 Our upcoming First Friday forums, for our March First Friday forum, we will be sponsoring a business wellness forum. We've announced that previously and we're going to have four panelists from different businesses and they're going to talk about wellness within various businesses in our area to talk about how you might incorporate, promote wellness activities or efforts within your business and with the effort of trying to minimize healthcare costs and improve morale and productivity and just being happier. April 5th, our First Friday forum in April will be our state legislators will come back and give us sort of their quarterly update on what's happening in Madison. At that point the budget will be in full discussion, so I think they'll have a lot to tell us. On May 3rd, we will have Todd Berry from the Wisconsin Tax Pairs Alliance is going to kind of give us his perspective on the state from the Tax Pairs Alliance. It's always an interesting program. He's fairly straightforward and always has an interesting take on things. And in June, we're going to have, we're working on one or two options, one on energy or one on workforce development. We haven't nailed that one down, but it's going to be one of those two for our June First Friday forum. With that, I believe those are all the announcements and anybody else have any announcements that I should be making, Betsy or John? Okay, then let's go right into our speaker and we're very happy to have Cecilia Rattell with us today, Cecilia lives in Washington D.C., but you all will be happy to know that she's a badger at heart. She grew up in Madison. She did take a little detour to Minnesota for a while. She grew up in Madison and she currently is Senior Director of Policy for the U.S. Chamber and the Institute for a Competitive Workforce, which is a 501C3 really form that works in conjunction with the U.S. Chamber. And she leads pre-K to 12 policies that focus on closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged students through improvements in accountability, various curricula like science, technology, engineering, and math, works on teacher quality and student achievement. She also manages the work of aligning the business community on education policy and advances policy positions to ensure that businesses remain competitive in a global economy. That's the overall arching goal of her position. Previously Cecilia was a lobbyist for the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce where she concentrated on education, immigration, labor management, and health issues. And in that position she led reforms for the chamber in education. And she was at that point was a part of a team that was recognized as the 2011 business leader in public policy by report politics in Minnesota. So with that brief introduction, Cecilia is going to talk about her perspective on education from the U.S. Chamber. She has a slide presentation, or a PowerPoint I should say slides a little old. And she has a PowerPoint presentation that will go for about a half hour and then afterwards she'll take questions and answers. So without any further introduction, I'd like to introduce to you Cecilia Rattell. Thank you all very much. You all have the packets of the presentation we're going to do so if you can't see those, otherwise everything will be up on the screen. First off, thank you all so much for coming today. It's so nice to be back in Wisconsin even though when I woke up this morning it said feels like negative 19. It's been a while since that happened so it's always good to know I'm alive and still kicking. So a special thank you to John Rogers, there you are back there for having me and making sure this all came together so nicely. So without further ado, let's get started. So as you just heard, I do work on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's policies in K-12 but I also work at the Institute for Competitive Workforce which is a 501c3 affiliate of the Chamber. And that is where all the educational workforce development is housed at the Chamber. We really truly focus on promoting high educational standards to ensure that we have a quality workforce. So as President Obama regularly says about education, it's not only an issue of economics, it's probably the economic issue of our time. And just last week we had Senator Rubio at an event at our Chamber building in D.C. and he had, his whole speech was based on protecting the middle class and if you're truly going to protect the middle class you have to ensure that you have an educated workforce otherwise the students that have traditionally not been educated are going to continue to not be educated and the rest of the population will continue to be further dividing the classes. So when you look overall kind of the national crisis about what's happening, one of the probably most troubling statistics is that for the first time in our history kids in America are less likely to graduate from high school than their parents. I mean to talk about truly not being part of the American dream that kind of sums it up. Traditionally we have always been the next generation, achieved more, achieved tire and that's to a point where it's not happening anymore. Secondly a third of American students don't complete high school and another third of high school students when they do enter college need a remediation. So we know there's something not working and it will take us all to fix that. Finally by 2020 there's going to be 123 million American jobs that will be high skill and high wage but only about 50 million Americans to film. We don't have to have a math expert out there to tell you that's a huge skills gap and it's a huge issue for businesses and really our tax system as a whole. So when you compare the U.S. internationally a lot of these things you've started to see this is much more kind of commonly understood and commonly recognized. Even when we look at the different states in you know Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa traditionally we always thought that this like region was way up in the top. Well back when you know no child left behind started we started collecting very specific data. It became very clear that Wisconsin was kind of middle of the pack. Yes we were achieving above the national average but there's still about two thirds of students in eighth grade that are not reading at grade level and that's obviously a huge issue. Internationally in math you're higher up for being compared among other states however it's still about two thirds of the kids are graduating from eighth grade or finishing eighth grade without being proficient in math. So you take that internationally and it gets even scarier the piece of test is an internationally benchmark test that you know allows countries to compare themselves to each other and you know for reading the US was ranked 12th and when you look at so the colors in the middle so there's the dark blue the white and then the light blue the colors in white are not statistically significantly different so that's kind of all the same group so yes we were 12th but there are some other ones in there but when you look at which countries are in there I think that's the part that's troubling. Same thing the US has dropped down to 17th now in science and sorry 25th in math and one of the things that you will often hear you know people say well we should all be looking at Massachusetts for all the answers they're always achieving the highest they're doing so many great things and they are doing a lot of great things however Secretary Duncan who is the current US Secretary of Education will even say if Massachusetts was its own country and compared internationally they would still rank 17th overall so yes they are doing better than a lot of other states however they are still not you know they don't have all the answers now one thing that the US is very good at is spending a lot of money we spend the second most money right behind Luxembourg and you can see the white bar there is the average so it's not always the money but it's how we're spending that money and that's something that you know we all could probably do better. As I talked about a lot of this data was able to start being collected in 2001 when no child left behind was included in the ESCA Act which is Elementary and Secondary Education Act and one of the things that was put into place in that law and nobody will stand here and tell you that that law was perfect and that it shouldn't be changed everybody is an agreement that needs to be updated Congress needs to update it if they want changes to be made however last spring we saw that Congress was not going to be updating it the administration started saying okay well all of the kind of punishments that would happen if no child left behind stayed in place are going to kick in next year because the one of the biggest requirements of it was by 2014 all students would be proficient so basically the students that were going into kindergarten the year that the bill was passed were supposed to be proficient in math and reading by the time they graduated 12th grade well those kids are now about to graduate 12th grade and clearly enough changes haven't been made so what the Department of Education did was opened up to states the ability to change their accountability system through that system and give them waivers so that they were not no longer being held accountable for that requirement so what happened is so the biggest thing about no child left behind was you could finally compare Wisconsin to New Jersey and New Jersey to Arizona and every state across the country well doing 35 waivers sets it takes a huge step backwards because now what we have in place is we have the 15 states that still have the old accountability system but now you've got 35 states that have completely different accountability systems and as you can see Wisconsin is one of those states that is does have a new accountability system which also had a few other changes to it as well so some of the major changes in Wisconsin's waiver if you go to so it creates this new accountability index so you have achievement growth gap closing all those different things but one of the if you go down to the fourth bullet point eliminates supplemental educational services this is a huge issue for anybody that supports school choice and making sure that kids that have you know are way behind or getting those extra tutoring hours once again we will not say that you know all those they're called SES dollars were being used in the most effective way because all the tutoring systems or you know providers were not you know good players they were not all providing the best tutoring however completely cutting that off is also very problematic the other really big one for Wisconsin Wisconsin is the only state that I know of that did this and it's the second to bottom bullet point here and so in the past it was a yearly you know identification of your priority in focused schools and some states have gone to doing it every two years with their waivers there's I think two other states that do it every three years Wisconsin is now doing it every four years so your student if you're going through the system could only get counted three times in a 12-year period which is a very scary thought if those schools are not making significant improvements and if there's schools that have traditionally you know not been where they need to be so those are a few things that everyone needs to be paying attention to in Wisconsin but also really throughout the country and as you watch Congress maybe reauthorize you know no child left behind is part of ESEA so what they would reauthorize would be ESEA if they reauthorize it these waivers only last I think it's two years so the system could all go back to whatever ESEA wants and the money that you're now putting into your like to create the systems for the waiver could be completely negated even if the law becomes you know changes in the next six months so there's a lot of questions around you know was like can the administration like do they have the power to make those significant changes to a law that went through Congress it's a huge question you know does the administrative branch I mean we all did eighth grade social studies can the administrative branch kind of knock out the balances of power and say we are going to undercut one of the biggest parts of this law. Another big part of no child left behind's law was that it required that states develop assessment and basic skills so both math and reading every state has their own tests we also all everyone knows the NAEP test and NAEP is this test that is you know supposed to be nationally benchmarked and has traditionally been what we compare and use for no child left behind ratings but what you saw was when states created their own assessments and created their own tests for these things where the rigor was varied significantly so if you look at this next graph the darker green I wish I would have chose different colors for this because once I thought it wasn't as dark as I was hoping the darker green so the left side of the two separate ones are where Wisconsin state tests tell kids that they're proficient so Wisconsin state tests tell 81 percent of fourth graders and 61 percent of eighth graders that they're proficient on math however on the NAEP test which is taken across the country it's 45 percent of fourth graders and 39 percent of eighth graders okay and it's I mean it's like that for other subjects and other states as well like Wisconsin is not unique in this sense at all in reading the gap is significantly more so it's 82 and 85 percent for fourth and eighth graders and then 33 and 34 percent so if you look at a couple of sample questions I love a sample question because you can kind of be like what does it mean to be you know proficient in fourth grade so on NAEP this is one that they had so which of these could be measured using a meter stick length of a swimming pool temperature weight or number of people so hopefully you all know the answer to that same thing here's another math question you know if Joe's recipe takes to bake a cake 25 to 28 minutes about how long is this so quarter of an hour half hour hour hour and a half okay so these are a couple NAEP fourth grade questions now moving into eighth grade math now this is one if every person in this room can't get it right not sure what we're gonna do okay so it says according to the graph below I just put it over to the side to make a little more space which element forms the second greatest portion of the Earth's crust so they give you the graph they give you all the labels so this is not a knowledge-based question it's can you read a graph and that would be a basic answer or a basic level of proficiency for eighth graders and now this is advanced so you've got three points which point would give like finish out a rectangle again you've got you know a little bit of knowledge will take you a long way so we clearly saw that the proficiency levels between what states were doing and what the national kind of standard was was significantly different but then when you looked between states it was also significantly different so here's a fourth grade question on Wisconsin's test and this would be a proficiency level cut score test for a fourth grader says which sentence tells a fact not an opinion so cats are better than dogs cats climb trees better than dogs cats are prettier than dogs cats have nicer fur than dogs okay so same grade different state Massachusetts I'm gonna save us all an hour and not read that but you can see the difference that's a proficiency level fourth grade question so when you're comparing states even it's not equivalent so we go back to okay now it's you know been 11 years since no child left behind passed with all of its you know flaws some of the good things that we saw were states have different standards states use different assessments we have some similar data but when you compare what states try to do on their own states have an interest in making sure people think that their students are the smartest I think we would all accept that so a couple years ago now a bipartisan initiative of state leaders so the council on state school chief officers and the National Governors Association got together and developed a set of standards for language arts and math and really what their goal was was to gap to close this gap between the expectations between high schools and what they needed once they left K-12 and entered either college or career so what they did was they went to higher ed institutions they went to the business community throughout the country and they said okay when you get a student that has gone through a K-12 program what are your expectations of what you need them to be able to do and then they back mapped from there okay so if you're graduating and this is what you need to be college and career ready in 12th grade you better be able to do this in 11th grade 10th grade 9th grade and that's how they created these college these common core standards so obviously probably the most important thing that was created was this level of consistency so for the first time now you know ever the United States has 45 states that have the same set of standards equity I mean Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa there's a lot of movement of the people that live in those states but now for the first time you can make sure that regardless of which zip code you're in you're getting the same excellent education opportunities so students need them the knowledge and the skills to give those them the opportunities in either college or career clarity instead of having the state standards that were literally a mile wide and an inch deep these go very very deep and really get into the understanding of multiple different ways to approach different problems and finally the economy is a scale so common standards create a foundation for district and states to work collaboratively and finally allow if one teacher or one district or one school is creating an excellent set of you know mathematicians people can finally go to them and say okay what are you guys doing so well and then you can scale it up so as you can see like I said there's 45 states in DC that have adopted both the math and language art standards Minnesota two years ago only adopted the language art standards however they are functioning now and acting like as though they have also adopted the math so I would expect them to formally adopt the math standards in the short term the other four states you know I'm going to actually Nebraska next week and one of the things that they want me to talk about is how do we get to like how can we adopt the common core standards because everybody else is talking about them and we're not doing anything so that'll be a great thing to see happen one of the best things about the common core standards is you're finally able to link the standards so what you're telling the teachers the parents the kids that they need to know to what they're actually being tested on and that has not happened in the past instead of having this kind of cut system where you've got these assessments and then there's this you know the teaching manuals and those sorts of things they finally all come together granted the implementation and Carrie and I were talking about this late last night implementation of this is going to be key to its success right you have to make sure if you've got a teacher that's been in a classroom for 15 years teaching math a certain way or teaching language arts a certain way and now you're changing what the standards are for them you need to make sure you give them the professional development that they need in order to implement standards and get those kids that they're having in their classrooms ready for the next step because once you miss them on one level it just kind of keeps growing so other things that the business community should and really should pay attention to with these is know your state timeline and plan Wisconsin adopted these back into 2010 in June of 2010 so it should be fairly laid out on the DPI website prepare for the anticipated drop in test scores so in Kentucky the state chamber there actually went around with the state school chief officer and started to have talking to groups just like this and saying okay so you know the difference between what you've always had on nape and your Wisconsin tests or nape in the Tennessee test when the common core standards come out your test scores of the kids that are proficient are going to be a lot more similar to those on the nape test than those of Wisconsin test and you have to set that bar high because if you don't set it high you just lower it people will meet the expectation of where it's set if you set it high eventually they'll get there so you got to embrace the kind of painful few years that it'll take to get over that hump but that's a huge kind of hurdle that we all know is coming and we just have to be ready for it so you know talk to your local superintendents engage in public dialogue no I mean this morning when I was at the Sheboygan Chamber of Commerce and there was a few school districts represented that partnerships right so if the science teacher because the science standards are now being created this spring or a math teacher needs you know actual professional development to do something and learn how to do a standard being a business that maybe provides those skills to your employees and like it's second nature to you invite them in and figure out a way to partner with them there's also some resources online both like I said Kentucky has a great resource in Pennsylvania the parent teacher's guide that's also a great one because parents have a huge role in a lot of this because they finally will know exactly where their students stands and one of the major things that these standards are trying to address of course is the skills gap so I touched on this in the beginning but the skills gap is something that is real you know throughout the country in this region with a manufacturing focus I know you guys are feeling it just as much as the rest of the country so you know despite the recession and high unemployment rates there's still an estimated three million jobs that go unfilled and that's a lot of empty jobs and when you ask the you know people in HR why are these jobs not filled and they'll say we've not had a single applicant that is qualified and that is a scary thought but we have to figure out a way to close that and when you put a group recently pulled employers and a half of them reported that they were unable to recruit workers also for those open positions so even if they said come do this you know people are saying no I don't want that kind of job or I don't want to do that so when and when you look at how long it's been since we've been talking about this upcoming skills gap in 1991 there was a US Department of Labor the achieving necessary skills and they started saying business leaders you got to pay attention to this and 30 years ago president Reagan released a report called nation at risk and they also said in that report it was more focused on education saying our biggest issue is our education system and just this past summer the council on foreign relations released a report that our biggest national security threat is our education system so it's real it's coming in all directions but one of the things that I know you guys in this community have been working a lot on and you are trying to figure out the best way to do it without exhausting all of your resources is strengthening of CTE so career and technical education and one of the things that you know a lot of businesses are always looking for is how do you teach leadership it's a hard skill to teach you can't really sit in the classroom and say this is what you should be doing but getting students out into actual settings in businesses they're able to build those relationships and figure out how to become a leader also those exposures to effective leaders teaches them okay so now that's how you mentor that's how you assist other people in learning things and eventually what you hope to have is those kids that have you know maybe started the program in seventh or eighth grade now they're 11th or 12th graders and they're back mentoring those seventh or eighth graders so it really becomes a cyclical system so they're also feeling that you know learning how to be an effective leader finally when you're you know empowering students to learn they suddenly become a lot more kind of self-aware and a lot of times they want to achieve they want to be you know a business leader they want to figure out how to do it and when they have those experiences that are actually in businesses they learn how to adjust their you know high school days so some of the things that you know I know like I said you guys are doing a lot of things in this area but if you are not currently participating in one of your guys's local CTE programs a few of the things that you should all be working on is establishing those relationships and I know like I said this morning with the Chamber of Commerce here they're working on that a business education partnership program ensure that you know there's explicit roles and expectations for everyone involved so it's not just give us money or give our kids internships but it's when our kids come to intern with you make sure they are learning how to be an accountant in X you know having those very explicit roles between both sides allows for you know saying yes this was successful or this wasn't you also don't you want to make sure what you don't have is you know one side saying okay we're gonna give you 15 of our kids for you know half a day for a semester and that not being good use of their time you don't want them sitting there you know not doing anything or showing up late coming in early and say well you still have to give them you know a passing grade because they're seniors and they're going to graduate and they need that test score they need that grade on their transcript so it's making sure that it's really worth both of your guys this time because it does take a lot of effort on both sides so that data and for information sharing finally there's a ton of you know technical skills advisory commissions so make sure that you're just paying attention to those using their resources a lot of them are free so tap into those you know the internships part-time jobs mentoring I also we talked about this some last night as well giving teachers internships and opportunities over the summer is also a great way to hit more kids if you might only be able to you know afford or have time for two students during the school year but you can give a ten-week internship to a local teacher and then he or she goes back and is with you know 30 60 90 kids every day you've suddenly exponentially increased how you're sharing what's happening in your business and that is a great opportunity for you to really enrich what they know and what they're already learning and what you need and like I said in the the slide to promote your opportunities because you know teachers do not have time to be looking at every business in the area's website to see what they have available so if you need something you know I'm sure John or other people at the chamber can help you you know talk with your districts and you can get that done there's also as you guys are leaving we recently released it's called the education reform playbook so it is intended for business leaders trying to get involved in education and trying to figure out how to bridge those partnerships I would highly recommend grabbing one of those there is also a couple other things the school board candidate questionnaire school boards have so much power that they oftentimes people that go unnoticed and people just think oh those meetings are boring I'm not going to go but there's certain people that always go and those are the ones that have been making all the decisions so I highly recommend getting involved this school board questionnaire is intended for if you are a company or a group or a you know person that endorses school board candidates these are some business friendly questions to figure out if they are people that are worthy of your endorsement there's also chambers throughout the country including Billings who's just launching this as of last week a school board candidate training program so training business leaders how to become effective school board candidates and school board leaders another great resource finally this is our third series of leaders and laggards our first two were focused on K-12 this is a state-by-state report card of public post-secondary education institutions so if there's also those on the way out if there is anything that I've talked about today I mean we're going to question and answer here but that you want more information on or you want you know a digital copy of any of these all of my contact information is in the packets and up on the slide I'm happy to help and answer any questions that you may have so thanks again yes ma'am okay so the question was is there any waiting of the standards when the assessments happen for different populations simple answers no so we you know firmly all students to be able to achieve the same level and if you look at school and students that have been able to be successful throughout the country there really is not one factor that says oh if you're this then you can't learn obviously there are factors that make it harder and you know do all those sorts of things and have other impacts on it but I mean we strongly believe that all students need to have the same standards and have the same kind of accountability to where they need to be yes sir so then being us internationally really doesn't work very well because here in the United States we are required to educate every student whereas in other countries they kind of layer it so possible that saying we're falling so far behind is because who's being measured okay so the question is my question is about say in Germany okay you know by my ninth grade is determined the level of education that child is going to have and so are they just measuring the top third they're going on to college whereas here in the United States you know we're measuring every so the question is should we be met should we be internationally compared because we educate everybody whereas other countries you don't believe educate everybody regardless of their background excuse the numbers so obviously there's some countries that have significantly you know more various populations Germany is a great example of a country that has a very good workforce development system so yeah they do start in high school determining what track those kids are going to go on but as far as fourth and eighth graders go most countries all make sure that their kids are reading at grade level but by the time they hit fourth grade so things like that there are really no excuses for and if that's I mean if that's our country and this is what we are then we have to figure out a way to educate everyone yes ma'am no so I can answer your question I know your question is are there other factors included when you're comparing states amongst each other this is a purely academic achievement level of proficiency for something I was gonna add I'm forgetting what it was but I'm sorry oh no I mean this is just academic achievement but one of the things this is what I was gonna say is that when you look at growth of who what states have done the most growth I did not put this slide on my slideshow because I didn't want to make anyone sad Wisconsin Iowa Minnesota are literally at the bottom so in the last 10 years the amount of growth that the state has seen in all of these assessments has barely changed whereas you've got some states on like a Florida for example that have the huge population of Hispanic students that are just continuing to grow they finally said okay what do we need to do how can we change it we're like providing for our students what reading program and there was a huge push in their reading programs they no longer promote kids from third to fourth grade that are not reading a grade level and they their growth was exponential in the last ten years so I mean there's definitely states that have really figured out a way to change what they're doing granted for states like Iowa Minnesota Wisconsin we started out kind of at the front of the pack and they just haven't changed much compared to what we did ten years ago yeah so the question is is anything else included in these numbers now the only thing in these numbers of academic achievement I guess I would disagree about class size I know there are some studies that you know especially for the younger grades that have shown class size matters a lot but when you look at countries that have you know some of the Asian countries especially they've classrooms of 80 kids with one teacher but the discipline is different and when you start looking at the cost that we spend that's where we get into the most cost is usually you know the adults whether teachers administrators wherever yes I guess I would have a question. Have you guys done any analysis on the distribution of the success of work and or lack thereof? So for example, is this a predominant inner city problem or is this a broad-based problem across all school districts? That's a great question. So I talked to a lot of local chambers throughout the country and you guys have been very good. No one has actually said this here and this is a first, literally a first. Usually what you will hear is our school district, our school, our neighborhood, we're not the problem. It's them. And that's not the case. It's really, truly not the case. When you start looking at actual numbers in a lot of schools, you have got kids that are in predominantly white schools with an upper-mid-earth class and you still have usually about a third of them, at least, that are not reading at grade level. And when you have that many kids throughout the country, and if you've got two-thirds of kids throughout the country that are not reading at grade level, it's got to be more than just those kids. So, in the back. As you slide, there really is this where the fourth grade question about cats versus dogs and the fourth grade question in Massachusetts that goes through a paragraph about Leo Tolstoy. I have to wonder, is there any research about how much more educated the fourth grade teachers in Massachusetts might be compared to Wisconsin? Because, I mean, the dogs versus cats, it's like a step above finger-painting and Tolstoy is like upper-high school collegiate reading. Yeah, I mean, I think there's different, obviously, requirements in every state for teachers, but the thing that's really key is it's not the teachers that are making tests up. It's not the teachers that are saying, this is what we should be testing on. It's the rest of the state saying, this is okay, we're going to go with this. So I think to just look at the teachers and say, well, is there something that they're doing different if they're doing better? If you told the fourth-grader teachers in Wisconsin that they needed to do the Massachusetts question, then they would change their curriculum, they'd change what they were doing. They might already be doing that, but when you don't have questions that align to that and you're saying, it's okay if it's this low, because we need to make sure that it was 81% of our kids are going to be called proficient on their state test because we don't want to tell them otherwise and their parents otherwise. It's not the teacher's fault. It's state level. It's all state level, but so it's probably DPI, correct me if I'm wrong. So it's the state that's setting these standards that have approved this test and they're just implementing it. There's nothing, I mean, it's kind of out of their hands, whereas with the Common Core Standard, Wisconsin, all teachers in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and not Texas because they didn't adopt them, they will all be able to achieve the same levels. It's also a lot clearer. So if you've got a teacher that maybe is moving here from Nevada, they'll know what their expectations are and it won't be changing every couple of years. Do you have a question? And we look at Finland as being one of the top countries and we also, when you look at Finland's educational system, you see the input that the teachers have in creating the standards and everything that goes on in the Finland system. And then we look at the Common Core Standards, which I do agree with the fact that we have high standards across the board, but they were created by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Governors Association. What type of input did the educators have and teachers, how much were they able to work with us too so that they themselves can have a professional development that they need, such as countries like Finland? Okay, so good question. So the development of the Common Core Standards and the assessment consortiums that are still meeting, so there's two assessment basically groups that are creating these assessments right now. They both have had teachers or teacher leadership in them during their development, but they weren't led by teachers. I think one of the biggest differences between what happens in Finland and the way that those teachers are respected and kind of put on a pedestal versus here all comes back down to the level of professionalism that teacher unions have. So in Finland, yes, there are very strong teacher unions, but they're a professional organization. They're much more like a bar association for lawyers, whereas here they're a labor union. They're talking about hours a day, number of days, and it's night and day difference. When that's what you're arguing about, you're not going to be considered a professional organization or a professional, or professional, that's the right word. So that's another huge difference between what happens in Finland and here. I know I hear repeatedly stories about truancy, either parents who don't value education, so they are totally fine with their kids staying home, because what's the point? Maybe they don't work, they have an education, so the kids apparently need mentors, something like that. I don't know how much of that is a factor in it. Getting junior achievement into the school, so other people are showing the kids why they should learn. But also, even as you said, so many parents from maybe middle-class families who say, I don't want my child to work while they're in high school, not understanding or appreciating that maybe getting a job when you're in high school is the best motivation to learn why you were in school. So many of the kids don't seem motivated or understand or appreciate why they need to learn these things. They think they're going to just graduate or something. Yeah, I know you're exactly right. And there's a huge connection actually between the reading levels in third grade. There is a report that the Annie C. Casey Foundation came out with a couple of years ago, and this has kind of been a well-respected stat, that if you don't leave third grade reading at grade level, you are 10 times less likely to graduate from high school. So between preschool or kindergarten and third grade, you are learning how to read. After third grade, you read to learn. So if you don't know how to read when you leave third grade, suddenly you can't read your problems in math. You can't do a science lab. You can't do social studies. And it's just exponential how far you get behind and you get to a point where you're like, okay, well, this is a waste of time. And you go to college. Another third of the kids are then getting remediated and paying for what tax dollars should have already paid for. So there's also been a huge kind of upsurge in bills that are starting to be floated at state levels, that if a student went through the K-12 system in that state and then attends a state school and has to take any remedial courses, they are then able to charge the district back, which in my opinion would change a lot of people's perspective about where we need to be. And we did run that bill when I was in Minnesota, I would just like to say. Still a fan. What do you do? They aren't motivated. They don't see their need for education. Maybe they do have bills paid by the system. You know, I get that. Oh, they get whatever, you know. Yeah, they take care of them. So they don't feel they need to take responsibility and do something for themselves. Right. I mean, it is definitely the younger grades where students are more engaged. So finding out how to keep them engaged when they're young is no doubt the key, because the older they get, regardless of where they are at the proficiency level, if they're not engaged, it's harder to get them engaged. It's kind of like anything. Yes, sir. The amount of money we spend here in the U.S. compared to other countries, I believe in many of these other countries, the government provides the benefits for the United States with that cost as a house. So when we're looking at these, I'm wondering, when you're putting the statistics out there, are you taking that back to your consideration? Because 27, 30% of our costs for benefits, you look at this, here, that's not the case. Right. I mean, it's all compared. The whole package is compared. It's priced for people. It's not purely what it is. It's priced for people. No way. So if, like, in the Finland, say they are, you know, if their health care system is paid for the government, they also have a price for people number because they add that portion in. So, I mean, everything, it should be all included. Yeah, it should all be included in that. So it's comparable. Yeah. How that is paid doesn't matter. We all pay for it. They pay for that in Finland. And we pay for that here. We pay for it. We pay for it. We pay for it. No, I'm just saying as a question. So in Finland, the only difference is the income tax is so much higher and that's how the money goes to, like in Germany, or friends, or anyone else. You know, I come from Germany. We live here for 28 years and this beautiful colleague, and I love America. I would tell you this. It's unfair sometimes, and I'm challenging the statistic. I mean, for any educator here, it's unfair sometimes when you compare Finland with the US. Finland is like Wisconsin. Finland has five main people, or 5.1, 5.2. They have one safe, they have one educational process. They can go on and say, this is what they want to do. I think their challenges, we have issues here, it's no doubt, but I think it's sometimes easier in a smaller country. I mean, it's constantly isolated. We could have a discussion here, about education in Wisconsin, and perhaps we wouldn't be not at the bottom of solilovels, you know, faster. But Wisconsin can do the same one. I mean, education is definitely a state issue. I'm not comparing the statistics. Yeah, but even if you compare Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Massachusetts, I mean, Massachusetts, who are high fliers, like I said before, if they were comparative in Ashland, they'd still be 17. So even if you start isolating states, and we've now given states 11 years that have left their own data, do what everybody needs to do to get kids to be proficient, and nobody's really changed, oh, not I shouldn't say nobody, but Wisconsin, for example, has not really changed their delivery system. And I want to make a third point, and it's really a big issue in Europe, and it's amazing to me here as well. In Europe, when you're growing third grade or fourth grade or seventh grade, it doesn't matter. If you're not proficient at the level that you need to be to read, for example, you will not move on. Right. If you're in fifth grade, and you have an ad in that level, whatever it is, you will repeat fifth grade in every class. So all your parents move on, and you're still in fifth grade, and all the others are moving on. You only do that once, as a student. Yeah. And then you know that you need to pick it up, and I think that has a lot to do. I think that would be easy, not soft at all. Yeah, there's no doubt that social promotion is a huge issue in Taiwan. Anyone have not yet? Okay. The Dutch touched on this a little bit. The movement away from the international scene for a second, let's look at ourselves for a minute. And then the slide that I thought was the most striking for me was the an estimated three billion jobs you made on film in 2012. I think that a lot of our generation, the younger generation these days, we can be very skilled and get the training that we need at good schools all over the country. But I think a lot of it is the culture of wanting Saturdays off and to be off at noon on Fridays. So I think that because things do come easier than they did for baby boomers in the room, I think that we, I think a lot of these values should become home as well as from teachers in the classroom. But I think a lot of it is work ethic. Something that is, that in Wisconsin I always value because I think this state has one of the strongest work ethics in the country, especially in the manufacturing sector which is hurting the most with this skills gap issue. So I always scratch my head and wonder how can we close to skills gap because we have the skilled professionals to fill these jobs. We have the jobs available. But when they show up, when they get hired, they show up late or they don't show up at all. That's one of the things that the business education partnerships that they're starting to work on are a lot of their career tech education pieces and getting more students and teachers into those businesses is really the key. I mean there's no doubt about the fact that business world and education world speak two different languages. And so you can bridge that language gap if the world continues to tell. In the back. An HR organization there at the City Year probably a few from the City Year they have an office and it's a business and education partnership of some sort where they get mentors or businesses to work with schools. And City Year was just all over those businesses working with HR and everything for partners with businesses to help with schools. And I know they have a lot of people here in Milwaukee and I'm not certain how strong it is. Can you address that? So City Year is similar to like the Reading Core type of program so it's in select cities and it's a great program but it's not something it's a, I think it's federally funded at least with some sort of joint grants with businesses. I don't know the details of how they're funded but it is a wonderful program that new college graduates enter. The students, certain parents I've talked to who are children have gone to City Year programs and are now going to be trained so that they can be mentors within businesses out of businesses with schools. Great. And there's there's a lot of people there. Okay. Okay. The run of one year. The run of one year. The run of one year. The private, you know, I've just received a solicitation from our participation in the run of one year because they have 90% penetration rate, regulation rate to go out of college from the cap of school system in New York City. My question is are all the schools in this state in this state? No. So these are purely public schools. I will say regardless of their public, private, any sort of graduation rates we have to make sure that we're not just giving out diplomas. Make sure that there's a lot of rigor behind those diplomas that are given out to be asking and people are saying we have 98% graduation rate is how many... 98% went to college. But how many of those kids then had to take remedial courses? That's the question. Okay. Are you here? Just a statement. I want to say thank you for sharing this information. I think anything's clear it's education and business need to work together because we're in this together. Yeah. The bottom line is we as a country in this state we're here for work. Perfect ending. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Cecilia, for coming in. I think she doesn't have to leave right away so if any of you have questions you're free to ask her questions and talk with her a little while longer. She's going to go and visit her parents in Madison. First of all, I want to say you may have noticed that our sponsor again this year is Prevea. We want to thank them again for sponsoring the 2013 First Friday forums. If any of you have an interest in some of the topics we talked about, there are two committees at the chamber could very much use your help. One is the Business Advocacy Committee which puts together the First Friday forums and the other is the Business Education Partnership that's part of the Workforce Development Committee which is working on some of these efforts to bring business and education together so that we can close that skills gap. If you're interested in any of those committees talk to Betsy or John at the chamber or me. And one last announcement, it's not our group but it's an ancillary group on February 6th, I think it is Melissa, right? February 6th is the Sheboyin County Economic Development 5th. February 5th is the Sheboyin County Economic Development Corporation Annual Meeting. If you're interested contact them for that. So with that have a great weekend and stay warm.