Federal Investments in Elementary Education
2025-02-26
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Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
Well, good morning everyone. It's good to have everyone here at the Labor Health Human Services Subcommittee on Preparations. And thank you for our witnesses for being here, especially as we discuss funding for K through 12 education. And this subcommittee is going to be looking at two areas primarily today. Number one, the effectiveness of federal K through 12 funding and also the importance of school choice. And I look forward to hearing and learning from each of our witnesses about the state of our public K-12 schools, the challenges that our students are facing, and the trends that these experts that are before us are seeing in the field. America's students are struggling. There's no way to sugarcoat, I think, that fact. The results from the latest National Assessment for Education Progress showed student test scores overall are below the 2019 levels in all grades and subjects. Students have not recovered from the pandemic, and the lowest achieving students are disproportionately falling further and further behind. Matter of fact, one third of eighth graders nationwide are currently reading below the basic level. The current system has failed these kids by leaving them wholly unprepared for the workforce. If this trend continues, the entire nation will suffer socially and economically. other industrialized nations will continue to outpace us. In too many schools, education in core subjects like reading and math are being replaced by indoctrination. School administrators and teachers are too focused on social justice issues that schools were never meant to address and not focused enough on academic instruction and academic excellence. Unfortunately, schools are often using federal funds to pursue these misguided, harmful agendas.
As I've said in this room before, probably on several occasions, schools should be teaching kids how to think and not what to think. For the sake of their children, parents across the country are standing up and demanding change from administrators and, in some cases, looking for non-district schooling options for their children. I'm pleased that the Trump administration has taken several steps to champion school choice and eliminate divisive ideologies from K through 12 education. I look forward to working with the administration over the next four years to make improvements to the overall system. While we may hear calls from some of this room today for more federal funding on K through 12 schools, the data tells another story. The federal government appropriates $19 billion annually for block grants to states for Title I K-12 schools. During the COVID pandemic, Congress appropriated an additional $190 billion for K-12 schools. On average, federal funding compromises less than 10 percent of the state education budgets. In recent years, total federal and state per pupil spending on education has skyrocketed. I think we all have to be clear, taxpayers are spending more and more on education, but getting far less results to the students. We need to pause, assess our efforts, and that's exactly what this administration is attempting to do. We have a big challenge ahead. as we turn to look at student success. As it has often been said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting that you would get different results. Well, over and over again, Congress has opened its credit card, and the efforts are not improving the outcomes.
I hope this hearing that we have this morning will help highlight why we cannot simply continue to expect more federal support to drive better outcomes in K-12 education. Before I turn to my ranking member, Ms. DeLauro, for her remarks, I would like to introduce the panel. First, we have Ms. Virginia Gentles from the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies. Welcome. She will share with us the challenges facing our schools, students, and parents today. Next, we will hear from Dr. Lindsey Burke, who is Director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, and her focus is on K-12 educational reform and school choice. Glad to have you here. We'll also hear from Ms. Starlee Coleman, President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, about the strong academic outcomes that charter schools are yielding for students despite limited federal funding. And last, and certainly not least, we'll hear from Mr. Robert Kim from the Education Law Center, whose expertise includes civil and education rights law and policy.
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