[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 13, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2883-S2884]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Education
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, with me today is one of my colleagues,
Mr. Connor Domingue, from my office.
High school seniors throughout our country are looking forward to
graduation, which is going to happen here in the next few months--in
some cases, weeks. The sad reality, though, is that some of these high
school seniors won't be able to read. They won't be able to read their
diplomas.
In fact, students in several States have actually filed lawsuits
against their schools for failing to teach them basic skills like
reading and math. One student plaintiff actually alleged in his
petition that he can't spell his name, and he is a high school senior.
And it brings me no pleasure to point this out. We all know we have a
problem with elementary and secondary education in America, but the
truth is that some--not all, but some--of our schools here in America
have become failure factories, and our kids are falling behind their
global competitors in just about every category--not just reading, not
just writing, not just math, also science.
We live in the freest, most prosperous country in all of human
history, and yet American kids rank 22nd--22nd--not in all 195
countries in the world, but 22nd among developed nations in terms of
our education achievement. It is embarrassing, and the American people
deserve better, and so do American kids.
In 1979, President Carter established the Department of Education. As
you know, Mr. President, it is a Cabinet-level Agency. Its purpose was
to improve education outcomes throughout the country. I want to read
you what the Department's mission is supposed to be. I am quoting here.
The Department of Education is supposed to ``promote student
achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering
educational excellence and ensuring equal access.''
Pretty words. Pretty words. That is all they are. Just empty, pretty
words. The results have been anything but excellent.
This chart represents reading skills among our kids in America. Down
here, mathematic skills.
This is when we started the Department of Education way back here in
1979. This is where we are today. The line--we are doing a little
better in math, but the line for reading is basically flat, and the
line for mathematics is not exactly steep.
The truth is that our scores, both for reading and math, have not
improved appreciably in decades, and any progress that we have seen
from the Department of Education's long tenure--which is very low. You
can see the numbers; they speak for themselves--they disappeared during
the pandemic when people in power decided to close down our schools.
Funding for the Department of Education has far outpaced spending in
the rest of Federal Government. If you compare spending just for the
Department of Education to spending in the rest of the Federal
Government, the difference is dramatic. Since the 1980s, the Department
of Education's spending has increased by 370 percent--370 percent. All
other forms of spending have increased, on average, about 195 percent.
Yet the scores remain stagnant, both for reading and for math. Now,
looking at these numbers, I think it is pretty clear why President
Trump is calling for us to shut down the Department of Education
altogether. He wants to--as we know, he wants to return education to
our States, and Louisiana provides a perfect example of why that is a
good idea.
I want to be clear. I am not saying that Louisiana public education
and secondary education is perfect. We are not well, but we are doing
much better.
Over the past few years, Louisiana has actually outpaced the rest of
the country in several measures of academic improvement and academic
achievement in our K through 12 schools. According to the Nation's
report card--that is what everybody looks to. The Nation's report card
is put out every year by the Department of Education, grading our
States on progress in elementary and secondary education. It might be
the only decent thing that the Department of Education does. I forget
the formal name of it, but we all refer to it as ``the Nation's report
card.''
And according to that report card, Louisiana led the country in
reading growth in 2024, and I want to show you that here in a second in
a chart. But, first, I want to go back.
I should have emphasized this. Once again, these are the average
reading and math scores for all the kids in America since the
Department of Education was established--flat line, mostly flat line.
But look what happened here--a dramatic drop in both math and education
scores. That is the pandemic. That is what happened when people in
power decided to shut down our schools.
It was more than one person, I understand that, but for all the
people who made this decision--they should hide their heads in a bag. I
mean, look what happened. We shut down our schools. We had the largest
learning loss in modern history. That is just a fact.
Now, some people are going to disagree with me, and I am not saying
that if they disagree with me, they are dumb. But I am saying that if
they disagree with me, they better hope the dumbest person in the world
doesn't die because they are going to take their place.
I want to come back. Let me go to Louisiana for a second. We didn't
shut down our schools but for a short period of time. You can see the
results on this chart. Between 2019 and 2024, Louisiana's fourth
graders went from ranking dead last in the country for reading
proficiency--here we are, 48th--to ranking 16th. I am very proud of
that. Math scores also steadily increased. Louisiana climbed from being
ranked 50th to 38th. We went from 50th to 38th and 48th to 16th best in
our country. Louisiana made this growth happen during the pandemic and
afterwards.
The pandemic was probably one of the most challenging educational
periods in our country's history. Parents remember. I remember. Even if
your kids are grown, you remember. It was difficult for kids to try to
learn from home. It was a disaster. Shutting down these schools was a
disaster, and American kids suffered because of it.
According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, which measures how
much of the loss we were able to gain back, American students--I am
talking about all kids throughout America--are still one-half of a
grade behind where students were when they were tested before the
pandemic. On average, we lost half a grade. In many States, the
academic loss was a full year. That means that fourth graders today can
only read as well as third graders prior to the pandemic.
This is an entire generation of kids who fell behind because our
people in power decided to shut down our schools. And many of our
States, despite the billions of dollars we appropriated to help them,
have failed to catch up.
I am going to say it again. The people who insisted on shutting down
our schools during the pandemic are responsible for the largest
learning loss in modern history. It was dumb, dumb, dumb. And again, I
am not saying the people that made that decision to shut down the
schools in America are the dumbest people in the world, but they better
hope the dumbest people in the world don't die.
Louisiana, though, managed to thrive during this period and
afterwards. Why is that? We looked around at what our friends and our
neighbors were doing in America and across the world, and we didn't go
with the flow. Only dead fish go with the flow. We didn't go with the
flow. We said: Let's look at what other countries are doing and working
and what other States are doing and working, and that is what we did.
First, we started giving our teachers the tools they needed to teach,
and that is important.
In 2021--I remember it like it was yesterday--our State legislature
passed a law mandating that all K through 3 teachers receive advanced
training in the very best methods of teaching reading. Reading is
fundamental. If you can't read, nothing else matters in terms of
educational progress. So we sought out the best methods for teaching
kids from kindergarten to the third
[[Page S2884]]
grade, the best methods to teach reading. We found them, and we
educated our teachers in those methods, and it worked.
We tried to make it the case that no kid makes it to graduation day
in Louisiana without being able to read. In fact, we passed another law
a couple of years ago. I worked very hard on this. It says: If you are
in the third grade, at the end of the third grade, you are going to be
tested for reading. If you can't read at a third-grade level, we are
going to test you again. If you can't read at a third-grade level at
the end of the third grade, we are going to test you one more time. If
you still fail, you are not going to the fourth grade. You are going to
stay in the third grade until you learn how to read. You might be 16
years old in the third grade, but, by God, you are not going to the
fourth grade until you can learn how to read.
Now, we don't just leave the kids on their own if they can't read at
the end of the third grade after being tested a couple of times. We
give them what we call high-dose tutoring. We tutor them and tutor them
and tutor them until they can read, and then they can move on. Because
do you know when kids drop out of school? Kids don't drop out of school
in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grade; they drop out of school in the 2nd
grade, the 3rd grade, when they can't learn how to read and nobody
cares. They are just socially promoted. We stopped doing that in
Louisiana.
We also started giving parents a choice in public education.
You know, competition makes us better. It makes you better. It makes
me better. Competition makes all of us better. Most parents--not all--
most parents are far more invested in their kids' academic success than
any teacher--I don't care how well-meaning the teacher is--than any
teacher, any school administrator, or any Federal bureaucratic.
Most parents--not all, unfortunately, but most parents in America do
not want their kids to be stuck in a school where violence is common
and learning is rare. They don't.
Several States throughout the country--I am going to mention four in
particular, but they are not the only ones. I am going to mention
Florida, Iowa, North Dakota, and Utah. Congratulations to them all.
They have implemented successfully school-choice programs. Utah may be
the best, Mr. President. This gives parents the ability to do just what
it says--gives parents a choice. They can send their kid to a public
school. They can send their kid to a private school. They can send
their child to a charter school.
Charter schools are tuition-free. Charter schools are public schools.
They are tuition-free. But they are not run by the education
bureaucracy; they are almost always run by parents and caring adults.
They don't have to follow all the redtape in their local school
district. They can experiment. They are independent, they are free, and
they work.
Every one of these States that I mentioned--their programs are
different, but each State that I mentioned--and I want to mention them
again because they deserve praise--Utah, North Dakota, Iowa, and
Florida. They all have a few things in common. They all allow parents
to decide which school will get their kids' share of State and Federal
tax dollars.
As you know, Mr. President, we fund our public schools through three
sources of revenue. The largest is usually local government. In my
State, about half of the money comes from local government, about 40
percent comes from the State government, and about 10 percent comes
from the Federal Government. So it is mostly local money, but it is
also State money to a large extent and some Federal money. But these
are all tax dollars.
In these States that I just described, if parents are happy with the
current public school their child is enrolled in, they can tell the
State: OK, spend that money per child--that I just described--in my
child's school. I am happy with my current school.
But if the parents aren't happy, they can seek another school that is
a better fit and move that money. They can choose to take their child's
funding to a different school to give that kid a better outcome.
This gives parents a choice, but it also--do you know what else it
does? It gets some of our schools off their ice-cold, lazy butts. It
makes schools compete, and competition makes all of us better.
There have been a number of studies on school-choice States, and
almost all of them have found that these programs, this program of
choice--you get to choose which public school you want your child to go
to or you can send your child to a private school--this choice results
in higher test scores, higher parental satisfaction, and higher student
safety.
Last year, Louisiana joined the choice move. I am very proud of that.
Our legislature passed a school-choice program. We call it the GATOR
Act. Starting this fall, certain students--not all of our kids; we are
going to eventually ramp it up so that it does impact all of our kids--
but certain of our kids will be able to tap into State-funded education
savings accounts that parents can use to pay for their child to attend
a different public or a different private or a different charter
school. Our goal is 3 years. In 3 years, every student in Louisiana
will be eligible to participate in this choice program.
I want to say it again. I am not saying Louisiana's scores are
perfect. I am not saying that. But it is undeniable that we are on the
right track. We are. We stayed open for the most part during the
pandemic. We trained our teachers. We have established standards. You
can't go to the fourth grade until you can read. We have implemented
parental choice.
I think President Trump--and I don't want to just limit this to
Republicans. Many of my Democratic colleagues believe in choice as
well. Sometimes they can't be as vocal about it, but I know; I talked
to them. They understand, as does the White House, that America's
future is sitting in these classrooms every day throughout the country.
I have said it a zillion times, a squillion times in Louisiana. The
key to Louisiana's future is not the price of oil. It is not what the
unemployment rate is. It is not who the Senator is or who the Governor
is. It is education.
The status quo in America isn't working. We didn't make it any better
as a result of our behavior with respect to the pandemic, and we are
behind, but we can catch up if we just do the right things.
One of those things is returning education to the States. I hope we
do dismantle the Department of Education. It is basically a conduit for
money--except that money goes through the Department of Education and
the 4,000 employees there, and they all put a condition on the money as
if they knew what was best for each State. They don't. We ought to
dismantle the Department of Education and send that money directly to
the States.
Thank you, Mr. President, for your courtesy. Congratulations on the
progress that the wonderful State of Utah has made in elementary and
secondary education.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.