Source: Congress.gov
Summary
This congressional hearing focuses on the persistent decline in K-12 education quality, highlighted by deteriorating NAEP scores since 2013 and widening achievement gaps. Witnesses including Dr. Hanushek, Dr. West, and Dr. Jenner emphasize the need for evidence-based teaching, the science of reading, and increased teacher support and pay. The panel discusses challenges such as student disengagement, smartphone and AI misuse, and chronic absenteeism, while advocating for state-led innovation, expanded career and technical education, and stronger accountability through student growth metrics. Key recommendations include mandating teacher performance-based incentives, establishing guardrails on AI use, promoting early childhood education, and ensuring equitable funding to serve underserved communities.
Participants
Transcript
Please come to order, and I apologize for being a few minutes late. The K-12 system is potentially one of the most powerful tools we have to lift children out of poverty, giving them a chance at success. Education transforms, and it can transform a child, a family, and a country's history. Through education, a child can achieve the American dream. Without access to quality education, that dream's dead. that child has a much worse life. A child who doesn't learn how to read well, more likely to turn to crime, less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to find a meaningful job. If we want the United States to succeed, we need children to succeed. And for children to succeed, they need to know how to read. I feel a little bit like Jesse Jackson with my rhyming and my alliterations. So it should concern us that children's reading, math, and science scores have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels. The scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the NAEP scores released last week, were the lowest in 30 years. Only one third of high school seniors are proficient at reading levels. Nearly 60% of employers say high school graduates are not job ready. And students are leaving high school unable to read. unprepared for the workforce. Now, we need to act for their sake, and we need to act for our country's sake. In August, I joined Secretary McMahon and other educational leaders in Louisiana for a roundtable discussion on how to strengthen literacy. One thing we discussed was Louisiana's successful implementation of evidence-based strategies in the classroom, like the science of reading and how these efforts can be replicated nationwide. The lesson is clear. Success in education is not determined by how much we spend, but by who makes the decision and how wisely resources are directed. When states and local communities are empowered to tailor solutions to meet the unique needs of students, innovation follows.
It's important to recognize that not all children learn the same way. In medicine, We used to treat all people with cancer, like with the same two drugs. And of course we got the kind of results you would expect from that lack of specialized diagnosis and treatment. Now we have specialized care for each type, and we've dramatically improved patient outcomes. We need the same approach for literacy. This includes ensuring federal resources can be used towards early detection screening for learning needs, like dyslexia, that causes students to struggle reading. I'm grateful that President Trump and Secretary McMahon are committed to reforming our broken education system so that it works better for American students and their families. They understand the simple truth that parents, not Washington bureaucrats, know their child best. So it should be parents making the decision regarding their child's education. I favor school choice because that empowers a parent to free a child from a failing school and to allow that child to go to the best school that's available for the best education for that child. And by the way, for parents, that is what you want more than anything, that your child have a better education, have a better life than you yourself had. I thank President Trump and Senator Tim Scott for working with me to pass the first federal choice legislation in history. I should also give credit to Ted Cruz, our Educational Choice for Children's Act. I look forward to hearing our witnesses' ideas on how we can improve K-12 education so that our children and our country can have a brighter future. With that, Senator Sanders. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on... what is obviously a very, very important subject. And I want to thank our witnesses for being here as well.
I want to broaden the discussion because you're absolutely right. There should be enormous concern about how our kids are failing educationally, how we are falling behind many, many other countries around the world. As I think many of us will remember, Several decades ago, Mr. Chairman, we were the best educated country on earth. You know that? We had more people getting a higher education, now public schools were the strongest probably in the world.
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