade teacher in one of those? Is that different from
10 somebody who is teaching seventh grade in a traditional
11 junior high and different from somebody teaching seventh
12 grade in a middle school?
13 MS. STOWERS: Typically that is, Madam
14 Chairman, Senator Scott, true that the K-8 school usually
15 is one of the small schools and that individual can either
16 be an elementary or junior high teacher, depending on what
17 grades they have in there. But a K-8 teacher could teach
18 in that school and teach the 7-8 portion of it.
19 In middle school, as we've said -- you know,
20 there's typically elementary or secondary people. And we
21 have brought it up several different times to make some
22 changes in those areas. We are in the process right now
23 of trying to put together some middle school content
24 standards, subject standards, so that it is -- because we
25 realize there are some problems with that, too.
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1 It is a matter of using the flexibility within
2 the districts sometimes, too, that we run into. When we
3 start to make those changes, we run into resistance from
4 middle school teachers, middle school administrators
5 saying, "Then we lose the philosophy of middle school and
6 working in small pods and you're telling us we have to do
7 a junior high where we have to segregate classes."
8 We're very much aware of that kind of thing, and
9 we're still working through it, as is the whole nation.
10 That whole area of middle school, it is a good way for
11 students in those adolescent years to learn, but it also
12 carries heat because a lot of colleges and universities
13 don't train individuals specific to middle school. But we
14 are certainly going to continue to work in that area.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, I guess I feel like
16 we're too narrowly defining what it needs to look like. I
17 would look more at least as a legislator and a citizen and
18 a parent is does this person have the skills to work with
19 children and does this person have knowledge in their area
20 and then give them some latitude to make the classroom
21 look like it needs to.
22 And I don't think that -- they certainly have to
23 work with their district, but why would we define what it
24 would look like? I can even envision changing it from
25 year to year based on what your students look like in
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1 terms of how you structure it.
2 MS. STOWERS: If I may respond, over the
3 period of time school districts have done that and
4 basically the requirement for middle school -- an
5 individual that doesn't have the middle school endorsement
6 can start teaching in the middle school right away, either
7 with elementary or secondary. And what we have is what we
8 call a transitional certificate that's available for them
9 and then they can take course work on a yearly basis up to
10 three years to pick that up.
11 That course work is basically the philosophy of
12 middle school so that they move from a junior high, they
13 get a little more philosophy as far as working with that
14 adolescent child.
15 When you're looking at a secondary program, most
16 of the time they focus in on, you know, the adolescent
17 through the adult and this is more of a focus into the
18 adolescents. So those individuals can begin teaching in
19 the middle school right away and pick up the course work.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Peck and then
21 Senator Scott.
22 SENATOR PECK: Do we have any curmudgeons
23 in the teacher ranks that will say, "I've been teaching
24 for 35 years and if I have to take a test and pay 50
25 bucks" -- what happens if he flunks it? Is he out on the
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1 street?
2 MS. STOWERS: Pretty much, if they don't
3 meet the federal legislation as well as our requirements.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
5 SENATOR SCOTT: Strikes me as an area
6 where we're providing major obstacles as to flexibilities
7 at the school districts. What would happen if we passed a
8 law saying elementary teachers could teach up to at least
9 grade 8 and the secondary trained teachers could teach to
10 at least grade 6?
11 So you could accommodate either one to teach in
12 a middle school and did away with this foolishness.
13 MS. STOWERS: Madam Chairman, Senator
14 Scott, that's already available in there, but we can make
15 those changes without making it into a law because we can,
16 with your direction for rules and regulations, certainly
17 look into that. And as I said before, we have been
18 wrestling with this over the years.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: I for one would urge you
20 to do that. I don't know how the rest of the committee
21 feels, but if you've got a seventh grader, I don't know
22 whether it really matters whether you've got a K-8 teacher
23 teaching them or junior high or middle school. You're
24 still dealing with the same developmental and learning
25 problems.
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1 Then where we see it pop out is number of
2 temporary certified teachers or number of uncertified
3 teachers or those kinds of pieces on our ratings and our
4 reports and, in fact -- two concerns: One is I think it
5 unfairly says there's not a competently trained person
6 with that child, and I'm not sure I agree with that.
7 But, you know, secondly, I guess and maybe more
8 important to me, I think we're kind of stamping out the
9 creativity that teacher could have in that classroom by
10 putting too tight a box around them.
11 MS. KING: We can certainly look into
12 that.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, if there are
14 other sentiments, if there are those of you that don't
15 think we ought to at least encourage their looking at
16 that.
17 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
18 the differentiation has been a mystery to me. I'm married
19 to an educator and she says there's a distinct difference,
20 but having said that, I wonder if we're not too fine
21 tuning in this certification area so I would support, I
22 guess, broadening what we do so that we don't take out a
23 group for the wrong reasons.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: And I guess I would
25 certainly rather see you take the bull by the horns and
413
1 look at us than us trying to superimpose that type of
2 thing.
3 MS. KING: Madam Chairman, we would agree
4 with you.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Because I think you have
6 the best chance of preserving essential elements and
7 broadening the piece to accommodate what could be
8 happening.
9 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, for my
10 clarification, I understand what a multiple-choice
11 question is. What is a constructed response question?
12 MS. STOWERS: If I may, Madam Chair,
13 Senator Peck, that's basically a scenario they will give
14 them and ask some questions that they'll do a simple essay
15 on it, is this is how I would react in the situation or
16 this is the kind of things I would do with a student in
17 these kinds of situations.
18 SENATOR PECK: You used a word I
19 understand, essay.
20 MS. STOWERS: That's basically what it is.
21 SENATOR PECK: Maybe we could put another
22 syllable on it some way.
23 MR. MARION: Wait until we get to my bill.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Keep in mind this comes
25 from a gentleman that we have to get our dictionary out to
414
1 be sure what he has said.
2 Any other comments, any other questions,
3 committee?
4 Thank you.
5 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman, how do you
6 want to --
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: We are at the 12:00 hour.
8 I think the committee is probably ready for a lunch break.
9 MR. MARION: I'm at your pleasure today.
10 That's fine.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: I have no doubt about
12 that. We will reconvene as closely to 1:00 as everyone
13 can make it back because we do have a full afternoon's
14 agenda.
15 (Meeting proceedings recessed
16 12:03 p.m. and reconvened
17 1:10 p.m., November 21, 2002.)
18 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Call the meeting to
19 order. Before Mr. Zax gives his presentation, we would
20 like to introduce -- we have a couple new legislators,
21 newly elected legislators, in the audience this afternoon.
22 Miss Gilmore, would you like to introduce
23 yourself?
24 MS. GILMORE: I'm Mary Gilmore, recently
25 elected to District 59. Dick Sadler was the
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1 representative that held the seat before I did. It is
2 nice to meet you.
3 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you.
4 Steve, would you like to introduce yourself.
5 MR. HARSHMAN: Steve Harshman, recently
6 elected House District 37, Rick Tempest's old spot. Glad
7 to be here and push my learning curve forward a little
8 bit.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Well, at this time
10 we're going to change the agenda just a little bit.
11 Dr. Zax is here to give us his final report on the
12 compensation component of the MAP model.
13 Dr. Zax, all yours.
14 DR. ZAX: Thank you very much. Pleased to
15 be here. I enjoyed my last visit and I'm looking forward
16 to this one as well. I don't have that much new to say, I
17 don't think, but I will be happy to say what is on my mind
18 and take any questions that ensue.
19 I want to begin with a slightly more complete
20 disclosure. I think last time I sort of backed into
21 reviewing my prejudices one by one. I thought I ought to
22 bulk them all up and deliver them as one nice package.
23 So what I believe, and what forms my opinions in
24 all of this: First, do I believe that public education on
25 the primary and secondary level can be improved? And the
416
1 answer to that is yes, I certainly do.
2 Do I believe that it should be improved? Yes,
3 and here it is not only a matter of principle to me but it
4 is a matter of my very narrowest self interest. When the
5 primary and secondary schools don't work, the mess ends up
6 in my lap and it is ugly. So anything you can do to fix
7 that or save me from it I'm entirely in favor of.
8 Second -- third, rather, can we make much in the
9 way of improvement without spending more money? Probably
10 a little. Much more than that, I doubt. I believe that
11 additional improvements are likely to require additional
12 expenditures. The bad news is the following, number five.
13 I also believe that it is possible and perhaps
14 even easy to spend more money and actually not get any
15 improvements. That to me is the real danger. And
16 especially if we are not doing a good job of watching what
17 the outcomes are, watching, keeping track of what actually
18 happens to the students. When we pay for inputs rather
19 than outputs, what you invariably find across all
20 industries and across all times and across all
21 societies -- when you pay for inputs, rather than outputs,
22 you get lots of inputs. Whether or not you get any output
23 at all is a wide-open question.
24 So until we do a better job of making sure that
25 we know what the outputs actually are, we run the very big
417
1 risk if we spend more money we're not going to get any
2 more of them. In this context what I mean by outputs is
3 student performance, increased student ability.
4 Lastly, I have some beliefs about how arguments
5 should be made, and I would like to introduce this by,
6 again, returning to the question of outcome as a
7 university professor what would I like to see my students
8 capable of when they come to the university.
9 And the answer is I would like them to be able
10 to make a reasonable argument, an argument that would
11 consist of posing a question, marshalling evidence to bear
12 on the question, and drawing a conclusion that is
13 consistent with the evidence.
14 And that knowledge, do I understand that to be
15 what I hope for the university students, but I actually
16 understand that to be fundamental to society as we know
17 it, where western society comes from. The enlightenment,
18 the industrial revolution, the last, 5, 600 years of our
19 collective history is all about learning to draw
20 reasonable inferences from what is available as
21 observation rather than basing decisions on dogma.
22 So from that perspective I have been asked to
23 examine what evidence has been -- well, I guess the
24 evidence that has been presented to me. It is quite
25 possible there are other documents circulating in this
418
1 debate, but the documents that I have read are detailed in
2 my report.
3 And based on those documents what have I
4 concluded? Well, it seems to me there's a substantial
5 evidentiary burden that is yet to be borne. Where does it
6 arise? Well, here is an example. Is there a shortage of
7 teachers? There may be, but any argument that says
8 there's a shortage of teachers has to engage the numbers
9 up here. And the numbers up here, you see them before,
10 show enrollment going down, teacher numbers going up, and
11 students per teacher going down.
12 That is not obviously representative of a
13 shortage. If you want to make the claim that there's a
14 shortage of teachers, you have to engage these numbers,
15 you have to confront these numbers, you have to come up
16 with some sort of story that makes these numbers
17 consistent with the diagnosis of a shortage. And I
18 haven't seen that story yet.
19 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Mr. Chairman, may we
20 ask questions?
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Go ahead.
22 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: I will ask the same
23 question I asked the last time: Is this teachers or is
24 this staff?
25 DR. ZAX: That is a question I don't have
419
1 a very good answer to. The original sources, as you can
2 see, are listed here and I'll use the definitions that
3 they represent. This particular column, number of
4 teachers, I understand to be teachers, not administrators.
5 But as you can see, I took this from the report by Robert
6 Reichardt of McREL.
7 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Mr. Chairman, we've
8 heard many times a lot of these so-called teachers include
9 the psychologists, the librarian, the nurse. I mean, it
10 is the staff people in the school. And a lot of those are
11 all rolled into the total number. And I don't know if
12 somebody in the audience must know -- maybe Gary McDowell
13 or somebody must know whether -- which this is.
14 COCHAIR STAFFORD: I believe we have an
15 answer right back here.
16 Please identify yourself for the reporters.
17 MS. HOLLOWAY: Debra Holloway, director of
18 teacher and leader quality for the Wyoming Department of
19 Education.
20 Mr. Chair and Representative Goodenough, this
21 came from a report which I commissioned Robert Reichardt
22 to conduct for our teacher and leader quality initiative.
23 And this represents teachers, not staff, people who are
24 teaching in the classroom.
25 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you, Deb.
420
1 DR. ZAX: Let me thank you again for the
2 question because that's precisely the question that has to
3 be asked of these numbers. If this wasn't just teachers,
4 then you would have to ask, well, perhaps it is being
5 distorted by other staff members and you would want to
6 pull them out somehow. Those kinds of questions need to
7 be asked repeatedly of most of the data we see here.
8 Here's another challenge. If you think you need
9 more teachers, you probably want to make the argument that
10 having more teachers is better. Better in terms of what?
11 Well, the natural answer is better in terms of student
12 outcomes.
13 If that's the argument you want to make, you
14 again have to confront these numbers. What these numbers
15 tell us crudely is as the student/teacher ratio goes down,
16 test scores seem to be stagnant, static, unchanging. Does
17 that mean that more teachers per student would be better?
18 Perhaps still, but it is not obviously supported by this
19 data.
20 If you want to make the claim that you need to
21 reduce the student/teacher ratio further, it seems to me
22 you have some obligation to explain why the next years
23 that you would add to this table would somehow look
24 different and more positive than the years that I've been
25 able to cull from the existing record.
421
1 Some of the other questions it seems to me would
2 need to be answered in order to support the argument that
3 more teachers are necessary -- so, for example, there was
4 some concern about vacancy rates. As you will see from my
5 report, I understand the vacancy rates among teachers to
6 be less than 1 percent. That's a small number in any
7 industry. In an industry with declining enrollments and
8 decreasing teacher numbers anyhow, looks like a really
9 small number.
10 Now it is possible the 1 percent -- actually the
11 half a percent vacant are the absolute critical people,
12 the linchpins in the whole system, without them nothing
13 happens. Maybe if that were true, you would want to look
14 especially hard to fill those slots.
15 But no one has made that argument that I've
16 seen. And until that argument is made, I have to say
17 there's some vacancies, yes, but it actually looks good to
18 what I've seen elsewhere.
19 What about retirement rates? There's some
20 concern about retirement rates and I have no reason to
21 quarrel with the data I've seen which suggests the
22 teaching staff, the teaching population is aging, getting
23 closer to retirement age.
24 Moreover, the inference I've been able to draw
25 suggests that people pretty much retire when they become
422
1 eligible, so are you experiencing -- are you coming to a
2 point where retirement rates may increase? Yeah, that's
3 plausible. On the other hand, I have not seen actually
4 any retirement rates themselves. That would be a useful
5 way of making this argument more concrete.
6 As I say in my report, moreover, there's the
7 question of what the consequences of retirement actually
8 are. Are teachers near retirement that much more
9 effective than the teachers that will replace them that
10 extraordinary efforts need to be put forward to retain
11 them? I haven't seen that argument made.
12 Number three, there has been some concern in the
13 record about the possibility that teachers are leaving
14 Wyoming to teach elsewhere where allegedly they're
15 remunerated more highly. The evidence in the record is
16 very mixed on that.
17 The report from Reichardt -- from Podgursky and
18 Wolkoff -- thank you very much -- claims that the balance
19 of teachers migrating in and out of the state is about
20 equal, those numbers sort of wash each other out. There's
21 a statement from Call to Action which claims that the
22 flows out of the state are much greater and then makes no
23 comment about what the flows into the state are.
24 Well, if I could be told that the state annually
25 loses net 2 or 300 teachers a year to Colorado,
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1 California, wherever else, I would probably stand up and
2 take notice. I haven't seen that number. The best I've
3 seen is 190 teachers left, maybe, but how many came back
4 or how many came from other places? Without an answer to
5 that question, the 190 number hangs in the air. With
6 nothing to compare it to, it is hard to take it seriously.
7 Four, what happens to teachers with temporary
8 certifications apparently is the nationwide trend. The
9 number and percentage of teachers in Wyoming who have
10 temporary certifications is growing over time. I agree,
11 that's worthy of note. The question then is why. If
12 these are -- if these represent teachers who are sort of
13 sneaking into teaching by getting a quasi-certificate
14 instead of full thing and spending their career in the
15 netherworld of half certification, that's probably not a
16 good thing.
17 On the other hand, if these are people getting
18 temporary certifications because they're trying to move
19 into areas where it looks like there's more of a shortage,
20 fields that are being underserved and so forth, if people
21 are using the temporary certifications to redefine
22 themselves in ways that are more productive both for them
23 and the education of the community, that's great, that's
24 what the temporary certification is supposed to be doing.
25 There's nothing in the record I've seen so far
424
1 that tells us why we have more temporary certifications
2 and what those people on temporary certificates are
3 actually doing, how their careers are evolving. Until I
4 see something like that it is hard for me to know how
5 seriously to take this.
6 Number five, we see there's a fair amount of
7 activity in the record about addressing the number of
8 school districts from out of state that come to recruit
9 among Wyoming teaching graduates, graduates of the
10 University of Wyoming. I think that's of interest.
11 But the comments to that that I find in some
12 sense more interesting, there's a fair amount of evidence
13 in the record which suggests that lots of Wyoming
14 districts are not themselves recruiting very vigorously.
15 They're not themselves going to the University of Wyoming
16 interview day. If they think there's a shortage and
17 they're not going to the home state university recruiting
18 day, that doesn't add up for me.
19 If you want to make the claim there is a
20 shortage, it is hard to recruit, hard to keep Wyoming
21 graduates here to teach, I guess I need to see that you're
22 making more of an effort before I believe that.
23 So similarly, to be told that there are
24 California state schools and Texas state schools coming to
25 the interview days at Wyoming, well, that's interesting.
425
1 But is that because they are raping the state of its
2 teaching staff or they are sucking out the people you're
3 producing, or is just because somebody from California
4 managed to get the administrator to pay for a nice weekend
5 in beautiful Wyoming? I'm not sure which.
6 If you were to tell me you had made four offers
7 to graduates of the University of Wyoming for teaching
8 jobs in the past year, lost two to Texas, one to Colorado
9 and one to California, I would take notice of that,
10 because there's a Californian sitting at the next table
11 handing out brochures, I'm unsure how seriously to take
12 that number. And until I see the other numbers, I have to
13 withhold judgment. I guess that's number six as well.
14 So on to another claim, should the State pay
15 more? In some ways the two numbers I'm going to show on
16 this slide are to me the most telling that I've seen.
17 Near as I can tell, in expenditures per pupil the state of
18 Wyoming ranks 10th to 15th. There's only one statement to
19 that and I have no reason to quarrel with it and I haven't
20 seen a quarrel with it. From a variety of sources I have
21 seen the claim the state is 44th in average teacher
22 salary. Those two numbers right there, how do they add
23 up?
24 And I can't tell you. I can tell you this,
25 though. Where do these numbers come from? My guess is
426
1 that that first number comes from the state legislature
2 when we're trying to decide how much money to spend, I
3 have a feeling it is the state government that is making
4 that decision and so the state legislature is responsible
5 for putting the state in the 10th to 15th rank in terms of
6 expenditures per pupil.
7 Who is responsible for that second number?
8 Well, my understanding is that the state legislature
9 doesn't set teacher salaries. If that's the case, then
10 the districts are taking that first number and it is the
11 districts who are translating it into that second number.
12 That sounds like a judgment made by the
13 educational establishment based on their educational
14 expertise. If they think the way to spend that money, the
15 10th to 15th ranking money in the country, then they think
16 the way to spend that is on low student/teacher ratios
17 which is the only inference I can make based on the
18 evidence I've got. I can't quarrel with that. That's an
19 educational judgment.
20 But at the same time it seems disingenuous to
21 them, first on the school districts' part to spend that
22 money paying more teachers rather than paying the teachers
23 more, and turning to the State and saying, "We're not
24 paying the teachers enough." The State is not doing a bad
25 job, 10th to 15th in the country.
427
1 The reason the salaries are lower is because
2 somebody else is making a different kind of judgment. If
3 we need to make the argument that teachers need to be paid
4 more, it seems to me that's got to be backed up with the
5 argument of why in addition we have to take so much of the
6 money we're getting and spending that on something else.
7 I haven't seen that argument made then either.
8 What I would want to see if someone was going to
9 present that argument is a counter to this table. These
10 are again numbers we saw the last time around. I still
11 see that orienting the slides has not improved in the
12 interim, but I'm hoping you will bear with me on that.
13 Should we pay the teachers more? In principle I'm in
14 favor of that.
15 It seems to me you still have the responsibility
16 as to ask why or what will we get for it. And this table
17 says average salaries in Wyoming have gone up; test scores
18 have not changed. It raises the question what are we
19 getting for the additional money? There may be good
20 answers and there may not be, but in the record as it
21 currently stands there are no answers and that is
22 disconcerting.
23 So I'm going to step back and say something
24 that -- to me, this is the most controversial thing I will
25 have said in this whole process. I am a professor. I
428
1 have undergraduates. I ask them to write term papers.
2 They hand in the papers and I grade them. The evidence
3 I've seen so far is a C-minus term paper.
4 When my students are asked to argue a point, I
5 expect them to bring to bear some numbers that actually
6 speak to it. Here I've heard lots of points raised the
7 the numbers I've seen are the first numbers you would want
8 to look at to address those points, but they're by no
9 means the last.
10 And so I guess I heard people -- I heard some
11 grumbling, three hours this morning spent talking about
12 data issues and so forth. Can't imagine why you're
13 grumbling. That's great news. One thing you need is a
14 much more precise measurement of what you're accomplishing
15 here so if people spent the morning how to measure things
16 better, terrific. I think that's the most positive,
17 constructive step I've seen in the process.
18 So that's my brief summary. I'm open to
19 whatever questions you might have.
20 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Committee, questions of
21 Dr. Zax.
22 Representative Lockhart.
23 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Only one thing.
24 We have a little different group than we had in Afton so
25 they may not know the history of how Dr. Zax was given
429
1 this challenge to get here. I will give you my 30-second
2 speech on it, is that we as an Education Committee have
3 been inundated with a lot of material, with different
4 kinds of conclusions in the material.
5 And we said how do we handle that, and so we
6 packaged that material, decision of the whole committee,
7 and hired Dr. Zax to analyze it from an objective view.
8 And that's what he's given you this morning and that's
9 what we heard in part in Afton. But that's for those that
10 were not in Afton.
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you.
12 Further questions?
13 Anyone --
14 SENATOR PECK: Mr. Chairman.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Bob.
16 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: I'm sorry, it
17 was Laramie, not Afton.
18 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We all knew what you
19 meant.
20 DR. ZAX: The process began in Afton. I
21 only appeared in person in Laramie.
22 SENATOR PECK: Same question, your opinion
23 on merit pay.
24 DR. ZAX: I spoke about this at great
25 length in the report. I felt a little out of step in the
430
1 sense that merit pay doesn't arise as a discrete issue in
2 most of the documents I read, but I think it is an
3 important issue to address. The fundamental principle as
4 an economist over all industries, all times if you don't
5 pay for output at some level you can't count on getting
6 it. So you always got to -- my orientation is always
7 going to be you've got to think of some way to reward
8 better performance and to encourage those not performing
9 well to perform better.
10 The trick in the teaching profession, and I
11 think it is a really substantial issue, is measuring
12 performance is something you can't do by shooting from the
13 hip, and it is something you can't do by just, you know,
14 looking at how people dress when they show up in the
15 morning. If you want to go to merit pay, you actually
16 have to take a substantial commitment to defining what
17 outcomes you are -- what outcomes you want and making a
18 responsible attempt to measure it.
19 I think it is the right way to go, but there's
20 no point it -- you could find an economist who would
21 simply say merit pay is the answer and you don't have to
22 know anything else about it. I firmly disbelieve that.
23 But I think merit pay badly done can create many more
24 problems than it solves. On the other hand, the absence
25 of merit pay clearly creates problems. The arbitrariness
431
1 of that is built into the system.
2 So the only way, the best way forward is clearly
3 merit pay done responsibly, and there's everything to be
4 said for moving as close to that as you can.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Committee, anything
6 else?
7 We will open it up to the audience and we have a
8 little bit of time left, if anybody has any questions for
9 Dr. Zax.
10 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Shy bunch.
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Looks like it.
12 Well, Dr. Zax we appreciate your report very
13 much. This is, I think, the fourth report we've
14 commissioned on these issues and we appreciate your work
15 and time.
16 DR. ZAX: Once again, I have enjoyed very
17 much my opportunity to participate in this process and I
18 wish you all very, very well with the continued progress
19 of the educational system in the state.
20 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you.
21 We're going to move back up to state Department.
22 Colonel Marion.
23 MS. BYRNES: Mr. Chairman, could we
24 interrupt the order of things? Dr. Smith has a plane to
25 catch, and we have a technical correction that we wanted
432
1 to run by the committee. And so we have materials and
2 while Dr. Smith is still here, if we could do that, if you
3 don't mind, it should be very brief.
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Dr. Smith, what have
5 you got for us?
6 DR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, members of the
7 committee, I am not happy to report that we did find
8 another technical error in the spreadsheet. Actually,
9 some district person brought it to our attention and said
10 the spreadsheet was not behaving in the manner that the
11 report said it should. If there's an error, it should be
12 in the spreadsheet, not in the policy.
13 We looked into it and it turns out -- and I can
14 make this a very short story and it is this -- it is
15 almost like what is the meaning of is -- but this is a
16 situation where we said in the report that the amount of
17 money that is available to small school districts for
18 central administration would be the -- equal to -- greater
19 than or equal to the amount that they would get under
20 those standard prototypes.
21 It got written in these formulas here. If you
22 would like to go into great detail how these formulas
23 work, I'm sure somebody in this audience could do that for
24 you -- I couldn't -- and it got written as not greater
25 than. So the net effect of this is that school districts
433
1 that were between 1,000 and 2400 and some, 2346.48, and
2 some other digits didn't get the amount of central office
3 administration that they should have in the way the
4 spreadsheet worked.
5 We have provided the Department with the
6 corrections. This is -- it is my understanding that this
7 requires no change in law because the law you adopted
8 adopted the policy that was in the reports, not the
9 spreadsheet, per se. We think that these errors are
10 unfortunate and we apologize for them. On the other hand,
11 we're pleased that people in the districts are fiddling
12 with them and making sure that they work the way that
13 they're supposed to. It is a lot better with 48 eyes
14 looking at it than 2.
15 So I will answer any questions about the nature
16 of this. I think LSO has provided a spreadsheet that
17 tells the effect of this. In effect, without the hold
18 harmless -- and Mary, you can correct me on this --
19 without the hold harmless, there would be no losers and
20 some winners, but because of the hold harmless, it creates
21 some losers and it is my -- I'll let Mary tell what the
22 policy is on this.
23 MS. BYRNES: Oh, thank you.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Byrnes.
25 MS. BYRNES: Mr. Chairman, the chart you
434
1 see here will take us through a medley of columns. To
2 start you off, it is the corrected guarantee and the
3 corrected guarantee is without the transition payments.
4 This is going to be the difference between the left side
5 and the right side of this page. We have the uncorrected
6 guarantee and the net changes.
7 Then you also see the transitional payments
8 that -- these are the catch-up payments for
9 transportation, special ed that we've held back over time
10 with our caps. And they don't play into the mix at all.
11 I wanted to make sure that didn't have a problem there.
12 The total guarantee corrected and the total guarantee
13 uncorrected, you have your net change.
14 We have some negative figures there and these
15 are the districts that are receiving a hold harmless.
16 They have lost ADM and because now we have provided more
17 money in this model because of this correction, their
18 costs at the loss of ADM become a greater figure, a larger
19 negative. They're pricier losses. These are hold
20 harmless districts right now. They would receive less
21 hold harmless money.
22 And I would like to refer to Larry Biggio of the
23 state Department to respond on the negatives.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Biggio.
25 MR. BIGGIO: Mr. Chairman, I would ask
435
1 that you not enforce the negatives on the school district
2 at this point. The districts have in good faith relied
3 upon the estimates provided to them by us through the
4 model. They're five and a half months into the school
5 year, have expended a considerable portion of their
6 budget. I would ask that you just allow us to forego the
7 negatives and award the positive amounts to those
8 districts that do have an increase.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you. Committee,
10 questions?
11 Dr. Smith, anything further?
12 DR. SMITH: No comments. I just thought
13 that was a pretty good Smith to Byrnes to Biggio triple
14 play right there.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Okay. Thank you very
16 much. Take that up.
17 DR. SMITH: Thank you.
18 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Now, Mr. Nelson, is it
19 time for Mr. Marion?
20 MR. NELSON: Yes, it is.
21 MS. BYRNES: Thank you.
22 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Is this going to be a
23 two-water-bottle presentation?
24 MR. MARION: One is almost empty,
25 Mr. Chair.
436
1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Somebody quick
2 poke a hole in it.
3 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair.
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
5 MR. MARION: If you would take the
6 accountability draft first which is --
7 COCHAIR STAFFORD: 154.
8 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, this bill was
9 drafted in response to the passage of the No Child Left
10 Behind act which mandates that each state develop a system
11 of rewards and sanctions as part of a single
12 accountability system for all schools, Title I schools and
13 non-Title I schools.
14 At the behest of the committee as part of the
15 discussion in Afton, I believe, we talked about having a
16 statewide design team to outline what the accountability
17 process should be. This bill describes the
18 representation. There is a date error on page 2, line 15.
19 It should say April 1st, 2003.
20 And then it provides for a transition because by
21 law, by federal law, we're required to implement rewards
22 and sanctions starting in the next school year. There's
23 no way to get that done and have it passed by the full
24 legislature in time to do that, so we're asking for a
25 transitional system that will phase out when the full law
437
1 will be passed.
2 And I think it is easiest if people have a
3 chance to read through this bill. Basically we're talking
4 about a system where we would have a significant
5 representation, have people decide what would be the most
6 appropriate reward and sanction system for Wyoming.
7 The Title I legislation, No Child Left Behind
8 legislation, has very specific sanctions for schools that
9 receive Title I money for those that do not make the
10 annual performance targets. But we're still required to
11 have another system and we think that this would best be
12 done if it was designed by a representative body instead
13 of either by the legislature or WDE or some other single
14 group. So that's the provision here.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Committee, questions on
16 154? This is the one that we discussed considerably over
17 the last meeting and its implementation.
18 Representative McOmie.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Thank you,
20 Mr. Chair.
21 Scott, we can have another measurement also
22 rather than just like -- like we just used the WyCAS right
23 now and that's what you're proposing here, a group of
24 teachers and other people will put together to come up
25 with another way of measuring the improvements.
438
1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
2 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Representative
3 McOmie, this is simply for what happens as a result of the
4 measurement. So we will still continue to use WyCAS in
5 its existing form for the spring of 2003 and the spring of
6 2004. The next piece of legislation we will talk about
7 will be the expansion of the assessment system through
8 grades 3 through 8 and then high school, but the piece
9 we're talking about here is what happens if you don't meet
10 your performance goals or if you exceed them dramatically.
11 For instance, with the federal legislation if a
12 school fails to meet its performance target two years in a
13 row they have to offer choice, school choice to the kids
14 who go to that school. That's the kind of thing we're
15 talking about. It is the same measurement system,
16 different repercussions.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman,
18 follow-up.
19 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Continue.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: This morning we
21 spent a lot of time talking about a new computer system
22 where we would be able to find other ways to measure
23 performance and that's why I asked that question. And,
24 you know, right now we've got WyCAS. That's the only
25 thing we've got, and this is going to, I guess, just set
439
1 up the committee that's going to figure out how you're
2 going to sanction or whatever you're going to do while
3 we're designing tests for, what is it, 1 through 8.
4 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Representative
5 McOmie, it is grades 3 through 8 and then once in high
6 school.
7 The other measurement system we talked about
8 this morning, the high school graduation piece which is
9 entirely a state law and fulfilling state -- this body's
10 intentions. The piece that we're talking about here is to
11 fulfill a federal requirement and to put Wyoming flavor
12 into it.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further questions,
14 Committee?
15 SENATOR PECK: Mr. Chairman.
16 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Bob.
17 SENATOR PECK: Would you elaborate a
18 little for us the rewards and sanctions philosophy and how
19 it would be applied?
20 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
21 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Senator Peck, this
22 is a hard one for me because I'm not a strong believer in
23 punitive rewards -- punitive sanctions and rewards that
24 might not be deserving in one year and then deserving in
25 another year. That's exactly why we want to have this
440
1 committee. And especially sanctions that would be applied
2 universally to any school in any district, regardless of
3 conditions.
4 So what we're hoping to come out of this
5 committee is that we could have a menu of sanctions
6 because certain sanctions are very good things. One
7 sanction in particular is that a school improvement plan
8 has to be reexamined and then have either Department
9 approval or get outside expert facilitation to say whether
10 or not this is an effective plan to improve the school
11 because there are places where kids are not learning what
12 they should be learning and perhaps we need to reexamine
13 the plan.
14 That kind of sanction is hard to argue with. Or
15 the sanction that a school needs to spend more money on
16 approved professional development for their teachers.
17 That's not a bad thing.
18 Other kinds of sanctions where you have total
19 reconstitution of schools and everybody gets fired, it is
20 hard to argue that those are the best things. So we would
21 like to see this group be able to develop a menu of
22 sanctions that if there was a school in Riverton that
23 didn't meet their performance targets, that the local
24 board and other representatives, parent representatives
25 could have a selection and say, "We believe this would be
441
1 the most appropriate sanction or reward for this
2 particular school given these conditions."
3 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further questions?
4 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Mr. Chairman.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Goodenough.
6 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Seems like in Afton
7 Senator Scott asked for some kind of a compilation of what
8 the ramifications would be of just telling the federal
9 government to jump in the lake over all of this and what
10 would be the risk and so on and so forth, and I haven't
11 seen that document circulating and I wondered if it got
12 done or not.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
14 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Senator
15 Goodenough, we've asked the federal government for
16 specific information about that, our contacts in the U.S.
17 Department of Education. And to be honest, nobody is
18 saying exactly what we will lose. We are pretty clear
19 that they wouldn't touch special education money and
20 probably not the Perkins vocational money.
21 That still leaves approximately 60 to $70
22 million at risk. The language coming out of the White
23 House and the U.S. Department of Education is pretty
24 strong and they made it very clear, they're not interested
25 in -- they don't have any interest in granting waivers or
442
1 flexability to states around certain things like that.
2 I can't give you an exact answer, Senator
3 Goodenough, but I think we're risking at least 60 to 70
4 million in the different title programs per year.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Anything further,
6 Committee?
7 Mr. Marion, there's an appropriation of 100,000
8 in there but no position. Is that going to be sufficient
9 for the Department of Education to carry this out?
10 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, thank you for
11 asking that. I believe for the temporary nature of this,
12 we're talking for a design team to function over a year's
13 period of time, we could handle that. The costs there are
14 mostly -- to be honest, this adequate yearly progress and
15 the notification about schools meeting or not meeting
16 adequate yearly progress has garnered a fair amount of
17 attention around the state since we've released the list a
18 few weeks ago.
19 The purpose for this money is to hold many
20 meetings around the state and the cost there is really for
21 travel for the people appointed to the committee, but then
22 holding meetings in various locations around the state to
23 truly solicit Wyoming citizen input. That's the cost.
24 And that is an approximate cost that Dave and I figured
25 out one day and that would be something that would easily
443
1 revert if we didn't spend it.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you.
3 Committee, further questions.
4 Representative McOmie.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman, I
6 have no idea, does the Department of Ed get all of their
7 financing from the general fund or does some of it come
8 from the school foundation funds, or how is that split
9 out?
10 MR. BIGGIO: Mr. Chairman.
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Biggio.
12 MR. BIGGIO: We actually have two agencies
13 for the Department of Education. One is 005, one is 205.
14 005 is primarily the operating funds for the Department of
15 Education and all of the federal flow-through dollars that
16 move to the districts. You're stretching my memory. I
17 don't remember the exact percentages, but the primary
18 general and federal mix is in the operating account for
19 agency 005.
20 As you move to 205, that becomes things like
21 foundation program, in the past the cap con, mill levies,
22 those sorts of things, and the primary funding in there
23 will be the school foundation account for the school
24 foundation payments.
25 But there's also a mix in there of general fund
444
1 for some of the other pieces. Some parts of Scott's
2 budget are in there. The WIND budget, the network
3 statewide that ties all schools together, is in there as
4 well. For the most part the federal money is in the 005
5 budget.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Follow-up,
7 Mr. Chairman.
8 Would this qualify for some of those federal
9 funds inasmuch as you're designing the testing and what to
10 do?
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
12 MR. MARION: Representative McOmie,
13 Mr. Chairman, we could certainly tap federal funds for
14 this and in some sense that's where some of the personnel
15 would come from as well. We could certainly tap some of
16 the federal funding in the assessment development realm
17 for this.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chair, what I
19 wondered was will we get additional federal funding more
20 than we're receiving -- we would receive without No Child
21 Left Behind?
22 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Representative
23 McOmie, the increase in federal funding that we received
24 as a result of No Child Left Behind is an additional 15 to
25 18 percent, roughly. We are getting additional money for
445
1 standards and assessment development that's a separate
2 line item.
3 We could go back and perhaps talk about this at
4 the December meeting if we should pay for this out of
5 federal funds or ask for the general fund to pay for this.
6 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further?
7 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman, I
8 believe, though, we would still have to put the money into
9 the general fund in order to be able to distribute it
10 back, wouldn't we? Is that how that works?
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Sure, it has to be in
12 the general fund somewhere.
13 Mr. Biggio.
14 MR. BIGGIO: All of the funds that we
15 receive eventually go to the state treasury and then we
16 disburse them from there.
17 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further questions,
18 Committee? Do we want to move this as a committee bill?
19 Anybody want to do that?
20 SENATOR PECK: So moved.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Second?
22 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
23 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Moved and seconded we
24 move LSO bill 154 with the noted correction on page 2 and
25 the correction on line 15. We won't vote until Senator
446
1 Devin returns -- she's here. Would you like to vote?
2 We're voting on 154.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: I have an aye vote on
4 that.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Would you call the vote
6 on that?
7 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: I have two
8 technical corrections on those.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We will take care of
10 that.
11 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
12 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
13 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
14 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
15 MR. NELSON: Senator Scott.
16 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
17 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
18 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
19 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
21 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
22 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
23 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
25 MR. NELSON: Cochair Stafford.
447
1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Aye.
2 Thank you. Next one will be 153, is that
3 true?
4 MR. MARION: Yes, Mr. Chair.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Representative
6 Robinson, if you want to note those corrections through
7 Mr. Nelson.
8 Mr. Marion, take it away.
9 MR. MARION: As we discussed in Sheridan
10 this summer and then again briefly in Afton, as per this
11 committee's direction my office held upwards of 25
12 meetings around the state to solicit public input about
13 the future design of the Wyoming assessment system.
14 As required by No Child Left Behind, as we've
15 been talking about, by the year 2005, 2006, we have to
16 have assessments in language arts, reading and writing,
17 and mathematics in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and then once
18 in high school somewhere between grades 10 and 12. Right
19 now, as you know, we have WyCAS in grades 4, 8 and 11
20 assessing reading, writing and math.
21 When designing an assessment system, the most
22 important thing to get from a design committee are the
23 purposes. Why do we want to have this system? We know
24 the federal government has said you must have a system as
25 a way to calculate this adequate yearly progress and hold
448
1 schools accountable, but if that's the only thing we do,
2 we would be short-circuiting ourselves.
3 With that, we asked the public for input about
4 the purpose of a design study. And that's the first slide
5 you see there. They were asked to rate -- and these were
6 the purposes listed. They were able to list as many as
7 they wanted. These are some of the ones that came out
8 most frequently, and just so you know, they were only
9 asked to limit themselves to three purposes because you
10 can't serve too many masters, so each person could pick
11 their three highest-rated purposes. So a score of three
12 would be the highest, score of two would be the next
13 highest, a score of one would be the third priority, and a
14 score of zero means it was not selected by the person.
15 As you can see, improved student learning,
16 whether the teacher group, administrators, a group of
17 noneducators, parents, community members together and then
18 you see a total is that light blue bar, is by far and away
19 the most important priority. That's a good thing if we're
20 going to take this time and spend this money, that should
21 be the purpose, is to improve student learning.
22 The other things that received a fair amount of
23 attention, second was improved teaching and being able to
24 use the results to be able to differentiate and shape
25 instructional programs within a classroom.
449
1 The school and program improvement, one of the
2 main purposes of WyCAS now was also the third highest
3 rated, and then measuring year-to-year growth of students
4 was another significant priority.
5 And all of the other things got some attention,
6 as you can see, but fairly low. It was very clear that
7 improved teaching and learning is the most important
8 reason for having assessment systems.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion, did you ask
10 any students?
11 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, that's a good
12 question. We had a few students at a few of the sessions,
13 but we didn't target students particularly.
14 COCHAIR STAFFORD: All right, thank you.
15 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, I might add that
16 everybody in the community was invited and we asked
17 schools to advertise and we placed an advertisement in
18 every local newspaper where we were holding the meetings.
19 But we did not go and solicit student input, which is not
20 a bad idea.
21 So one of the other things we asked them, the
22 types of questions they would like to see on an
23 assessment. And, Senator Peck, bear with me, but we have
24 what we call selected response or multiple choice type of
25 questions.
450
1 Another type of question -- and we showed the
2 people examples of all of this -- is shorter constructed
3 response questions that might take five or ten minutes for
4 a student to answer, but they're not selecting from a
5 list.
6 And then we have what we call extended response
7 or performance tasks that could take anywhere from writing
8 an essay for 45 minutes or working on a project for a
9 couple days. We called those extended or performance
10 tasks. We actually separate them out. But for the
11 summary page, the next page, you can see that I asked the
12 people if you had a pie worth 100 percent and you wanted
13 to divide up the student's score by the different types of
14 questions to show up on the test, what would it look like?
15 And you can see that, by and large, the extended
16 tasks, constructed response got the majority of the weight
17 and that weight increases as you move up in grade level.
18 They want to see the high school and middle school kids
19 being able to perform the more real world, authentic kinds
20 of problems. But multiple-choice questions were still --
21 represented approximately a quarter of the pie at all
22 grade levels.
23 There's more details on subsequent pages
24 breaking it out by teachers, administrators, noneducators,
25 and then the total for each of the particular grade spans.
451
1 And the pattern is fairly consistent whether you're
2 talking about teachers, administrators or noneducators
3 throughout, and then it is represented as that change as
4 you move up the grade span. People want to see more of
5 these extended type of tasks as you move toward the high
6 school level.
7 That helps us thinking about design. It is
8 clear that people do not want a multiple-choice test. It
9 is clear from our reading of the law and Wyoming standards
10 that a multiple-choice test would not meet this criteria
11 of alignment. It would not allow us to probe the level of
12 thinking that standards call for and as required by
13 federal law.
14 With that, we can move to the bill.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Goodenough.
16 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Where do those
17 fill-in-the-blank questions fall? Are they considered
18 multiple choice or something else?
19 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
20 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Senator
21 Goodenough, as part of my familiarity with the educational
22 measurement literature and my reading of that and feeling
23 on it, what the literature says and what best practices
24 are, true/false tests are considered pretty poor tests in
25 general. They actually discriminate against the more
452
1 creative thinkers because they're the ones more apt to see
2 gray. And fill in the blank tend to be very low level,
3 factual recall kinds of tests so we did not even consider
4 those.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion, let's move
6 to the bill.
7 MR. MARION: This bill, as you can see,
8 fits and amends 21-2-304(a)(5) and the first change that
9 we see is on page 2, lines 4 through 7, basically from
10 this public input. And I might add, Mr. Chair, when we
11 designed WyCAS the last time, Senator Devin was on that
12 committee and I think there were 12 or 13 people on the
13 committee with a few facilitators, and that was really the
14 people who designed the assessment system in some small
15 rooms over a six-month period of time.
16 So the advantage of this now is we have hit
17 communities from every corner of the state and have input
18 from 500 or so people.
19 With that we suggested that putting in the
20 purposes in lines 4 through 7 that the assessment system
21 shall be designed primarily to improve teaching and
22 learning in schools within the state and shall foster
23 school program improvement.
24 That was the first suggested change. The
25 deletions on lines 12 and 13 are taken care of on
453
1 subsequent pages. They don't really go away. They're
2 just further specified later in the bill where it says
3 subjects and grade levels specified by new paragraph
4 (a)(6) of this section.
5 The other piece -- and I wish Senator Scott were
6 here to hear this because this is one of his main interest
7 areas -- but that the assessment system shall measure
8 year-to-year change in student achievement in the areas
9 specified -- reading, writing, mathematics -- for students
10 assessed in grades 4 through 8. Even though the law says
11 students will be assessed in 3 through 8, 3 would be the
12 baseline and we would by grade 4 be able to measure the
13 year-to-year change subsequently to grade 8, and again
14 based on feedback from the public, the assessment shall
15 derive not less than 50 percent of the student and school
16 assessment scores from open-ended testing.
17 And I laid out the types there: Constructed,
18 extended and performance tests and the reason to ensure
19 alignment as required by federal law.
20 And then this is the new section, paragraph 6,
21 so require the statewide assessment system implemented
22 under (a)(5) to assess student performance in reading,
23 writing, mathematics -- Dave, we have a --
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson.
25 MS. BYRNES: I think we have a little
454
1 correction on page 3, 17 through 19. It should say assess
2 student performance in reading, writing, mathematics in
3 grades 3 through 8 and 11.
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson.
5 MR. NELSON: Mr. Chair, I think we want to
6 leave A there. Aren't we looking at staggered timelines?
7 Look at paragraph B.
8 MR. MARION: I'm sorry. That's why I need
9 him.
10 Actually, that -- actually, A preserves the
11 existing system until we can phase in the new system in
12 paragraph B.
13 So effective in the 2004-2005 school year we
14 would assess student performance in the same subjects in
15 grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 and then --
16 MR. NELSON: Add science.
17 MR. MARION: -- add science by the
18 following year as required by the law. We're required to
19 add science into the assessment system.
20 Actually, though, this is my fault. There
21 should be a correction there. Science only needs to be
22 given at three different grade levels: Elementary, middle
23 and high school. So we need to specify that separately.
24 It doesn't have to be given 3 through 8. It has to be
25 given just essentially like we have it in WyCAS, 4, 8 and
455
1 11, so we need to make that correction. I don't know if
2 that would be --
3 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion, you're
4 saying science in the year 2005-'06 will only be given to
5 grades 8 through 11?
6 MR. MARION: No, once in elementary
7 school, for instance, grade 4; once in the middle grades,
8 say grade 8; and once in the high school, grade 11. It
9 doesn't have to be given every single year, whereas
10 reading, writing and math do.
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson, you can
12 make that correction.
13 Senator Devin.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Chairman, when we make
15 that note about science, can we -- I guess I would be
16 interested -- I'm not sure whether grade 4 is a better
17 place to test than grade 6 or, you know, do we need to
18 have that discussion? Do we need to write it so the
19 latitude is there so that we really get a measurement of
20 our system? Because we have a new open field here and I
21 guess I would just be interested in knowing if we just
22 need to keep it rather open or if that really is the best
23 place to test, or do we know?
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
25 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Senator Devin, we
456
1 can write it to meet the federal requirements that we
2 could say assess science once between grades 3 and 5, once
3 between grades 6 and 8, and once between grades 10 and 12.
4 And that would give us the latitude to work with the
5 districts and statewide science to determine what might be
6 the best place to put those assessments. We could
7 certainly do that.
8 For instance, grade 9 might be a good grade to
9 assess science because there's not a reading, writing,
10 math test in grade 9. That ends in grade 8. That
11 certainly could enter into that discussion.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Just a follow-up on that,
13 I suppose you want to put some language to be determined
14 by in consultation with because you would want to give
15 that at the time across the state. You wouldn't want
16 districts giving it -- you wouldn't want it to appear it
17 is a random choice once the agreement is reached.
18 MR. MARION: It would have to be as part
19 of the statewide system and fixed implementation and be
20 the same grade for every school in the state.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Bohling.
22 DR. BOHLING: Mr. Chairman, members of the
23 committee, we won't be revisiting the state standard for
24 five more years and the science standards are written at
25 grades 4, 8 and 11, so that is really what we test. We
457
1 would be testing with this, so we would want to make sure
2 that we aren't waiting a year or two past the standards to
3 assess those.
4 So I think that we need to be consistent with
5 where we write the benchmarks for those, and five years
6 from now we'll revisit but we won't revisit before then.
7 So that's just something for us to think about.
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Committee, further
9 questions concerning 153?
10 SENATOR PECK: Mr. Chairman.
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Bob.
12 SENATOR PECK: Scott, this test is
13 all-encompassing, it fits equally well for the
14 college-bound and the vocational education student?
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
16 MR. MARION: Mr. Chairman, Senator Peck,
17 this test will be designed to test and be aligned with the
18 Wyoming content performance standards which are designed
19 to certainly set high but reasonable expectations for all
20 children to meet before they graduate from high school,
21 whether they're in vocational -- and that's interesting, I
22 had a conversation with a superintendent this morning
23 about vocational. What he's hearing from his community is
24 they still need to read, write and do math at a level that
25 will allow them to take advantage of the technology that's
458
1 available to us in this century.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further questions,
3 Committee? What's your pleasure?
4 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Move the bill.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Been moved by
6 Representative Lockhart. Second?
7 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Second.
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We have a do pass on
9 153 with correction on page 4 concerning science testing
10 that we will take a look at at the December meeting with
11 the appropriate language.
12 Further questions on that?
13 If not, Mr. Nelson, please call the roll.
14 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
15 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: No.
16 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
17 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
18 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
19 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
20 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
21 No response.
22 Representative Robinson.
23 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
24 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
459
1 MR. NELSON: Cochair Devin.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
3 MR. NELSON: Cochair Stafford.
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Aye.
5 Thank you, Mr. Marion.
6 Senator Goodenough.
7 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Before Scott leaves
8 do we have time to have a five-minute recap of the
9 requirements that are going to be placed on the State and
10 the punishments that would be imposed?
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
12 MR. MARION: Mr. Chairman, it is my
13 pleasure. Only one bottle of water, so I have time.
14 MS. HILL: I would caution against the
15 five-minute recap idea, Mr. Chairman. With respect to
16 Senator Goodenough, the requirements of No Child Left
17 Behind are broad and very deep and in order to give
18 justice to the scope of No Child Left Behind -- you heard
19 a portion of what Linda Stowers had to say with regard to
20 teacher certification. There are multiple Title I school
21 requirements, there are professional development
22 requirements, there are assessment requirements.
23 At the committee's pleasure, the Department
24 would be pleased to provide some materials and to do a
25 presentation, but I would be really fearful of misleading
460
1 the committee because we hadn't given the proper thought
2 to an -- even a thumbnail sketch of No Child Left Behind.
3 We have people in our department who on -- a weekly basis
4 you may have as many as five people involved in different
5 regional meetings on how to comply with No Child Left
6 Behind.
7 So it is, of course, your pleasure, Mr. Chairman
8 and your call, but it would be strongly recommended we
9 give you a professional recap on that rather than a --
10 MR. MARION: Excuse me.
11 MS. HILL: Yes, I said it.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Goodenough.
13 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: We're in the position
14 of having to explain to people in short form what we're
15 doing here and they're not going to stand and listen to
16 half-an-hour slide presentation. We have to be able to
17 tell the people that we represent this is what is going on
18 and this is what is going to happen to the schools in
19 Natrona County and this is the punishment that will happen
20 if we don't and so on and so forth.
21 With all due respect, it seems we've heard in
22 this committee brief summations of what the law does and
23 the punishments if we don't comply, so it is hard for me
24 to believe you can't come up with it right here and now.
25 MS. HILL: I will be glad to have Scott
461
1 take a shot at the 30-second explanation with the real
2 caveat and plea to the committee that it is really far
3 wider, far deeper than Scott will even be able to do
4 justice to. But he's a bright guy.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion, we've
6 already wasted a minute and a half so you have three and a
7 half minutes. Go for it.
8 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, I'm used to
9 Ms. Hill taking much of my time. But with that, the key
10 things I think Senator Goodenough is asking about -- this
11 is an 1100-page law. Just focusing on the assessment and
12 accountability piece, it expands the requirements set
13 forth under the Clinton administration of IASA of
14 statewide standards and assessments.
15 Now, the big change from the previous
16 authorization in 1994 is this addition of a single
17 statewide accountability system to hold schools
18 accountable for the learning of every single child in that
19 building.
20 And that, in essence, is the thumbnail. There
21 are many schools who are doing pretty well on average.
22 The problem, as we say, is you could have one foot on a
23 block of ice and one on the wood stove and on average
24 you're pretty comfortable, but there's a lot of kids who
25 have been denied fair educational opportunities to obtain
462
1 a significant, high-quality education. This law is
2 designed to say we need to start measuring this more
3 precisely from these earlier grades and more consistently
4 and then hold schools accountable for the achievement of
5 those children.
6 When I was participating with Superintendent
7 Catchpole at the negotiated rulemaking about this law, the
8 assessment piece, the loudest advocates for more stringent
9 state requirements were parents of inner-city children
10 whose children who have been routinely denied educational
11 opportunity. So that's the three and a half minutes. I
12 actually had a minute to spare.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you.
14 Senator Goodenough.
15 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: And the penalties if
16 the State fails to comply will be what?
17 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Senator
18 Goodenough, the penalties at the state level if we don't
19 meet the performance targets is at the state level we lose
20 percentages of our administrative funds. If districts do
21 not meet the performance targets, it is never a reduction
22 in money.
23 In some sense, especially the first several
24 years, it is an addition of resources and school
25 improvement funds to try and improve the performance of
463
1 those kids in those schools. It is not about taking
2 things away. It is about trying to direct resources to
3 those schools who need it the most and appear to be
4 struggling to raise achievement of their children.
5 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Mr. Chairman, didn't
6 I hear something in the past about personnel changes if at
7 the building level -- curriculum changes at the building
8 level, or is that just --
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
10 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, Senator
11 Goodenough, no, it was not your imagination. If a school
12 fails to meet its performance targets for upwards of six
13 years in a row, they do run the risk of reconstitution.
14 And in terms of -- Carol Mauford, director of programs, is
15 sitting in the back and she's much more familiar with
16 these rewards and sanctions.
17 But in terms of curriculum, what about that
18 piece, Carol?
19 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We will leave it at
20 that at this point. We can visit with her at a later
21 date.
22 Thank you, Mr. Marion.
23 We're going to take a seven-minute break and
24 come back and finish up.
25 (Recess taken 2:20 p.m. until 2:30 p.m.)
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: In the absence of
2 Ms. Sommers, we're going to tag-team this at-risk
3 adjustment, Mr. Marion.
4 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, actually I think I
5 asked Mr. Nelson to help with this since he was the
6 drafter. If you could start through the bill because I
7 ran many of the analyses so I'm familiar with that aspect
8 of it.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson.
10 MR. NELSON: I would be happy to. The
11 bill that was in your packet was 241, and just to start
12 the conversation on this, as you left it at your Laramie
13 meeting, the recommendations that were forwarded by the
14 committee were two.
15 One was to look at a mobility adjustment within
16 the at-risk adjustment, the proxy, consideration of the
17 mobility factor at primary levels in -- we call it the
18 unduplicated count, which is our proxy for the at-risk
19 adjustment.
20 That was one recommendation that was forwarded.
21 The other one was in her report -- and as we speak, here
22 comes Ms. Sommers. I will just continue talking until
23 she's ready here.
24 The second part of the recommendations that were
25 forwarded were funding for summer school programs which
465
1 could provide some summer school intervention and
2 remediation programs for children at risk. And this bill
3 implements both of those.
4 I must say that the mobility factor within the
5 at-risk adjustment is somewhat modified because as Ruth --
6 and she can speak more on this -- continued her studies,
7 she gave her report that you have all received does
8 indicate that there needs to be more study effort on the
9 mobility adjustment.
10 And with that, do you want to take it over?
11 MR. MARION: Actually, I'll give Ruth a
12 second here if I may.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Marion.
14 MR. MARION: Mr. Chair, one of the reasons
15 asking for the mobility factor to be studied more, we felt
16 a little uncomfortable with the data we were going with.
17 As Dr. Zax says sometimes the quality of the data gets in
18 the way of the analysis. And the only thing we had to go
19 on from the mobility analysis is what the school districts
20 checked on WyCAS and we do know from school districts now
21 that the percentage of students receiving free and reduced
22 lunch is dramatically underrepresented at the high school
23 and middle school levels compared to what the actual
24 numbers should be. Consequently, the mobility index has a
25 greater effect at that level over and above the free and
466
1 reduced lunch count.
2 But we think it is confounded because the free
3 and reduced lunch count is so undercounted that -- the
4 poverty index is so undercounted at that level and Ruth
5 and I in conversations with Jim Smith felt it might be
6 best to collect more data, to focus specifically on
7 disentangling this mobility factor from the poverty index
8 to the extent we can.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Ms. Sommers, is there
10 anything in your final report we would like to review
11 before we get further into the bill at this point?
12 MS. SOMMERS: Not necessarily,
13 Mr. Chairman. Scott basically said about the mobility. I
14 would just reiterate that right now the Department does
15 not have mobility information specifically on every grade,
16 and it is collected only in the WyCAS years, 4, 8 and 11,
17 so the design of delaying this for another year is due to
18 the need to collect that data as part of, actually, I
19 believe the state report card in No Child Left Behind.
20 So this data is intended to be collected in
21 April, I believe, for the data facilitation committee.
22 The same thought process is also true about
23 considering the grant program for summer school. It needs
24 more study and communication with what districts envision
25 and what the Department envisions in researching best
467
1 practices, and if you could consider again putting that
2 off for a year, looking at the school year for 2004 in the
3 summer, I believe it would give the Department and school
4 districts time enough to design a plan.
5 For instance, we don't know if applications for
6 reimbursement for summer school should be an application
7 process ahead of summer school or it could be an
8 application for expenditures after the fact based upon
9 successful test scores that the Department has looked at
10 and approved.
11 So those are the kind of technical questions
12 that need to be reviewed and gone over with all of the
13 players, with the stakeholders as a group.
14 So that's why when we started drafting the
15 legislation, we did extend the time on it a little bit. I
16 must apologize for running in so quickly. You guys must
17 have flown through --
18 MR. MARION: I was very brief.
19 MS. SOMMERS: You were brief? Thank you.
20 MR. MARION: Let the record reflect that.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Committee, questions?
22 Do you have any further explanation,
23 Ms. Sommers, concerning the bill itself?
24 MS. SOMMERS: No, Mr. Chairman, I'm just
25 ready to answer any questions.
468
1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Do we have any
2 questions, Committee?
3 You guys are pretty easy this afternoon. What's
4 your pleasure?
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Move the bill.
6 COCHAIR STAFFORD: It has been moved.
7 Is there a second?
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Second.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Been moved and seconded
10 on 241, school finance at-risk adjustment.
11 Further discussion or questions?
12 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Question.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Is there anyone in the
14 public that wishes to make a comment on it at this time?
15 Seeing none, Mr. Nelson, would you call the
16 roll?
17 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
18 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
19 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
20 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
21 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
22 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
23 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
25 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
469
1 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
2 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
3 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
4 MR. NELSON: Cochair Devin.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
6 MR. NELSON: Cochair Stafford.
7 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Aye.
8 Thank you, Ms. Sommers. Appreciate this. Look
9 forward to the final issue of this as we get down the road
10 and figure out where we're going to go with this.
11 MS. SOMMERS: Thank you.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you, Scott.
13 Committee, any other issues to come before this
14 committee at this time?
15 Next meeting is scheduled for December, Monday
16 the 16th, Tuesday the 17th in Cheyenne. Agenda will be
17 sent out as soon as we get it -- Senator Devin and I get
18 it put together, but those are the dates. And that's set
19 pretty firm, so mark it down.
20 Senator Devin, comments?
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: No.
22 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We are adjourned.
23 (Meeting proceedings concluded
24 2:40 p.m., November 21, 2002.)
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7 I, JANET DEW-HARRIS, a Registered Professional
8 Reporter, and Federal Certified Realtime Reporter, do
9 hereby certify that I reported by machine shorthand the
10 foregoing proceedings contained herein, constituting a
11 full, true and correct transcript.
12
13 Dated this ___ day of _________, 200__.
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19 _____________________________
20 JANET DEW-HARRIS
Registered Professional Reporter
21 Federal Certified Realtime Reporter
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