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Mr. Chairman, Mr. Miller, thank you for convening this hearing on increasing parental awareness of Supplemental Educational Services. I appreciate the opportunity to speak before you today on this important issue.
By including the Supplemental Educational Services (or SES) provisions in the current version of Title I, the Congress recognized that parent options and information are essential to meeting No Child Left Behind's goal of all students achieving academic proficiency by 2013-2014. The Department of Education is working hard to inform parents about SES and ensure that all parents of eligible students are empowered to take advantage of this option and obtain the services their child needs to achieve success in school.
I have recently come to the Department of Education from the state of Minnesota, where I headed an office in the state's education agency modeled after the Office of Innovation and Improvement, which I now oversee. In Minnesota, we concentrated on ensuring parents had the information and choices necessary to give their children the best education possible. In my new position here in Washington, the needs of families have, for me, acquired even greater focus.
As we all know, SES participation rates are low. There is evidence, however, that student participation in SES is increasing. The Department's interim report on the National Assessment of Title I estimates more than a five-fold increase in the number of students receiving SES from the 2002-03 year to the 2003-04 year. A recent GAO report estimates that 19 percent of eligible students received services in the 2004-2005 school year, which is an increase over an estimated 12 percent of students receiving services in 2003-2004, and which translates to about 430,000 of two and a quarter million eligible students. Secretary Spellings and I believe strongly that these numbers can be higher, and that more can be done to get more students these services.
As the Secretary explained in a May 15 letter to the Chief State School Officers, the Department is taking a two-pronged approach toward improving SES implementation across the country. On the one hand, we are continuing and enhancing our efforts to provide high-quality technical assistance and resources to States and local school districts, and to grant States and districts flexibility in implementing the requirements of No Child Left Behind in exchange for meaningful results. On the other, we are prepared to take significant enforcement action where poor implementation of SES by States and districts requires it. In both these areas, parental awareness is a crucial ingredient.
Over the past few years, the Department has provided States and districts with technical assistance and resources needed to implement SES successfully. We have issued extensive non-regulatory guidance on SES. We also have issued documents identifying exemplary practices and remedies for problems where they exist. For example, as part of our series of "innovation guides," we produced a publication discussing promising practices that States and districts can use to develop strong SES programs. The Department has also provided support and assistance in the area of SES through national conferences and ongoing discussions with States.
As part of our technical assistance efforts, and in direct response to the need we saw in the field for more informative and higher-quality parent notification letters about SES, the Department drafted and included in the SES guidance a sample parent letter, which is intended not only to contain all required information, but also to be as "parent-friendly" and easy to use as possible. However, we recognize that States and districts need more information on parent outreach and communication. The Department has recently assigned to our Comprehensive Center on Innovation and Improvement the task of developing a technical assistance effort to help respond to the needs of States, districts, and community-based organizations to conduct effective parent outreach on SES issues. The Center will be developing this effort this fall and will implement it in sites around the country during the 2006-07 school year. The Center's effort will include technical assistance in the areas of planning and implementing outreach, as well as providing sample tools for educators to use to reach parents effectively. The Department is also sponsoring a meeting of State SES administrators in October, in conjunction with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the C.S. Mott Foundation, to provide additional technical assistance and guidance to States. Through this forum, we will facilitate further discussion of the issues confronting States and districts and the types of technical assistance that would be most useful in improving parent outreach and communication.
The Department will also continue to collect and disseminate examples of districts that are effectively reaching out to parents and working well with providers to increase SES participation rates. In particular, we believe there are lessons to be learned from the States and districts to which we have granted additional flexibility through our two SES pilot programs.
The first program is what we call the "flip pilot." In this pilot, a select number of districts in a state may reverse - or flip - the order of offering public school choice and SES, meaning that SES is offered in schools in year 1 of improvement, and public school choice follows for students in schools in year 2. In 2005-06 - the first year for this pilot - four districts in the State of Virginia participated, and each district enrolled more students in SES programs than they had in the previous year and had higher participation rates than the national average. In the May 15 letter to Chief State School Officers, Secretary Spellings invited other states to apply to participate in this pilot on the basis of these positive results. We are excited to see that there are five States and sixteen districts participating in this pilot for the 2006-2007 school year. This year, we will be looking closely at SES implementation in the pilot districts, and are requiring them to report on their parent notification materials and activities as part of the terms of the pilot agreement.
The second pilot allows districts identified as "in need of improvement" to offer supplemental educational services, which is currently prohibited under the Department's regulations. In 2005-06 - the first year for this pilot also - Boston Public Schools and Chicago Public Schools participated and, again, both districts enrolled more students in SES programs than they had in the previous year. I want to thank Mr. Miller, Mr. Davis and others for their December 2004 letter and for their continued support of Chicago's participation in this pilot project. For the 2006-2007 year, Anchorage School District in Alaska and Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida have joined Boston and Chicago in the pilot. As with the flip pilot, districts participating in this pilot program will report to the Department on their parent notification materials and activities as part of the terms of their agreement.
While we are working to provide enhanced technical assistance and are learning valuable lessons from the States and districts participating in our pilot programs, we recognize that, in some cases, ensuring compliance means taking enforcement actions. Through our monitoring and evaluation of the public school choice and SES provisions, we know that, in the 2003-2004 year, several States did not ensure that LEAs included all required information in their notices to parents. Further, the Department's Office of Inspector General conducted a series of six audits over the past few years that revealed significant findings on State and LEA implementation of these provisions. The audits found that each of the six States failed to monitor adequately their LEAs for compliance. As a result, nearly all of the parent notification letters reviewed failed to include the required elements of the law, and multiple LEAs did not offer eligible parents the option to participate in SES at all. We are preparing to enhance our monitoring efforts on these provisions to determine the extent to which these problems are prevalent across States and districts, and we look forward to continuing to work together to expedite the implementation of improvements. However, for those States and districts that persistently fail to meet the requirements of the law, we are ready to take enforcement action such as placing conditions on grants, withholding funds, and entering into compliance agreements.
We know parents want these services for their kids, and are receptive to SES when they know it's there. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of families are taking advantage of these free services, and we know that, in some school districts, demand for SES exceeds the funds the district is required to spend for SES and public school choice. It is clear that parents value SES as a way to help their children find academic success in school. I conclude by reiterating that the Department is committed to making SES a reality, and to ensuring that the students and families who most dearly need it can get it. I'll be happy to take questions...
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