Hearings to examine the nomination of Linda McMahon, of Connecticut, to be Secretary of Education.
2025-02-13
Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
Committee on Health Education, Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. Ms. McMahon, I appreciate you coming before the committee today. You were very successful leading the Small Business Administration in President Trump's first term, and I'm glad the President has given you another opportunity to serve. You have enormous challenges. At the K through 12 level, students who were behind before the pandemic are even further behind now. According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, reading scores among 4th and 8th graders declined 5 points since the pandemic. In math, 4th grade scores fell by 5 points and 8th grade scores fell by 8 points. The failures of the traditional K-12 schools are leading more families to try other education options proven to help students succeed, like charter schools. The Biden-Harris Department of Education tried to take these options away from families. They passed onerous regulations, making it harder for charter schools to apply for federal grants, impeding their ability to grow and to serve more children. the Department's bloated bureaucracy failed to improve the nation's education system quite likely made it worse. There's been a lot of talk about dismantling the Department of Education, and I'm sure that you will be asked this today. But before we begin, I want to explain what the Department of Education actually does. On average, only about 10% of public funds that go towards educating a child comes from the federal taxpayer. That's only 10%. 90% comes from state and local government. While the federal government accounts for a small minority of the funding, it is responsible for the vast majority of bureaucracy and red tape preventing communities from improving educational success. I'm hearing from schools across the country that they have stopped going after federal competitive grant funding because it is not worth the hoops and red tape the Department of Education has placed on those dollars.
If schools are not eager to apply for competitive grants to improve operations, something is wrong and something should change. It's not only the K through 12 system failing students. Colleges and universities are not preparing students to succeed in the modern workforce. The cost of higher education are quickly outpacing the value of the degree students receive. According to a nonpartisan analysis, 23% of bachelor's degree programs and 43% of master's degrees have a negative return on investment. Too many students leave college woefully unprepared for the workforce. After being saddled with overwhelming debt, they cannot pay off. Under the last administration, the Department of Education's only answer was to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars, that's hundreds of billions, in student debt from those who willingly took it on to supposedly advance their life. They transferred it to Americans who either chose not to go to college or had already paid their way through school. To implement these schemes, the department dramatically increased the scope and authority of the student loan financing program, clearly outside of what Congress previously intended. Your experience overseeing SBA loans will be a great asset as the department looks to reform a very broken student loan program. We've also seen rampant anti-Semitism on college campuses, leading to attacks and harassment of Jewish students. I'm pleased to see the Trump administration has already launched investigations, and I look forward to working with you, presuming that you are confirmed. The status quo is not working. The educational system is failing our children. The Biden-Harris Department of Education stood in the way of student success. Transformative change of the educational establishment is needed. The department needs to get out of the way of states and local communities who are best positioned to actually address students' needs. We need to empower parents so they have a voice in their child's education. This includes increasing access to school choice, perhaps also called parental choice, so families can give their child every opportunity to succeed in the classroom and beyond.
With President Trump in the office and Ms. McMahon's leadership, we have a real opportunity to accomplish this. Thank you again, Ms. McMahon, for coming before this committee and continuing the discussion on how we can work together to improve student success and get our education system back on track. And with that, I yield to Senator Sanders, the ranking member.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mrs. McMahon. Nice to see you again. Let me begin by thanking teachers all over this country. This is a very difficult time to be a teacher. And talking to teachers in Vermont, and I think teachers all over the country, what they are telling me is they are spending a lot of their times not only teaching math and English, but dealing with the emotional needs of kids. Because among other things, our kids are struggling in many, many ways. So it's a tough time to be a teacher, and I want to thank the teachers very much for the extraordinary work that they are doing, especially for some of the most vulnerable kids in our country. You know, way back in 1863, as we recall from our history books, Abraham Lincoln was in Gettysburg, and he looked out on a field where soldiers by the thousands had just died,
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