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Testimony of Barbara Lang President & CEO of DC Chamber of Commerce Before the Committee of the Whole Bill 17-1, "District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007" Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Good afternoon Chairman Gray and other members of the City Council. I am Barbara Lang, President and CEO of the DC Chamber of Commerce and Chairperson of the DC Workforce Investment Council. I am pleased to be here today to represent the 2000+ members of the Chamber, and the over 200,000 employees they employ in the District and in our surrounding jurisdictions. Before I begin my testimony, I want to applaud our new Mayor, Adrian M. Fenty for making education his top priority. And to thank, you Mr. Chairman for placing public education in the Committee of the Whole, which demonstrates how vitally important this issue is in the District of Columbia. The DC Chamber of Commerce is the largest business organization in the region, representing businesses large and' small, from The Plant Man, a one person operation, to Howard University, the city's largest private employer. At the Chamber, we truly work hard to make living, working, playing and doing business in the District of Columbia a much better proposition for all of our residents. The issue of public education was the Chamber's top agenda item in 2006 and made so by our former chair, Steve Porter. And in continuing that thinking, the Chamber's 2007 policy agenda includes as one of its agenda items "enhancing workforce development and education for D.C. residents." There is no more important issue than education to the business community because of its direct tie to workforce preparedness. For decades, the District's economy has become increasingly dependent on suburban workers. Between 2000 and 2005, the District gained 30,000 jobs and at the same time, 43,000 District jobs were filled by suburban workers. We estimate that for every job filled by a suburban worker, the District loses approximately $80,865 net economic benefit each year. Clearly our residents are not benefiting from the job growth of the last few years, and they are losing their share of jobs in our city at an increasing rate. Today, only slightly more than one in four jobs in the District is held by a District resident. So why, at a time when we are experiencing significant job growth, do we continue to lose job share in our city? The simple answer is that our residents are not prepared to take the jobs that are being created. For example, as many as 44% of our residents have less than a high-school education, yet more than 60% of new jobs in our city will require post-high school levels of education. Unfortunately, younger residents are the most at risk of finding themselves without viable employment opportunities. District residents between the ages 20 and 29 are two and a half times as likely to be unemployed as residents who are 30 or older. Couple this statistic with the fact that roughly only half of our students will graduate from high school, and one can see how this paints, in harsh colors, a dire picture for the residents of the District of Columbia. The fact is that the percentage of District workers holding jobs will continue to erode without dramatic intervention. Simply stated, we must do more to prepare our youth for the jobs that we have today, and those that we will have tomorrow. We must declare right now, a State of Emergency for the public education system in our city. The "District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007" is the siren declaring this state of emergency and has called all to respond. And responded we have, print media has written more than 15 articles on the District of Columbia Public Schools in the last two weeks, the Committee of the Whole has scheduled six hearings on this bill, the Board of Education has presented its own competing legislation, and, most importantly, the students of the District of Columbia came out on Saturday, February 10th', 2007, to add their voice to the debate over school governance, and we heard heart wrenching stories of what's wrong in the classroom. The business community too has heeded the call and any plan to improve public education must include our collective voice. And let me say, this is not the first time business has weighed in on public education and issues affecting our youngest residents. The Chamber has long been active in improving access and opportunities for the young people of the District of Columbia. In 2006, the Chamber held our Business Summit, with the theme of "Turning the Tide on Public Education in the District." The goal of the program was to: (1) raise awareness of the critical nature of this issue of public education; and (2) galvanize business support around fixing our public schools. As a result of the summit, the Chamber took on a number of initiatives working directly with the schools and our member businesses. Last year, in partnership with the Department of Employment Services, the Chamber structured a Private Sector Summer Youth Employment Program for 177 high school and college students. In record time, we prescreened, interviewed and placed students in public and private sectors jobs. Because of our success, we are preparing to host the program again this year. We also worked with businesses and DCPS to develop the Certificate of Employability program, which was created to help students gain valuable life skills and workforce readiness training to ensure that they have what they need to become successful in today's workforce. This program helps students develop employability skills and ensure that they have met standards developed jointly by the business and education communities. The Certificate of Employability program was launched in November 2006 as a pilot program at four high schools with four partner employers: Bell Multicultural and Exxon Mobil; H.D. Woodson and Cardinal Bank; Cardozo and Miller and Long Construction; and McKinley Tech and Verizon Communications. The Chamber recognizes that if the District is to reap the benefits of its own renaissance, a qualified and well-trained workforce of local residents is one of the most critical factors to sustained growth and continued competitiveness. The issue of school governance is controversial as demonstrated by the divergent opinions of many of the witnesses who have come to testify before the Council. And reasonable minds can differ on which structure--Board or mayoral controlled-will yield the best results. What cannot be debated, however, are the indispensable features of a successful school system. All will agree that a school system must: (1) have a unified command structure; (2) provide teachers and facilities that promote learning; (3) recognize that a child's social problems must be addressed so that he or she is able and ready to learn; (4) establish academic standards; (5) have accountability controls; (6) give the Chancellor/Superintendent control of the system's approved budget and hold him or her accountable for the agreed outcomes in exchange for the public's investment; and finally, (6) "parental governance," as Colby King wrote in his Saturday, February 10th 2007 Op Ed piece. Mr. Chairman, because the issue of school governance is so controversial, I surveyed the Chamber's membership in preparation for my testimony. Chamber members had very strong opinions on the issue of school governance. Members have specifically remarked,
Once again, we applaud the Mayor's attempts to improve our school system, and we hope that any plan that is approved by the Council is based on sound principles. We, at the Chamber, would like to see the following included in the Mayor's legislation, and we have met with Mr. Reinoso and he has agreed to provide in the Mayor's testimony on February 27th: (1) a plan to close the achievement gap; (2) a clearly defined system of measuring student performance; and (3) transparency and accountability. In addition, real education reform must include a specific requirement for annual performance metrics for success, and the approach used to teach our children should be holistic, with the perennial objective being delivery of a quality product. With respect to the facilities management, we believe that there should be an independent authority for school modernization. This authority should be formed to execute school construction and renovation projects. Such delineation would ensure that those with proper expertise are making necessary decisions. However, this unit should not set the policy as to which schools will be modernized, sold or replaced. That responsibility should lie strictly with the administration. In closing, maintaining the status quo is not acceptable. What the chamber's members would like to see in an education proposal is a results driven plan that closes the achievement gap and gives our children the tools they need to be competitive in the workforce, and we believe that the Mayor's plan is an excellent start to solving a very complex issue. We look forward to seeing our children succeed academically as well as in life. Thank you Mr. Chairman and I'll be happy to answer any questions at the end of this panel testimony. |
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