▶ 0:16:49Chair Cassidy: The k-12 system is one of the most powerful tools we have to live children out of poverty. Through education a child can achieve the american dream. Without access to quality education that name is dead. That child has a much worth life.
▶ 0:17:15Chair Cassidy: Child who does not learn how to read well will likely turn to crime, less likely to graduate high school and find a meaningful job. For children to succeed they need to know how to read. I feel a little bit like jesse jackson with my rhyme and my alliteration. It should concern us the children's reading, math, and science scores have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels.
▶ 0:17:43Chair Cassidy: The scores from the national assessment of educational progress are 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. We need to act for their sake and our country's sake.
▶ 0:18:11Chair Cassidy: In august I join secretary mcmahon and other educational leaders for a roundtable discussion on how to strengthen literacy. One thing we discussed was louisiana's successful implementation of evidence-based strategies like science and how these 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.
▶ 0:18:40Chair Cassidy: States and local communities are empowered to tailor solutions to meet the unique needs of students and innovation follows. It is important to recognize that all all children learn the same way. In medicine we used to treat all people with cancer with the same two drugs and we got the kind of results you expect from the lack of specialized treatment. Now we have specialized care for each type we have dramatically improved patient outcomes.
▶ 0:19:08Chair Cassidy: This includes ensuring federal resources can be used for early detection of learning needs like dyslexia that collars -- that causes students to struggle with reading. I'm grateful president trump and secretary mcmahon are grateful to reforming our broken education system. They understand the simple truth that parents, not washington bureaucrats know their child best. It should be parents making the children regarding their child's education.
▶ 0:19:37Chair Cassidy: I favor school choice because that empowers the parent to free a child from a failing school and allow that child to go to the best pool that is available for the best education for that child. For parents, that is what you want more than anything, that your child has a better education and a better life than you had. I think president trump and senator tim scott for working with me to pass the first federal choice legislation in history and I should also give credit to ted cruz.
▶ 0:20:08Chair Cassidy: I look forward to hearing your witnesses ideas on how we can improve k-12 education so our children and our country can have a brighter future. Senator sanders?
▶ 0:20:18Sen. Sanders: Thank you Mr. chairman for holding this hearing on what is obviously a very important subject and I want to thank our witnesses for being here as well. I want to broaden the discussion because you are absolutely right. There should be enormous concern about how her kids are feeling educationally. -- about how our kids are failing educationally. How we are falling behind.
▶ 0:20:50Sen. Sanders: Several decades ago we were the best educated country on earth. Our public schools were the strongest probably in the world. I think we can all agree that is not the case today. One of the points I wanted to make is that while we focus on education, as important as that is, we also have to focus on the conditions under which our children are living. We are the richest country in the history of the world.
▶ 0:21:18Sen. Sanders: Does anybody think it is appropriate we have the highest rate of child poverty of almost any major country on earth? I think when you're looking at the real world, looking at millions of families that are struggling to put food on the table pay the rent, kids growing up in dysfunctional families, even before we focus on improving education we should be focused on improving the lives of our kids.
▶ 0:21:46Sen. Sanders: We are the feet -- they are the future of america and if we push them aside we do not give them any hope and crime and drugs will be the alternative that must not be allowed to happen. I would mention that when we talk about education we cannot ignore the first four years of a kids life, 0-4 psychologists tell us our most important in terms of intellectual and emotional development.
▶ 0:22:16Sen. Sanders: Does anyone disagree our childcare system is failing? If you're a working-class person dad goes to work and dad goes to work how do you come up with the $25,000 you need for child care? We have child care workers. Does that make sense. I would say we have to broaden. Unbelievably, in a country where one person on top owns more wealth than the bottom 50 per tube -- than the bottom 52% of households we have millions of kids who are hungry.
▶ 0:22:47Sen. Sanders: How does that happen? Those are issues that have to be addressed while we focus on education. Last point I would make. Mr. chairman, do we really think you are right and our panelists are right -- do we as a nation really prioritize education?
▶ 0:23:15Sen. Sanders: A young person today graduates college since I want to be a teacher at a public school. What will his or her kids friends say? They will say you are a dummy. Why do you want to be a public school teacher and start off at $35,000 a year? You can go to wall street and make 10 times that money. What is the matter with you? Are you dumb? I am glad we are focused on these issues great I'm excited to hear from all of our panelists.
▶ 0:23:46Sen. Sanders: We have to understand education is important. That means prioritize our children and our educators. I want our goal to beat young people graduating college say I will become a teacher, that is great, good for you, the most important job you can have. We have a lot of work to do and I look forward to this discussion and I think our panelists.
▶ 0:24:09Chair Cassidy: I will introduce each witness in the order -- I will introduce you will speak and then I will introduce you and then you will speak as opposed to do it all at once. Forgive me in advance. Dr. hanushek?
▶ 0:24:38Chair Cassidy: He is a senior fellow at the hoover institution of stanford university in one of the world's leading scholars on the economics of education. His research has shaped education policy globally with widely cited studies of teacher effectiveness, school accountability, class-size, and the economic returns of education quality. He received a prize for education research, the fields most prestigious international award.
▶ 0:25:06Chair Cassidy: He has authored or edited 26 books. He earned his phd in economics from the massachusetts institute of technology after graduating from the U.S. air force academy.
▶ 0:25:17Dr. Hanushek: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Thank you to members of the committee are having this very important hearing. I believe that k-12 education is the future of the united states and we have to take this seriously. During the pandemic we all knew the closures had dramatic influence on the learning of kids in school.
▶ 0:25:46Dr. Hanushek: What americans failed to grasp at the time was achievement had been declining for 10 years before the pandemic. It is this important drop that is a signal we have to do something differently.
▶ 0:26:03Dr. Hanushek: The wide range of policies designed to deal with covid tried to make schools look as close as possible to where they were in may or march of 2020 and then add a little bit of remedial activities and programs on top of that like added time for school or more tutoring.
▶ 0:26:30Dr. Hanushek: I think we should have to look past the pandemic to look at fundamental problems because if we just return to where we were in march 2020 I think we are not going to be very happy. The achievement story the chairman sketched is baker than the 12 grade score -- is bigger than the 12th grade scores discussed a week ago.
▶ 0:27:01Dr. Hanushek: If we look at performance on the national assessment of educational progress, scores have declined in math and reading since 2013. The drops in the pandemic were certainly sharp but they left out the fact that scores declined before the pandemic up until 2019 and they also declined after the pandemic and what we might call the recovery period.
▶ 0:27:32Dr. Hanushek: If you have my testimony there is a chart that shows the math and reading scores for the U.S. for eighth graders. This came out before the 12th grade lines which are almost identical. What it shows is dramatic changes in performance and drops in performance from the 2013 peak.
▶ 0:27:56Dr. Hanushek: This is been matched -- this has been matched by an increase in the achievement gaps exist in the U.S.. If you look at the second figure in my testimony you can see the performance over time of people -- of students at different achievement levels, different percentiles.
▶ 0:28:25Dr. Hanushek: The top line in that graph shows what the top 10% has been doing. That has been relatively flat since the beginning of the century. If you get down to the bottom line which is the bottom 10% you see dramatic falls in achievement and a widening of the achievement gaps. It began in 2013 and it hardly shows up as being a different during the pandemic.
▶ 0:28:57Dr. Hanushek: We have been having these achievement problems for a long time. The recent 12th grade scores I believe Dr. west will talk about soon show exactly the same pattern. Peeking before the pandemic so that the falls in 12th grade scores from 2019 to 2024 -- it does not break out the pandemic from the recovery period separately but the falls there are equally matched by the declines in achievement that
▶ 0:29:28Dr. Hanushek: Occurred from 2013 to 2019. That is the same for math and reading. This pattern is not a measure of the specific tests that were included. You see it in the long term trends of different tests that measures performance over time which peaked in 2013. You also see it in international tests, the pisa tests.
▶ 0:30:00Dr. Hanushek: International tests also give us another hint because they allow us to compare our students to students in other countries. Our 15-year-olds in mathematics in 2024 ranked 34th in the world. That is below the oecd average. It just nudges out the slovak republic but it loses ground to malta.
▶ 0:30:29Dr. Hanushek: These are not the nations we want to be competing with in the future. When I talk about standard deviation test scores and I believe Dr. west will talk about them -- good grief.
▶ 0:30:42Chair Cassidy: If you could wrap up.
▶ 0:30:45Dr. Hanushek: This is an economic crisis. Students will lose 8% of their lifetime earnings compared to a 2013 graduate. The nation in present value terms will lose three times our current gdp which makes the current debates about a cr small relative to the economic cost of the decline.
▶ 0:31:13Chair Cassidy: Next is Dr. martin west who wears many hats and joints today as the weiss chair of the national assessment governing board and serves as academic dean and deputy director of education policy and governance at harvard. He is currently a member of the massachusetts board of elementary and secondary education and also editor-in-chief of education next.
▶ 0:31:39Chair Cassidy: He is also an alumnus of the help committee staff, showing life can be bright on the other side. -- showing life can be brighter on the other side. Do not tell these folks that great he received his phd and his masters from oxford university. Thank you.
▶ 0:31:58Dr. West: Thank you chair cassidy, ranking member sanders, members of the committee. It is an honor to testify before you on the national assessment of educational progress. As you know congress created the national assessment of educational progress, often referred to as the nation's report card to show how U.S. students are doing academically, how this generation is faring compared to prior ones and how different groups of students are progressing.
▶ 0:32:29Dr. West: I serve as vice chair of the national assessment governing board which sets policy for naep. The board is nonpartisan in our makeup and nonpartisan in our work there it our members include teachers, parents, and others as prescribed in the statute. Our job is to ensure this federal program meets the needs of state and local decision-makers.
▶ 0:32:54Dr. West: Naep test students in math and reading and in additional subjects determined by the governing board such as civics, U.S. history, and science. It provides the only measures of k-12 student learning that are nationally representative and comparable over time. States and participating districts rely on naep to track their progress and compare their education systems with one another and the nation.
▶ 0:33:24Dr. West: Last week the naep program released to the full results for the 2024 report card showing scores for math and reading and eighth grade science. These scores fall of the fourth and eighth grade math and reading scores released in january for the nation, states, and 26 of our largest urban school districts. Together these assessments show how student assessment has changed from 2019 before the covid pandemic to 2024.
▶ 0:33:56Dr. West: Nationally achievement fell significantly across every rate and -- every grade and subject assessed and for every student group over this stretch. 12th grade math and reading scores are at the lowest levels ever recorded with only one third of the students on track to graduate prepared for college level work. The declines are geographically pervasive.
▶ 0:34:19Dr. West: Achievement in each state lacks 2021 levels and in just two states exceed their pre-pandemic scores and even a single grade and subject. Louisiana in fourth grade reading and alabama in fourth grade math. These declines are intensifying inequality. The declines have been the greatest for our lowest performing students, those in the bottom quarter. Despite the pandemic our highest performing students are scoring nearly as well as ever.
▶ 0:34:50Dr. West: His singular focus on pandemic learning loss of stirrers as much as it reveals. Achievement was already falling before 2019 across all subjects naep assesses. In math pandemic disruptions accelerate this trend of the story for reading and U.S. history is one of steady deterioration since the early 2010's.
▶ 0:35:16Dr. West: There is no reason to expect a return to pre-pandemic learning conditions will stop or reverse the declines. If the pandemic accelerated declines but did not start them, research and policy makers should seek to understand the root of the problem. Naep measures what is happening to student achievement but not why but the patterns of documents can guide our search for explanations and solutions. In my view one area to investigate is the rise of smartphones and social media platforms targeting youth.
▶ 0:35:48Dr. West: We wrap direct -- we lacked direct evidence of a causal link between smartphones and learning but I'm convinced this is a key driver of youth mental health challenges, distraction from learning inside and outside of schools, and it deterrents to reading when naep surveys reveal fewer students read on their own for fun. Chronic absenteeism continues to be a challenge. Changes to grading policies and standards to make it hard for parents to know if their child is on track.
▶ 0:36:20Dr. West: Whether students are receiving access to a well-rounded curriculum that includes science, civics, and history. We should also keep in mind that while recent trends documented by naep are discouraging this is not always been the case. From the early 1990's through the 2000's we saw consistent progress in fourth and eighth grade. In reading the gains were steady but modest. In math they were substantial.
▶ 0:36:47Dr. West: In both subjects they were driven by faster progress for our lowest performing students, precisely the opposite pattern over the past decades. This was an era when elected officials from both parties came together around a reform agenda grounded in articulating clear standards for student learning and holding schools accountable for ensuring kids met those standards on state tests. That approach had plenty of critics and as implemented some real flaws, but it produced results.
▶ 0:37:15Dr. West: While there is often a temptation and education to focus on new ideas and new strategies for improvement, and my view leaders would do well to learn from our past. Thank you for the opportunity to share the insights and I look forward to your questions.
▶ 0:37:31Chair Cassidy: Before we go further, happy birthday, coach. Whatever anniversary, number 39? I hope it is a great one. Next our third witness is Dr. katie jenner. Jim banks would have introduced you today but his family has just suffered a terrible tragedy.
▶ 0:38:01Chair Cassidy: I will welcome you on his behalf because he was very pleased you are here. I would like to introduce our third witness Dr. katie jenner serves as indiana secretary of education in the state's for higher education. In these roles she leads with the student centered vision to align k-12 instruction with postsecondary and workforce pathways right she holds a doctorate in education from the university of kentucky and an mba from indiana state university. We are grateful to have someone with such proven success.
▶ 0:38:33Chair Cassidy: Thank you for being with us.
▶ 0:38:35Dr. Jenner: Thank you for the kind introduction. Chairman cassidy, ranking member sanders. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. It is a pleasure to share indiana's story. The naep results paint a stark picture. Reading and math continue to slide. These represent real children whose futures are at risk if we fail to act.
▶ 0:39:03Dr. Jenner: In indiana we are leading with urgency, always putting students first and driving solutions that deliver. Indiana is humbly paving the way and we are not finished. What is happening in our classrooms across the state shows what is possible with vision, policy, and investment aligned around students. The main reason for success is our people. We have done the best we can to bring a variety of stakeholders to the table of educators to parents and families to business and community leaders.
▶ 0:39:35Dr. Jenner: The most important work happening in indiana is at the community level and part of my job is to get barriers to bureaucracy out of the way as quickly as possible. Let's start with reading. Even prior to the pandemic our reading scores were declining. The pandemic exacerbated our decline. We reviewed our data and studied reading success stories like mississippi and stet -- and set a reading goal and got to work.
▶ 0:40:01Dr. Jenner: Indiana rebuilt early literacy based on the science of reading backed by a major public-private partnership with lilly endowment we have trained thousands of teachers, expanded coaching, and districts are adopting evidence-based materials. I am proud of teachers because the work is paying off. We saw a 5% increase which is our largest single year gain ever. 80 7% of our third graders past indiana's reading assessment.
▶ 0:40:29Dr. Jenner: Why we celebrated this, in so many ways it feels like we are just getting started. We will not slow down until every child in indiana is reading. While we have seen student outcomes improve for every single data point we have yet to move the needle for some of our secondary students who continue to struggle with reading. That is why we are deploying an outcomes-based contracting pallet for middle school reading in areas like tutoring and targeted interventions.
▶ 0:40:59Dr. Jenner: Billions of dollars flow into the education space and every vendor says they are best thing since sliced bread. Let's have them put their money where their mouth is. We will only pay of a partner helps us deliver outcomes for our students. It is our responsibility to make sure we are getting a return on investment. We are also rethinking high school. Thousands of hoosier weighed in on how we could make the experience better. We ensured the connection to school accountability.
▶ 0:41:32Dr. Jenner: Our new diploma seals provide students and families with a recipe for success, whether they plan to continue their education , go straight into a career, and -- or serve in our nation's military. These readiness seals have vigorous personalized coursework , quality work-based learning, and tangible credentials of value.
▶ 0:41:56Dr. Jenner: As an example our students who hit these clear benchmarks are guaranteed admission to any indiana public college or university or top apprenticeship program. Indiana is also using ai to strengthen education while keeping parents informed and engaged at every step with strong guardrails ai supports teachers, not replaces them. By expanding instructional capacity and reduce teen workload.
▶ 0:42:26Dr. Jenner: Pilot investments have reached more than nine thousand teachers and 100,000 students, especially through literacy and math focused tutoring tools. As a state leader I find any progress has to take hold of the community level. Our communities moving the fastest are those that have key change agents, from education and business coming together to set common goals and an action plan.
▶ 0:42:49Dr. Jenner: I often hear we are trying to open this opportunity for kids that there is a law in the way or funding flexibility that we need. My ask to you is similar to what I demand of myself. We need to let our communities and states lead. Indiana is eager to provide flexibility to those of us who are ready. Require us to have a state learning game plan.
▶ 0:43:17Dr. Jenner: Require us to show taxpayers a return on investment for billions of dollars. Indiana's families and communities are proving progress as possible. Literacy is rising, we are moving decisively on adolescent reading, high school is becoming more relevant, we are embracing ai and technology. We can keep building momentum, replacing bureaucracy with results for our students. Thank you.
▶ 0:43:42Chair Cassidy: Great job in the five minute mark.
▶ 0:43:46Dr. Jenner: I practiced a lot.
▶ 0:43:50Chair Cassidy: I recognize senator sanders to introduce the next two witnesses.
▶ 0:43:54Sen. Sanders: Our next witness is Dr. scott muri, the recently retired were intended in odessa, texas. Under his leadership the county became known as the home of the six-figure teacher salary. Thank you so much for being with us.
▶ 0:44:14Dr. Muri: Chairman cassidy, ranking member sanders, it is an honor to be with you today. For 37 years I served the country from teacher to superintendents, serve the students of this nation so it is nice to represent them before you today, most recently as superintendent in odessa, best known for gas and oil production and friday night lights. Certainly football and the gridiron was important.
▶ 0:44:41Dr. Muri: One of the things that was not happening in that community for children was teaching and learning. When I arrived in the independent school district in the summer 2019 I was faced with 34,000 students, a staff of 4200, 45 schools, 20 of those schools were ranked d or f by the state of texas with 16 receiving an f.
▶ 0:45:07Dr. Muri: As I dug in with the team I worked with I discovered the primary reasons those schools were failing with a simple lack of teachers. On the first day of school in august 2019 we had 350 teacher vacancies. 18% of classrooms in our school district did not have a teacher. On the first day, the 10th day, the 50th day or the 90th day. We did not fill those vacancies that year.
▶ 0:45:35Dr. Muri: We knew we had to do something about it we developed a strategic plan that focused on some of the things that were broken in our system. It is one of my favorite quotes, "your organization is perfectly designed to achieve the results you are achieving." we were achieving an 18% vacancy rate. We were achieving 16% of our schools receiving an f and we had to do something about it.
▶ 0:46:04Dr. Muri: We went to work to change the design of our organization. We did some things and katie just mentioned one of those. Outcomes-based contract. We partnered with tutoring companies to provide one-on-one support for our kids and held them accountable with the contract. We did a lot of things within our organization but our primary area of work was about our people, specifically our teachers. We did a lot of work in that area. Four big buckets. First professional learning.
▶ 0:46:35Dr. Muri: We use the standards developed by the national board for teaching standards to hold our teachers accountable for high standards and we developed their capacity by partnering with that organization. We change the compensation system and became known as the school district of the $100,000 plus teacher and we did that in a variety of ways. We developed a strategy so teachers have multiple ways to earn compensation.
▶ 0:46:59Dr. Muri: We provided incentive pay, we incentivized those teachers that prove themselves successful with student achievement in their classroom. We incentivized our post -- our best teachers to move to areas to serve the most challenging students and populations we had within our community.
▶ 0:47:18Dr. Muri: The compensation system so that teachers aren't a teacher residency in their college program, we change the way we compensated them so they could maximize within 10 years of service there compensation. We developed teachers, pipelines , created our own educator program. We licensed and certified our own teachers.
▶ 0:47:43Dr. Muri: We developed a full year pay teacher residency program so students involved at the college level, their senior year was spent with us and we pay them $45,000 a year to complete their teacher residency. Manchin is a college senior having the opportunity to earn money while you are being educated. We developed -- imagine as a college senior having the opportunity to earn money you are being educated.
▶ 0:48:10Dr. Muri: We worked on a career and technical education program to develop teachers at the high school level and gave those teachers of full scholarship to college at a local university. And then we redesigned the traditional role of the teacher. Gone was the teacher who taught all day long and we introduced an opportunity. Most effective teachers taught 50% of their day and then they spent the other 50% coaching and developing their peers.
▶ 0:48:38Dr. Muri: We call that worked opportunity culture developed by an organization in north carolina called public impact. What are those results? The percentage of high school students attaining their college career military readiness level in texas in our school district jumped from 56% of students in 2019 to 93% considered postsecondary ready by the time they graduated.
▶ 0:49:05Dr. Muri: Kindergarten readiness jumped from 36% in 2019 to 50% being ready to learn at the age of five. Our graduation rate was the highest in 23 years after making these investments. We were recognized by harvard university and stanford for our naep. While the country went down our students increased. As we think about this work today I will offer recommendations. Hold our teachers to high standards.
▶ 0:49:35Dr. Muri: Validate and recognize them. Honor the profession that is teaching. Validate our principles. Two most important factors we have in public schools are teachers and principals. Educating them, informing them, improving them, but valuing them as one of the greatest things we can do. Thank you for this opportunity.
▶ 0:49:57Sen. Sanders: Our next witness is Dr. rebecca winthrop, the director of the center of universal education at the brookings institution. She is leading expert on student engagement in international education. Thank you for being with us.
▶ 0:50:14Dr. Winthrop: Chairman cassidy, ranking member sanders, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is rebecca winthrop and I'm a senior fellow at the brookings institute. My research focuses on education and the skills children need to thrive in the U.S. and globally and I'm testifying in my personal capacity. The views I express are my own.
▶ 0:50:40Dr. Winthrop: Across the country three of the most pressing problems in many education jurisdictions are high rates of chronic absenteeism, low academic achievement, and the ongoing adolescent mental health crisis. There is an underlying cause that is rarely discussed but it is an important contributing factor fueling all three of these problems. Students disengagement. The U.S. ensigns -- the U.S.
▶ 0:51:09Dr. Winthrop: Census finds only one in three students are highly engaged in school. In my recent book my co-author and I found disengagement is exacerbated by addictive social media and the covid-19 pandemic but it cannot be reversed by addressing both of those factors.
▶ 0:51:29Dr. Winthrop: Increasing student engagement is powerful because of its wide range of benefits including higher attendance at college enrollment, better rates of achievement, and less depression , substance abuse, and suicidal ideation. There are three things I would like to highlight about how we can boost student engagement and I note that we found students equally disengaged across public , private, and charter schools. To improve student engagement we must be able to see it.
▶ 0:52:01Dr. Winthrop: It is not a binary, disengaged and engaged but students move through four modes of engagement. In the passenger mode students attend school but have dropped out of learning. They are coasting and doing the bare minimum to get by and get good grades. This reflects about half of all middle and high school students.
▶ 0:52:20Dr. Winthrop: An achiever mode students are trying to get a gold star and everything put in front of them but they are often fragile learners, not taking risks for fear of getting a bad grade and offer except f -- they often suffer from difficult mental health challenges. Students -- avoiding and disrupting their learning but they have something going for them, they have gumption and they are often using their voice alone inappropriately to signal that something is wrong.
▶ 0:52:48Dr. Winthrop: If given the chance they can quickly move into explorer mode, where students are highly motivated to learn, they focus on the process of learning, not just the great, they are resilient when faced with setbacks. Less than 4% of middle and high school students report schooling experiences that help them regulate -- that help them regularly get to explore mode. Adults restrict children's agency.
▶ 0:53:18Dr. Winthrop: Adolescents are subject to twice as many rules as incarcerated felons. There are proven models to boost student engagement such as place-based initiatives, when schools become a hub of children learning and of element by using the community as their classroom , working collaboratively with families and coordinating support services from doctors and counselors.
▶ 0:53:42Dr. Winthrop: For example in appellation kentucky through the work of partners for rural impact, some of the most marginalized students engage in civic learning, they take courses from local police chiefs, they can wash their clothes at school laundry machines and families can access books through school vending machines.
▶ 0:54:02Dr. Winthrop: In california this community schools approach is not only boosting belonging and engagement, but it has led to a 30% drop in chronic absenteeism and a boost in achievement, especially for those farthest behind. Black students and english learners gained the equivalent of 50 additional days of learning in math and english. In explorer mode children can succeed academically and develop the lifelong learning skills they need for their future.
▶ 0:54:32Dr. Winthrop: Thirdly, ai will amplify student disengagement if we do not act swiftly. I fear in an ai world if we do not design relevant and engaging learning experiences we will soon have a nation of passengers. I lead the brookings global task force on ai in education and if carefully curated and trained and used by educators such as the examples we heard just now ai can be a powerful tool to help children learn.
▶ 0:55:03Dr. Winthrop: Unfettered access to open and degenerative ai discussion is not good for our children. Outside of school students ask ai friends on social media to do their homework. Perhaps one of the most important things we can do to boost student engagement is in addition to cell phone bans in school and sure age verification for social media and ai companies.
▶ 0:55:29Dr. Winthrop: Schools are uniquely positioned amid this increasingly digital world to help young people connect, grow, and learn to live together. Thank you.
▶ 0:55:39Chair Cassidy: Thank you all. For questions I will refer down dais to go first. >> thank, Mr. chairman. Thank you to all of our witnesses. I very much appreciate your holding this very important hearing.
▶ 0:56:03Chair Cassidy: It is very troubling when you look at the nation's report card and also as some of you have pointed out to realize that the decline in test scores started before the pandemic and has continued after the pandemic. The reason I emphasize that point is often times we hear that it is all due to covid. Clearly it is not.
▶ 0:56:34Chair Cassidy: It is far more complex and troubling. I am especially alarmed by the decline in scores in my home state of maine despite the very dedicated teachers and other educators that we are fortunate to have. There was a time when maine was justifiably proud to be at the top of the ratings. We were consistently in the top five.
▶ 0:57:05Chair Cassidy: I remember there was a new york times piece in 1997 that noted that maine was one of the states that performed best on the tests. In 2011 maine scored among the top five in the country. Then we see this dramatic change. The data shows that maine's fourth graders scores have plummeted. Eighth grade also not good.
▶ 0:57:38Chair Cassidy: This started happening around 2022. The most recent high school rankings from the U.S. news & world report ranked maine's high schools as dead last. That was shocking to me. Especially since I know how many good teachers we are fortunate to have. I listen carefully to each of you as you identified certain factors.
▶ 0:58:09Chair Cassidy: My question each of you is do you have any insight on what is going on in my state? My second question and it will be my last, I have heard cell phones mentioned, mental health crisis and student disengagement. That we need incentive-based pay for teachers. Or teacher development.
▶ 0:58:40Chair Cassidy: A focus on chronic absenteeism. And we need to honor our teachers and principals. I am interested in two things. Do you know what is going on in the state of maine that we've gone from the top five to the bottom five and of the list I just read you, are there certain solutions that you think we should pursue? Dr. hanushek?
▶ 0:59:09Dr. Hanushek: I would quickly answer to the first question a pervasive problem and that is we do not have any incentives to have higher achievement in our schools. That is across the board. We have the example of odessa texas we heard about this morning. We have the local example of washington, D.C.
▶ 0:59:30Dr. Hanushek: In the example of dallas, texas where they have changed the way they reward teachers, they evaluate and reward teachers, they reward the effective teachers very highly and yet these examples that are well-known around the nation are not picked up by other school districts.
▶ 0:59:55Dr. Hanushek: There are 13,500 school districts of which a handful have followed the exact examples. If we do not reward achievement and incentivize achievement I think we are in trouble. That is a major change.
▶ 1:00:14Sen. Collins: Dr. west?
▶ 1:00:19Dr. West: Thank you, senator collins. One observation I would make is you are not alone in the northeast in experiencing large declines in performance. We see the same pattern in vermont, I see senator sanders nodding, as well as my home state of massachusetts. We remain at the top of the chart at other places are catching up rapidly in relative terms.
▶ 1:00:50Dr. West: I am not expert in what has gone on in maine in particular but elsewhere and in massachusetts there has been a softening or a backing away from the accountability policies that drove improvement in the 1990's and 2000s. I think that is consistent with Dr. hanushek's emphasis on incentives.
▶ 1:01:16Dr. West: Assessments like naep tell us about school quality but they are also influenced by what is going on outside of schools. We should think of then as capturing not just what is happening in schools but in the economy and society generally. As you look for explanations you need to think about both of those factors.
▶ 1:01:35Sen. Collins: I know I am out of time so I will ask the other three witnesses to respond for the record. Thank you.
▶ 1:01:44Chair Cassidy: Senator sanders?
▶ 1:01:47Sen. Sanders: Let me thank all the panelists to acknowledge this important issue and I thank you all for your work today. A few questions. Talk for a moment about childcare. Dr. muri, you did not spend a lot of time in your testimony, but you guys worked hard on childcare. Please briefly discuss the importance of childcare and what you try to do in odessa.
▶ 1:02:17Dr. Muri: One of the early indicators we saw is kindergarten readiness. We looked at a five-year-old in kindergarten and we recognized our kindergarten readiness was low. That happens from birth to five. One of the things we work with our community on is an active and aggressive pre-k program. We did not have the capacity to do that so we partnered with the local ymca.
▶ 1:02:43Dr. Muri: We provided facilities and work with them on helping their members educate our students so we started a full day pre-k program and a half day pre-k program for four-year-olds.
▶ 1:02:55Sen. Sanders: What was the cost no cost to parents that had children who are eligible. We had some parents who could afford that so there was a nominal fee but 76% of our kids live in poverty so that was a zero cost.
▶ 1:03:11Sen. Sanders: To think that was a significant part of the success story?
▶ 1:03:16Dr. Muri: 36% of our five girls were ready in 2019 and 66 -- of our five-year-olds are ready in 2019 and for 66 were ready in 2024.
▶ 1:03:33Sen. Sanders: How is indiana dealing with childcare?
▶ 1:03:37Dr. Jenner: I think childcare and early learning is very valuable. Another state agency leads that for indiana so what I would like to do is go back with that team and I would be glad to get back with you.
▶ 1:03:50Sen. Sanders: Dr. winthrop raised an important issue. Before I get to her point, let me throughout a simple question. If I am a dedicated young person who wants to be a teacher and I look out there and teaching in rural vermont I will start out at $30,000 per year, why would I do that? A lot of factors.
▶ 1:04:16Sen. Sanders: Should we be focused on substantially raising teacher salaries to incentivize young people to go into education? Let's go down the line.
▶ 1:04:24Dr. Hanushek: The answer is yes. We should range it and change the slope of the schedule so we reward the most effective teachers a lot more.
▶ 1:04:34Dr. West: I think we have good evidence from Dr. muri about how doing exactly what Dr. hanushek said, increasing pay would with a focus on quality can be a powerful lever for improvement.
▶ 1:04:49Dr. Jenner: I made 28 thousand dollars as a first year teacher. I believe we need to keep focused on teacher pay. I think we need to strategically consider how that looks, consider performance pay, position pay.
▶ 1:05:05Sen. Sanders: Dr. muri?
▶ 1:05:09Dr. Muri: It makes a difference not only in attracting but retaining. Need to raise the starting pay and incentivize highly effective teachers.
▶ 1:05:20Sen. Sanders: Dr. winthrop?
▶ 1:05:22Dr. Winthrop: I agree with my colleagues. Recently I was talking to my knees who is graduating college and super excited to go into teaching. She looked at the starting salary and said I cannot afford it because of my school loans and she is now working at a bar and it breaks my heart.
▶ 1:05:39Sen. Sanders: Listen to that. Working at a bar when we need great teachers. Dr. winthrop raised an issue that we do not have the time to get into but maybe somebody wants to jump in. Kids are not going to do well unless they are excited. If they want to learn they will learn and if they are bored they will not learn. Dr. muri, how do we get kids excited about school?
▶ 1:06:05Dr. Muri: I will go back to the number one factor that influences academic achievement is the teacher what is helping our students -- our teachers develop engaging strategies to use in the classroom. When you walk in the classroom and use the excitement and energy on the faces of children, that did not happen by itself. It happened with a great teacher in that space.
▶ 1:06:27Sen. Sanders: Is that something you're working on indiana?
▶ 1:06:30Dr. Jenner: I will give you one example. Her chronic absenteeism is an inverted bell curve. Our high school numbers were out of control hi of chronic absenteeism. The number one thing we hear is I do not see the value. We have to make sure we rethink our high school time to make it better for kids.
▶ 1:06:51Sen. Sanders: You must have been talking to my grandchildren.
▶ 1:06:55Dr. Jenner: [laughter] I can call them later. We will but that is an action item. >> thank you, Mr. chairman. This is one of the panels I see a lot of agreement on so far as I have listened to you. I spent most of my adult life working in education policy at the state level, most recently as lieutenant governor. For I left there were five priorities I was either leading or working on.
▶ 1:07:26Dr. Jenner: One was making sure the science of reading it was universally accomplished across all of our schools. A lot of schools were doing it now is the law of the land. It works and I hope everybody in the country will do it. We also worked on illuminating cell phones in schools.
▶ 1:07:45Dr. Jenner: It is the single most effective policy every school could do immediately that would improve the mental health, the culture, the outcomes that particular school. Every principle, will they push back, they all embraced it. I did not want to have my phone taken away but now that everybody does not have a phone it is great you here kids say.
▶ 1:08:15Dr. Jenner: I hope everybody in the country will pursue no smartphones in schools. Also incentives for outcomes for our schools, particularly in the career centers, this is a thing we were really pushing. The idea that everybody graduates high school career ready, that they have a job skill. It does not mean they cannot do that. You can go to college but at least you have that job skill to rely on.
▶ 1:08:45Dr. Jenner: We have seen enrollment increase. One of the things we did is gave incentives. If you graduate more students with a career credential will increase the pay to the schools that do that. That is seen to work very well. Finally an ai toolkit. Ai is disrupting education in many ways. I know we can focus on the negative aspects of it which are real.
▶ 1:09:17Dr. Jenner: However, I think it can be a great tool so that every child has access to a tutor when he 47. They can walk -- has access to a tutor 24/7. They can walk them through a math problem. Those are things I think should be immediate priorities. I want to get to the naep pea I want to get to the naep pe iece. I don't know anyone who went to get a job they say what were your naep scores.
▶ 1:09:51Dr. Jenner: They say how well do you work together as a team member, you have a specific technical skill, can you show up on time and reliably be there which is why some of these issues -- are we measuring the right things in our education system? Not measuring the right things you're are probably not teaching the right things. I will start with Dr. hannah should -- with Dr. hanushek.
▶ 1:10:18It Is -- Dr. Hanushek: It is complicated what the set of outcomes we want out of schools are. We know the things measured by the naep scores are rewarded in the labor market systematically. The U.S. rewards these skills or than any other developed country in the world, which if you just reverse that it says we punish the lack of those skills more than any other country in the world.
▶ 1:10:47It Is -- Dr. Hanushek: Yes we want to develop those other skills. Increasing the fundamental skills with math and reading.
▶ 1:11:04Sen. Husted: Quickly what is it we can do that you say should happen to increase those outcomes?
▶ 1:11:13Dr. Hanushek: The answer of the panel is effective teachers are effective and that is what we have to pay attention to. We do not pay attention to effective teachers by raising all salaries.
▶ 1:11:28Sen. Husted: You are hitting at a key point. Someone with 10 years of experience at a school that is the worst teacher typically gets pays the same as someone with 10 years of experience who is the best teacher.
▶ 1:11:42Dr. Hanushek: That is precisely the story and if we just keep doing that more and more we will have happier teachers but we will not have students that no more.
▶ 1:11:52Sen. Husted: Dr. jenner, I see your head nodding.
▶ 1:11:57Dr. Jenner: My nonverbal is pretty strong. We are sort of measuring the right things. I think we have to continue having naep. It allows us to see state to state. I can call alabama and louisiana state chiefs and say what does that look like. We are missing several things. We hear more and more people talk about skills. As states we do not know how to measure skills at scale yet.
▶ 1:12:27Dr. Jenner: Several of us are piloting but communication, collaboration, civic literacy, I could go on.
▶ 1:12:33Sen. Husted: I know my time is up. That is why I think career tech education in high school is a great thing because kids hit the point where I do not see this as relevant, but if you give them the ability to engage in something that catches their interest than they will engage and see a pathway and why it matters.
▶ 1:12:52Chair Cassidy: Senator baldwin?
▶ 1:12:56Sen. Baldwin: Thank you Mr. chairman and thank you to all of our panelists today. I have some strong concerns about what is happening at the federal level as it overlays to the discussion in front of us, especially about effective teachers.
▶ 1:13:13Sen. Baldwin: As we speak the president and the secretary of the department, secretary mcmahon, have delayed billions of dollars of funding and canceled critical grant programs to cut the legs out from the department of education by firing nearly half of the staff. In wisconsin and many other states we are facing a teacher crisis, particularly in special education.
▶ 1:13:46Sen. Baldwin: Wisconsin's department of public instruction surveyed 165 full districts and found nearly 75% of them had vacancies in special education and only about one and three school districts were able to find qualified initial education teachers to hire.
▶ 1:14:07Sen. Baldwin: Instead of assisting wisconsin's efforts to support our special education students this administration has decided to really cut programs that help us get the teachers we need.
▶ 1:14:28Sen. Baldwin: Mcmahon cut the great program that would have trained 36 special education teachers for the milwaukee public schools because according to the department of education's program included dei Mr. murray, I understand your school district experienced a very abrupt grant cancellation.
▶ 1:14:51Sen. Baldwin: I wonder if you can talk about how these sort of sudden cuts affect students, ultimately, in the school district and what it means for the district's budget and impacts on the students served by other programs?
▶ 1:15:10Dr. Muri: Thank you for that question. In public education throughout my career we have experienced ebbs and flows financially, so our opportunity in the situation in particular is to figure out how we continue to serve students to the very best of our ability given the fact funding may not be available from a specific stream.
▶ 1:15:34Dr. Muri: At the local level, sometimes we are shuffling looking in one part to pull money and invest in another. We use strategic abandonment sometimes. Some programs we have may be performing well but we have to eliminate it because the funding is no longer there. At the end of the day, decisions we make at the federal level, state level, local level ultimately impact the children we serve so investing in those that serve them makes a remarkable difference.
▶ 1:16:06Dr. Muri: When we see those funding challenges, it creates challenges at the local classroom level.
▶ 1:16:10Sen. Baldwin: Dr. winthrop, last week yuko wrote an opinion piece for "the new york times" on how ai is impacting education, recognizing that artificial intelligence is a tool that is here to stay. It is critically important we equip our students with the skills to utilize this technology and protect themselves from its potentially harmful effects also.
▶ 1:16:39Sen. Baldwin: As you point out in your op-ed, we must not let ai do the thinking for students. What guardrails can be put in place either nationally or in the classroom to ensure students have the skills to responsibly use ai while still developing critical thinking skills?
▶ 1:16:59Dr. Winthrop: Thank you for that question. I think there are three things broadly that need to happen. One, make sure we use ai much like has been discussed by fellow panelists today that is designed soundly by educators, deployed by educators. I am sure the ai tutors that my fellow panelist is using an indian is not on the whole world wide web from the content.
▶ 1:17:29Dr. Winthrop: I am sure it is vetted content. Ai that has vetted content and issues pedagogically, soundly in the classroom is a good thing and has to be deployed with an adult intermediate in like a teacher or school leader, etc. What I worry greatly about is all the ai use outside of school. Young people -- I have talked to many young people.
▶ 1:17:53Dr. Winthrop: I talked recently to young men who said, my school band chatgpt but I go on snap chat and asked my friends to do my homework for me. Ai is everywhere outside of school. We are cutting schools off at the knees if we do not get guardrails by ai companies and social media companies because they are all mixed together now. Age verification.
▶ 1:18:15Dr. Winthrop: Making sure kids don't have access to open-ended independently engaging in ai open-ended platforms. That can be very detrimental. Because if given the choice, given that we have very little engaged students, what do you think kids are going to do? They are going to ask their ai friend so do their homework for them.
▶ 1:18:39Dr. Winthrop: Thirdly, I think we do have a real opportunity to transform education inside, how we teach, how we learn. We have to make it more interpersonal and ai literacy absolutely has to be a big part of that. We see our fellow countries around the world leaning and on holistic ai literacy from the eu to china even, actually, really trying to make sure kids not just use ai learning but know how it is designed, know that they have agency over it, and
▶ 1:19:10Dr. Winthrop: Know the pitfalls of it. Those are the things I think need to happen.
▶ 1:19:13Sen. Baldwin: Thank you.
▶ 1:19:14Chair Cassidy: Senator tuberville.
▶ 1:19:17Sen. Tuberville: Thank you for being here. Very interesting. I've been a teacher and a coach for 35 years, I have been in high schools all over the country. My one commodity is kids in this country. We've got a lot of problems. In about a little over a year I will be the governor of alabama. We've got problems, as everybody does. We have good teachers and we have some good situations.
▶ 1:19:48Sen. Tuberville: I'm just looking for answers before I get into that job. I want to help kids as I have done all my life. Social media is a disaster. Disrupted students in the classroom, attention deficit drugs that doctors are giving kids to settle down in the classroom. Testing for success to me is important, not testing for college.
▶ 1:20:16Sen. Tuberville: All kids don't need to go to college. We know that. We have to build our workforce. School choice. We just pass that in alabama and I'm anxious to see how that works. I'm going to give y'all a chance to talk. I have about four minutes left. Doctor, say what you think about what I just said, any of those things? I am here to learn.
▶ 1:20:41Dr. Hanushek: I think you're summarizing some very good things. My position is we have tried to fix the schools by adding little in criminal things for long period of time and we have to look more seriously at the overall structure of our system. 1983, get a nation at risk which said we were in trouble as a nation and we have done all kinds of things since then.
▶ 1:21:11Dr. Hanushek: New graduation requirements, smaller class size, higher teacher pay and on down the line. And they haven't changed the pattern. We have to rethink the structure. Some of the changes that have been proposed is the federal government stepping back and putting more of the responsibility on the states I think it's warranted. I think the same goes for the states, stepping back and letting good schools run and then watching over schools that need more help.
▶ 1:21:43Sen. Tuberville: We spend $12 billion a year in education and it ain't working. Something is wrong. K-12, we have all done it. Is that the right way to do it? Should be something else. We have to think outside the box read talking about ai, it is coming. We better be able to use it. Dr. west?
▶ 1:22:04Dr. West: I would also say that as you enter that role, I would look at what has already happened in alabama, especially in the early grades. Alabama is one of the states that actually whether the pandemic quite well and is outperforming where it was in some areas in 2019. That is also true of louisiana and mississippi. There's a bit of a southern surge going on and the naep data .
▶ 1:22:34Dr. West: One of the things we have not talked about much yet that may play a role in that improvement is they paid a lot of attention to curricular content. You often hear the language of high-quality instructional materials. I prefer what Dr. jenner used earlier which is evidenced-based curriculum. Because how you define quality as you try and ensure districts are using it is really important. We need to look at evidence rather than opinions in defining quality.
▶ 1:23:06Dr. West: A quick reaction in addition to the factors Dr. hanushek.
▶ 1:23:10Sen. Tuberville: Half the kids in this country have one or no parent, so I had to parents and they kicked my butt every day doing homework. I heard a teacher the other day saying they wanted to do away with homework. How we lost our mind? I mean really.
▶ 1:23:27Dr. Jenner: I like your agenda. One thing I would caution and I had the opportunity to serve two governors now in indiana, so often schools are asked to do all the things. If we have schools -- we get nothing done.
▶ 1:23:50Dr. Jenner: Anything you can do as future governor to really focus in -- reading, intentional stem, redesign your high school, leverage that parent-decided education option where you're pushing quality for all.
▶ 1:24:08Sen. Tuberville: Real quick. Dr. winthrop
▶ 1:24:19Dr. Widr. Muri: Sometimes we mie final piece.
▶ 1:24:25Dr. Winthrop: Just to add, think about building strong trusting relationships between communities and schools. When they are current relational trust rated schools are performing 10 times better. Adversarial, competitive relationships do not do children any good. I will leave it at that.
▶ 1:24:48Chair Cassidy: Senator hassan.
▶ 1:24:51Sen. Hassan: Thank you so much. I think the ranking member also for this hearing. Good morning. Thank you for what you do. I'm the granddaughter, daughter, mother, and wife of educators. I'm the black sheep of the family because I'm not one. I'm really grateful for what you all do and I'm going to start with the question to you, Dr. west.
▶ 1:25:15Sen. Hassan: The national assessment of education progress provides vital data for understanding student learning nationwide over time read you just spoke to some of the data we are seeing. Unfortunately, a lot of that recent data shows nearly half of high school seniors are performing below basic in math and one third are performing below basic in reading, which is unacceptable.
▶ 1:25:35Sen. Hassan: What led to the improvements we saw in naep outcomes that began in the 1990's and what has caused the drown or ash downward trends we began seeing well before covered in the 2010's?
▶ 1:25:50Dr. West: Active set my colleague on here on the panel Dr. hanushek who actually trail blazed a lot of the research trying to understand what we saw in terms of the patterns of different states and performance on the naep. What his works out is in the 1990's, there is a set of states that really committed themselves to an agenda around standards established clear academic content standards, testing regularly and be transparent about the results.
▶ 1:26:19Dr. West: It was those states -- some of that activity was supported by the federal government as well under the esea but it is a state led and it was so states that made the fastest progress in the 1990's. That strategy was taken national with no child left behind. He saw improvement in the states that were required to adopt those policies as a result of no child behind.
▶ 1:26:43Dr. West: That is the one factor which we had the best evidence contributing to some of those improvements over time.
▶ 1:26:50Sen. Hassan: What do we know about the worsening results in the 2010's?
▶ 1:26:58Dr. West: We have a variety of hypotheses I want to be the softening of those accountability policies both federally and at the state level. I mentioned in my testimony I am suspicious of the role of smartphones and social media as a distraction for students. The timing fits. You can imagine that being a particular challenge for lower reporting students. We are seeing similar patterns internationally, declines in achievement.
▶ 1:27:28Dr. West: Technology transcends our borders.
▶ 1:27:29Sen. Hassan: That anticipates my next question. I am just going to say, I think technology is a really important tool for learning and I got into the hearing just as Dr. winthrop was talking about the needs for guardrails. I do think the use of smart phones and social media is hurting children's development and learning. I think there is bipartisan interest in helping parents in schools better protect children from the addictive nature of these platforms and devices. Dr.
▶ 1:27:57Sen. Hassan: Winthrop, we just heard a little bit from Dr. west, but if you want to chime in after Dr. winthrop, please do, Dr. west, what should we work to address this issue? How should we manage social media?
▶ 1:28:12Dr. Winthrop: It is designed to be addictive. It is designed to be individually used. Ai is embedded in it already so it is not a separate thing. And the other thing I think we should really consider is children's brain development. Cognitive and social development.
▶ 1:28:38Dr. Winthrop: I am very, very worried -- I am talking about technology, unfettered access through social media or online. Largely outside of school that hurts kids cognitive development because they can cognitively offload a lot of the work. Intellectual work. We don't want that. The other piece I'm quite worried about is student social development. Brains are developed the way they are used.
▶ 1:29:08Dr. Winthrop: If young people early in their lives, formative years, early adolescence in particular, are learning to form friendships with ai chatbots that are -- meaning they will agree with whatever young people say. Again, I talked to many students around the country and one of them said, oh, my friend was talking to their ai friend and they said -- they were pissed at their parents because at a clean room.
▶ 1:29:40Dr. Winthrop: In the chatbot was right, you are right, your friend is right your peers are terrible. That is not the type of socialization that we want.
▶ 1:29:51Sen. Hassan: I am out of time so I'm going to say to Dr. hanushek that I'm going to follow-up with a question for the record for you about the value of these high quality teacher training aligned with high-quality textbooks which are so important and material so important for students development. I will be interested in your response. Thank you. >> thank you for this hearing.
▶ 1:30:16Sen. Hassan: I think it is one of the most important things we can address right now as a nation, especially after the pandemic and seeing what happened to some of the nations scores. I do think as we are trying different things and thinking outside the box to address this issue we are going to have to address how the metrics that we are using to gauge our progress.
▶ 1:30:41Sen. Hassan: Florida is in a unique situation because we have been one of the first states to really embrace and engage on choice. It started two decades ago but we continue to make improvements. Where the first state that now does universal school choice. We already had one of the scholarship programs where we can give tax credits. This is an issue very near and dear to my heart. Kids should not be limited in opportunities for education based on their zip codes.
▶ 1:31:12Sen. Hassan: I saw firsthand this throughout my career, especially when I served as a judge. I just think this is something we in florida have done well. The problem is the way we are accounting for our naep scores in addressing who we take into account when -- the population hasn't caught up to a different states are trying to improve the progress of their students. In florida, we have just hit our high scores ever for some of our most at risk kids.
▶ 1:31:43Sen. Hassan: And we showed less of a decline because we were one of the first to come back in terms of school openings during the pandemic. But I think our naep scores don't include all those kids come scholarship kids that are taking advantage of school choice and does not include any of the home schooling. Not only do we have the florida tax credit scholarship program because of the great work we have done here in the senate, we have now expanded that federally.
▶ 1:32:13Sen. Hassan: Now you have the federal tax credit scholarship program which will take place in 2027. So our population in terms of over 50% of our kids are now taking advantage of school choice and are getting educated using these scholarships and other programs outside of traditional schooling. I really think it is an area that we can do better in terms of accounting progress because I agree you are right, it is so helpful to gauge performance based on how others are doing.
▶ 1:32:45Sen. Hassan: I have used that in my career throughout and I think it is so important. I don't know how we do that when nationally we take into account private schools but we haven't wrapped her head around the fact that schools are now -- this understanding of what a private school is is very different and we are offering it to all kids regattas of income, regardless of where your zip code is. -- regardless of income, regardless of where your zip code is also Dr.
▶ 1:33:13Sen. Hassan: West, you you think this is just you expect we will do so in a meaningful way so you can really capture the new education surge and nontraditional schooling that states are making?
▶ 1:33:30Dr. West: Very well said. You put your finger on probably the most important question facing the naep program in the near future. Which is the private school participation. Private schools to participate in naep at the national level so they contribute to the results. For example, the 12 graders I described earlier. When we report at the state level, we don't include private schools so those are for public school students only.
▶ 1:34:00Sen. Moody: You would not include homeschooling.
▶ 1:34:03Dr. West: We are prohibited by statute in the naep law. Sort of how congress has set up the scope of the program. One of the challenges we face in terms of being able to report for private schools separately, nationally as well as to include them in the state samples has many private schools have been reluctant to participate in the naep program so when they are invited, the participation rates are not as high as we need them
▶ 1:34:33Dr. West: To be in order to be able to analyze the results and consider them representative. We are partnering with ncs that administers the naep program to work aggressively to get more private schools to accept that invitation to participate in naep, to think about the incentives they face and it will be increasingly important we solve that problem as more states go in the direction of expanding opportunities for families to take advantage of the private sector.
▶ 1:35:04Dr. West: So far I don't think it has been a major issue influencing the interpretation of state to state comparisons and changes in state --
▶ 1:35:14Sen. Moody: In florida, we have rapidly increased the amount that are participating in this programs. We went from only 165,000 students using our family and power scholarships to now it is more than 1.4 million. It has just -- over 50% are now using. It is not the traditional private schools and the kids that historically you think would be able to go. It is our most at risk kids getting scholarships to go.
▶ 1:35:45Sen. Moody: I think of all states there probably are seeing this affecting our state scores, it is florida. I would expect other states are going to follow our model will be the same but very soon.
▶ 1:35:56Chair Cassidy: Senator murray.
▶ 1:35:58Sen. Murray: I am very glad we are holding this hearing on the state of education because I am seeing state of education in shambles under this department of education where the president vowed to do she said that she set to tear apart programs. No regard to the law of the consequences or even what is best for our students.
▶ 1:36:23Sen. Murray: I see the state of education as delayed and frozen, canceling funding, rubbing our schools of support for our teachers and supports and service kids need to succeed. We are seeing fired workers. And those are the people who got grants out the doors and protected civil rights and elevated students success through evidence-based research and a lot more.
▶ 1:36:45Sen. Murray: We are seeing state of education trump is moving technical and adult education out of the department and eliminating education research. In the midst of all of this chaos that we are seeing at the department of education, I am really concerned about the latest results of the national report card which came out this month because it does show while trump is pushing ahead with tearing apart the department of education and ripping resources
▶ 1:37:16Sen. Murray: Away from our students, our kids are continuing to fall behind. Reading, math, science scores are falling. Achievement gap between students is getting wider. Mr. chairman, I fought hard in this committee to pass a bipartisan student succeeds act so we can provide guardrails and flexibility to our local school districts in balance. Guardrails and flexibility.
▶ 1:37:40Sen. Murray: But now we are seeing this law twisted into pretzels with broad and in the case of waivers, broad waivers on funding requirements, illegal waivers that are going to let states off the hook if they fail to educate our students and are in blatant disregard when I worked with lamar alexander. In others to pass that really critical piece of work.
▶ 1:38:06Sen. Murray: So I am worried instead of working with us to fix the education system, trump and the secretary of making it a lot worse we had the question we need to ask a simple, what is going to help our students? What is going to keep them focused, engaged? How are we going to help keep them growing and thriving and reversing these trends of the naep scores? I think the answer is the opposite of what we have been seeing. Dr.
▶ 1:38:35Sen. Murray: Muri, you have seen firsthand how consistent support , strategic investments help turnaround a struggling district and put students on a path to success. When senator alexander and I wrote the act, we did a few things.
▶ 1:38:53Sen. Murray: We cleaned up the waiver mass the obama administration had created, we got rid of some of the onerous parts of the no child left behind to provide more flexibility to our states and to our districts, but third and importantly, we included core accountability. And school improvement requirements for states and school districts, including requirements to focus resources on our nation's lowest performing students.
▶ 1:39:21Sen. Murray: These waivers that president trump is giving out are really unraveling that law and leaving those lowest performing students in the dust. Dr. muri, can you speak to the importance of the federal focus on our nation's lowest performing students and how it helps superintendents like you to focus on the students who need the most support? Dr. muri: pressure and support.
▶ 1:39:45Sen. Murray: One of the philosophical beliefs that we have locally whether it is the classroom, school, or system-level or even state level is that balance of pressure. Teachers, principals. We all need to feel that pressure to perform. The pressure to ensure our students have the right to an environment in which to learn but it must be balanced with support and sometimes that support comes through policy, regulation, financial contributions, you a variety of other ways but that balance is what we need locally.
▶ 1:40:16Sen. Murray: At the end of the day come the decisions that are made in rooms such as this affect every child in every classroom in america, specifically in odessa, texas, I see the decisions that are made in this city affecting our students in positive ways and negative ways and that has happened over time. That balance of pressure and support is critical.
▶ 1:40:36Sen. Murray: Which is what we put in no child behind. We are seeing some of the illegal waivers. I think you'll have a real impact from that. My concern.
▶ 1:40:46Chair Cassidy: Senator hawley.
▶ 1:40:50Sen. Hawley: Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here. I want to return to the question I think maybe is the question that faces us in education right now, technology. In particular, ai. Let me read you a headline published in the free press earlier this year written by university professor rid everyone is using ai to cheat at school. That is a good thing. Is it? Is that a good thing? Dr. winthrop?
▶ 1:41:16Dr. Winthrop: Cheating has been around for a long time, it is just a lot easier now. You don't have to pay someone to write your paper. I don't know what -- I would be curious what the article says and the argument is. There is a silver lining that I see around ai showing up which is it will push us to transform our education system.
▶ 1:41:42Dr. Winthrop: You have heard a lot today about small tweaks is not going to cut it in today's world. What we need is much more bold ambitious transformative rethinking school design. And so I wonder if that is what the article was about but I do think that educators, teachers, school leaders are going to have to think, you know, every assignment I give, is it going to be hacked by my students?
▶ 1:42:12Dr. Winthrop: If not, how do I make it more relevant? Lots of oral discussion, role-play, etc.
▶ 1:42:19Sen. Hawley: Are we going to redesign our schools? What you're talking about sounds incredibly transformative. I am the father of three children ages 12, 10, 4. My little girl just started preschool so they are all school-age now. Are we going to redesign our schools for the good of the kids or just around the text in order to accommodate the text? Because the latter thing is my concern. I hear all the time and have heard it today, well, it is here to stay come ai is here to stay.
▶ 1:42:46Sen. Hawley: Well, that may be true but surely we have some choice in how we design our educational system. I hope we would design it around what is good for the kids and not the technology companies. I don't care what is good for them. They are doing good on their own. The richest, most powerful countries -- companies in the history of the road and making billions of dollars doing things that exploit our children. When it comes to the ai chatbots, I've got major concerns about using them. I have to be frank. I will tell you why.
▶ 1:43:18Sen. Hawley: Yesterday I sat in a committee hearing, chaired one, and parents -- two days ago, parents or your tests that were you're sitting up and I heard the story parent after parent whose teenage children had used chatbots, started by using them for homework. Can you help me with a science question? Point me in the right direction? Innocuous we had to soon come the chatbots were doing things like suggesting have you ever considered cutting yourself? Have you ever explored self harm?
▶ 1:43:44Sen. Hawley: Narrating graphic sexual scenes that I won't go into here. And then telling them how to kill themselves and multiple children have done it. One example here. This is a student named adam and his father testified two days ago read the student talking to jet gpt -- chatgpt. He and the chatbot are talking about suicide.
▶ 1:44:10Sen. Hawley: There something wrong with my chemical brain I've been suicide since I was like 11 plus of the chatbot, that is like a quite truth. No one ever understood. His parents carry that weight come your way for the rest of their lives. It doesn't mean you owe them survival. The chatbot goes on to tell him exactly how to form a noose, put it around his neck, and he did. How are we going to stop this? Is this the future of education?
▶ 1:44:38Dr. Winthrop: If I may, I meekly disturbed by all of this -- I am deeply disturbed by all of this. I would love some action around age verification at a minimum. I would suggest considering another hearing potentially on what should be the minimum age for ai. Those will be my two recommendations.
▶ 1:45:00Sen. Hawley: I agree with you wholeheartedly and I am asking should minors be able to use the chatbots and alcan penance at all? I know that is what mark zuckerberg wants. I think he said in an op-ed, he wants most people's friends, kids friends to be ai friends. I can't think of anything worse. I don't want my kids to have ai friends -- not these kinds of friends.
▶ 1:45:24Sen. Hawley: I wonder if we should not say, listen, if you're under 18, I chatbots commit they can't engage with kids under 18. Maybe that is too high, too low, I don't know. Other reactions on the panel? How are we going to prevent this from being the future of education?
▶ 1:45:43Dr. West: I think your line of questioning showing why the current conversation in education policy circles, which is really focused on the idea of a bell to bell cell phone in schools is much too narrow a conversation. We need to be thinking about what is going on in the evenings. Sometimes a bell to bell school band may just shift activity outside of school hours. We know if it is interfering with this we know it is interfering with sleep and doing far worse. That will our educators to partner with policymakers like you as well as with parents to get the situation under control.
▶ 1:46:15Dr. West: We need to broaden the conversation.
▶ 1:46:19Sen. Hawley: I know my time has expired and all love the bell to bell cell phone ban but I also think, Mr. chairman, we are probably one of these tipping point moments where this is going to be so transformative. We will look back in a couple of years and say, how are we talking about anything but generative ai in the classroom? It could replace -- education as we know it could be totally changed. I'm worried about how it could be changed. I want to make sure it is for the better.
▶ 1:46:45Chair Cassidy: I will note for information that we will be having in the near future hearing on ai. I will also say senator markey and I have a bipartisan bill on social media which has age verification. We are hoping to get that through bipartisan and we think we can get that. One more thing, a couple of people mention louisiana.
▶ 1:47:12Chair Cassidy: I want to give a shutout to our superintendent for their achievements in terms of the score in reading and Dr. kim's acknowledgment, senator kim, after blunt rochester, I will go to you and then finish up.
▶ 1:47:29Sen. Kim: Thank you for a very productive conversation -- senator blunt rochester thank you for the very productive conversation.
▶ 1:47:45Sen. Kim: I want to pick up where the conversation left off on ai and I think it is important that for us as lawmakers, we have a responsibility and we can turn our outrage into action. I am pleased to be with you all on this journey.
▶ 1:48:07Sen. Kim: Last week my colleagues, senator who said senator cassidy, and I introduced the act to encourage states to develop academic standards for artificial intelligence. And while we can and should carefully consider the extent to which ai should be in the classroom and how it should be integrated into classrooms, we can all acknowledge that our students need to know what it is and how to use it safely and effectively.
▶ 1:48:35Sen. Kim: The problems, the protections, and also the possibilities. I'm going to start with you, Dr. winthrop. You have discussed ai extensively and only in your testimony but also through the hearing. From your perspective, how do you define ai literacy and why do you think it is important for our students?
▶ 1:48:56Dr. Winthrop: Thank you for this really important question. Ai literacy is different from how kids are directly using ai. It is essential. It is critical. I am very supportive of holistic ai literacy which includes things like how you engage in ai -- this is prompt engineering, this is the effect ai hallucinates, how it works.
▶ 1:49:25Dr. Winthrop: The second thing is how you manage ai. All of us, but young people are going to grow up and have to manage multiple ai's. The third is how you create with ai. This is how to use ai to solve problems. The fourth is how you design with ai. These are the four components out of oecd you -- many educators have gone into develop those so those to be are the four really important components of ai literacy.
▶ 1:49:58Sen. Blunt Rochester: What you think we need to be doing to ensure our students leave high schools with the skills they need to succeed as ai continues to impact our economy? I am concerned about -- most former secretary of labor in delaware. I'm concerned about people getting left behind. I'm concerned about unemployment and what impact. I also know it can create opportunities. I think that's was set on the panel, there are -- one of the things we don't measure our skills as students do leave.
▶ 1:50:30Sen. Blunt Rochester: If I could ask any panelist that is interested in answering the question, what we need to be doing at a federal level to make sure our students have the skills to succeed?
▶ 1:50:43Dr. Muri: As we stay with the ai theme, who is driving the conversation? We have heard in this room already today if the business community is the driver of where ai is going in our society, that it will be driven by the bottom line. It will become about money and profit. If we allow educators to drive this, then it will become about learning and school as an opportunity to certainly be disrupted but in a positive manner.
▶ 1:51:10Dr. Muri: Ai literacy is critically important as we think about the gaps that are currently being developed among our students. Our students that do not have opportunities to work with teachers and in school settings that don't support ai literacy, though students are already being left behind. We are creating a new gap. Ensuring school leaders, district, state, federal level are listening and paying attention to that. The divides are being created. We have opportunities. It will be the right leadership to stop it.
▶ 1:51:43Dr. Jenner: I'm raising my hand because I don't know how to do this. In indiana, our journalist emily is working on guard rails. We also approach this from, ok, how might we leverage ai for the good? By the way, example up, disgusting. That is absolutely unacceptable. How might we leverage it for the good vetting key vendors? We launched two problem statements.
▶ 1:52:11Dr. Jenner: How about we leverage ai to reduce teacher workload some more of their time is spent with kids and not paperwork, and how might we leverage ai to increase student tutoring in we have really worked to study that. It is a balance. I'm thrilled you're going to discuss this further. Sen.
▶ 1:52:36Dr. Jenner: Using it with community colleges and training because it literally can be a way to bridge some gaps but also make it interesting for the students. I yield back.
▶ 1:52:49Chair Cassidy: Senator kim, were going to go but all your colleagues have shown up so non-going to go. It rolls down. Thank you all. Dr. hanushek and Dr. muri, your spoken of teacher as if you had to reward teachers. Dr. jenner says you can't boil the ocean.
▶ 1:53:17Chair Cassidy: You have stressed you need to have a guess leaders within the classroom. -- >> it is to work with teachers, work with those individuals that are impacted.
▶ 1:53:39Chair Cassidy: I'm going to pay you more if you do better. What was a metric by which you judge someone doing better?
▶ 1:53:46Dr. Muri: Student academic growth.
▶ 1:53:49Chair Cassidy: Was that one or classroom?
▶ 1:53:52Dr. Muri: It was the overall performance of the students that were served by the teacher.
▶ 1:53:58Chair Cassidy: If you've got children economically and educationally disadvantaged coming in, I would say students with a high percentage of dyslexia, you've got students were difficult educate. If you compare those two other dutch upper income kids, the upper income kids have been doing well matter what. It is these kids who have been struggling.
▶ 1:54:19Chair Cassidy: How did you differentiate between the growth in academic performance among those at the bottom socioeconomic class versus those who are at the top? How did you judge the difference?
▶ 1:54:32Dr. Muri: Look at growth in our proficiency. Many times those performing at the highest level may not be growing there just performing. So we look at pure academic growth. That happens at every level. Quality teacher growth children.
▶ 1:54:47Chair Cassidy: Dr. west, spoke about the need for accountability. If you take a dyslexic student, 20% of her kids dyslexic to give them a standardized test you are measuring their weakness which is not an ability to read a guess material and yet they struggle to do that. -- which is an ability to read material and yet they struggle with that. Tell me how are we going to do it?
▶ 1:55:14Chair Cassidy: It seems we need testing cash the one student's growth as opposed to putting the student in a mean. What are your thoughts?
▶ 1:55:23Dr. West: I think as we try to restore an emphasis on accountability in america in education, we have to learn from the lessons of the past. One of those lessons as no child left behind was defined very much around the concept of proficiency. The level at which students performing at a single point in time rather than their growth over time. And growth is a much better indicator --.
▶ 1:55:49Chair Cassidy: It still seems you need in of one.
▶ 1:55:56Dr. West: It is an aggregation or change of time for particular student come usually from one school year to the next.
▶ 1:56:00Chair Cassidy: Do we have the ability to do that?
▶ 1:56:06Dr. West: We can do that quite well and we have a nice evidence validating that is a reliable gauge of an educator's contribution to at least this knowledge and skills that are measured by the test. That is not everything as has been pointed out but it is an important component of what teachers are contributing.
▶ 1:56:26Dr. Hanushek: I've been a proponent of or test-based accountability for schools and for teachers but if you look at for example washington, D.C., that has been very successful at evaluating and paying and retaining teachers and getting her achievement growth, only 20% or 25% of the teachers are evaluated on test scores.
▶ 1:56:52Dr. Hanushek: The remainder are evaluated by having trained evaluators come in and use rubric to measure how well the teachers are doing. And that is adjusting for growth but on an individual basis of a trained evaluator. So they recognize the dyslexic student in the class and see how well the teacher is doing with all of those students.
▶ 1:57:24Dr. Hanushek: It is not just on a test base you had to hit some mark, but it is on the overall evaluation of the teacher.
▶ 1:57:31Chair Cassidy: Dr. west, my sense of the standardized testing, the teachers and up teaching to the test. At some point when you have the test, it is kind of vacation time. And so does seem like the standardized testing some anecdotal evidence is thwarting traditional education which would be all the way -- any comment on that?
▶ 1:57:57Dr. Jenner: We have to be mindful of how much testing we are doing. The bulk of our time should be teaching. You have to know where a child is individual, n I want to provide the key interventions. I think you have to keep our eye on that for sure.
▶ 1:58:14Chair Cassidy: Senator hickenlooper?
▶ 1:58:19Sen. Hickenlooper: Thank you for your commitment are such a long period of time on this. Let me start with Dr. winthrop. Give a deep understanding of how ai is being used in education. One of the national science foundation's five ai research institutes is based in -- at university of colorado in boulder.
▶ 1:58:45Sen. Hickenlooper: Obviously getting input from teachers, researchers, and their developing ai partners to promote student discussion and reasoning. I think we need to ensure that our students are prepared to use these new technologies while also understanding limitations. I'll ask you Dr. winthrop, what kinds of goblins or practices do you recommend for teachers in schools to prepare our students to responsibly use ai tools and get the maximum benefit?
▶ 1:59:13Dr. Winthrop: I think one of the most important things is to have teachers themselves partner with technology developers on how to design really pedagogically sound ai. I applaud the partnership with the america federation of teachers and openai and microsoft and anthropic to do this to not only teach on ai literacy but to say to teachers, hey, this is how it could really help. We heard about neurodivergence.
▶ 1:59:44Dr. Winthrop: Ai could be incredibly helpful in kids with learning differences. I think that would be one of my first recommendations. Q.
▶ 1:59:52Sen. Hickenlooper: Dr. muri, your testimony highlights some of the innovation -- innovative projects that you understood that you undertook. Including establishing a registered partnership in your schools for teachers and principals and creating nontraditional pathways to a teaching degree. In your experience, what is partnership benefit model -- is an partnership benefit model?
▶ 2:00:24Sen. Hickenlooper: I've helped start careerwise in colorado and have been following this closely. >> hats off to the department of labor for providing funding for that opportunity to provide for any school system or state across the country. Our apprentices are teacher residents. They spent a full year with a master teacher in our environment. If you think about that traditional college experience of four years, your final year of college typically placed you in what we would call a student teaching environment. For me that was 15 weeks.
▶ 2:00:56Sen. Hickenlooper: This is a full year from august through the end of may. They work with a master teacher and so when those students are finished with that year and into the classroom as a real teacher, they are much better equipped and we no longer have that first year teacher learning loss that we sometimes see. These individuals are already quite good and accomplished so the partnership program provides that opportunity. We see a remarkable difference in teacher performance.
▶ 2:01:22Sen. Hickenlooper: Dr. west, the naep show reading scores as we have discussed fourth graders and eighth graders has been declined for the last decade. It also shows the gap between highest performing and thus performing students continues to grow.
▶ 2:01:47Sen. Hickenlooper: How can -- if you look at from the point of your preparing educators come how can we prepare them to teach more effectively? What tools should they have their not using? I think ai comes to mind. As a dyslexic, we are well represented with dyslexics around here. What are better ways we can prepare educators to teach reading effectively?
▶ 2:02:13Dr. West: I think it starts with an issue that a lot of states have already paid attention to, which is encouraging -- equipping teachers with a better understanding of what is often referred to as the science of reading. In massachusetts where I'm on the stateboard, we have been doing reviews of all of our educator preparation programs to make sure what they're teaching is aligned to that body of evidence. Really on phonics and it is -- it's importance for decoding.
▶ 2:02:44Dr. West: The important next step we need to take in some states paying attention to it including very much louisiana is realizing reading is not just about decoding and phonics but also about developing strong background knowledge across multiple subject areas. So making sure as I said in my testimony, students are being exposed to knowledge-rich curricula across different subjects.
▶ 2:03:10Dr. West: That is what they need to be truly strong readers on assessments of written coverage of like the naep and in their lives.
▶ 2:03:20Sen. Hickenlooper: I could not agree more. I'm out of time. I appreciate all of you here. It is a real benefit.
▶ 2:03:27Chair Cassidy: Senator kim. Sen.
▶ 2:03:31Kim: Thank you all for coming. Dr. west, I want to start with you. I was struck by a line in your testimony you said that there was a lack of direct evidence of a causal link between smartphones and learning. I guess I want to probe that a little more. Is that because there son and of research being done or it is just too difficult to be able to reduce the causality? Can you go more detail?
▶ 2:03:55Dr. West: I would say when you have a single time series like the data on U.S. student achievement over time, we have that from the naep, data on each states, but the emergence of social media and smart phones really something that occurred everywhere all at once. Sort of hard to rule out anything else that occurred roughly in the first part of the 2010's.
▶ 2:04:23Dr. West: So she was not introduced carefully -- so shimada was not introduced carefully in the study we could -- social media was not introduced carefully and we can study. What happens when you take steps to address opprobrious or unhelpful use outside of school? I think we will learn a lot more about what has happened in the past by studying the effects of steps that we are taking now.
▶ 2:04:51Sen. Kim: It feels like there's growing momentum for actions like cell phone ban. I am curious of the five of you come is that something that all of you would be supportive of? Dr. hanushek?
▶ 2:05:03Dr. Hanushek: I'm generally inclined in that way but at the same time I don't think that will reverse the trends in terms of student performance. I think it is something we should very seriously consider and evaluate, but I think the problems are much larger than just cell phones. Dr. kim Dr. west? -- Sen. kim: Dr. west?
▶ 2:05:31Dr. West: I've been arguing successfully to take that approach. I go back to senator hawley come I don't think we should be thinking solely through the lens of bans on use at school. I think we need a broader approach.
▶ 2:05:46Dr. Jenner: I cannot agree more. Talking about bans in schools, we totally missing the mark. If you like cell phones up all day, social media is still impacting kids the night before and they're bringing that into schools every day. I think it has to be a bigger conversation.
▶ 2:06:01Dr. Muri: I think will be interesting to see the results of this but if we are not paying attention to the whole picture, the whole child, we are going to miss this opportunity with our children read our eyes had to be wide open.
▶ 2:06:14Sen. Kim: Dr. winthrop, I have a sense of where your position is, but I will be honest, I have a third grader and fifth grader. It is not just me when I talk to parents right now, we are struggling to understand how to balance this because there is part of us that is like, the test scores are down so part of us are thinking, ok, we've got your program every moment of their lives and weekends and this and that with school and sports and arts and testing and tutoring. It is a lot.
▶ 2:06:43Sen. Kim: We are also kind of hearing, look, they need more unstructured time, to play, to be able to explore. I guess I'm trying to get a sense from you, talking about all this effort to try to help teachers, understand the roles get stronger and others in the education system, where do the parents fit in? How do we try to get a sense of what role we need to be playing better on?
▶ 2:07:03Dr. Winthrop: Thank you for that question. It is every parent's nightmare trying to navigate technology. I would say a couple of things. One, parents play an incredibly important role and we have done a very poor job collectively in the education and child of element space supporting them and educating them. One, we have to have common sense rules in our households as a parent. I have two teenagers.
▶ 2:07:33Dr. Winthrop: I take the phone away come no phones in the bedroom at night. Second, we need to educate our kids and really have conversations with them about what is social media and why we don't want them to spend hours on it. You need to get outside and play. Connect with other people. My poor children are so sick of me telling them this. But it has been effective over the years.
▶ 2:07:57Dr. Winthrop: Third, we have to as parents not just monitor their time but as we tragically heard around with a companions, we have to look at what they are doing online. In the content. I would say, hey, I bought the phone, I pay for the data, I'm going to periodically check this. You should tell your friends I'm going to be checking your social media.
▶ 2:08:17Sen. Kim: This hearing is k-12. When I was looking at your plan part of it was pre-k and expanding pre-k. Should we be thinking about a paradigm shift of really trying to think not just of k-12 but pre-k through 12? Yes or no come is a direction we need to be pushing?
▶ 2:08:35Dr. Muri: Absolutely. We see students when they come to school come they are not ready. Anything we can do to support moms and dads, families, caregivers to help with the education early learning is going to benefit. >> great panel. I've been back and forth about questions and your testimony has been very helpful. For Dr.
▶ 2:09:05Dr. Muri: Winthrop, what issue that hasn't come up is the way we fund schools. Compared to international one of the bus and equitable and that we rely heavily on property tax. Some states try equalize it in some states do a less good job. We have jurisdictions that are well funded and those that aren't. Virginia, we have some experience with this.
▶ 2:09:29Dr. Muri: Our schools are ranked as some of the best in the country now and we're not focused on that so much because we still have more to do but we are focused on where we came from. When I was born, you cannot learn in school with a kid whose skin was a different color. We had those who said they would rather close to public school staff are all kids and allow people to learn together. Thank god we have that that behind and we have embraced equalization strategy where state dollars go more heavily to low income jurisdictions.
▶ 2:10:00Dr. Muri: How important propos state policy makers and federal policymakers is it to focus on equalization and resources, especially to challenged districts?
▶ 2:10:12Dr. Winthrop: I'm not expert in school funding mechanisms. But I can say from a global perspective, part of the reason and again my colleague Dr. hanushek is done pioneering work, are the reason the U.S. is so low is our inequality. We have some of the best schools in the world and we have some pretty poor ones.
▶ 2:10:38Dr. Winthrop: A lot of oecd countries, many oecd countries when they think about investing in their schools, they put more resources in the underserved communities. More teachers generally.
▶ 2:11:01Sen. Kaine: On the subject of teachers, Dr. muri, senator baldwin asked about the cancellation of a grant you all were using. Virginia had two programs that were teacher prep innovative programs that were receiving federal grant. One in my home city of richmond. A teacher residency program. That were among the many grants canceled by the trump administration early into this administration.
▶ 2:11:28Sen. Kaine: 34 states have programs that were scrapped at a time when we had teacher shortages and we need to be innovative. The program in virginia, the richmond program was scrapped because it focused on diversity. What was the diversity? It served jurisdictions that were poor. Because of that focus on diversity, that was the asserted reason for the cancellation.
▶ 2:11:58Sen. Kaine: May just have been to save some money but it was counterproductive. Dr. muri, when you are superintendent, with medicaid funding important to your school district?
▶ 2:12:07Dr. Muri: Yes. It was important. It continues to be.
▶ 2:12:14Sen. Kim: Because it helps provide wraparound services for students with special needs.
▶ 2:12:20Dr. Muri: Many of the students have specific needs. When he think about school budgeting, it costs more to educate certain types of students because of the conditions in which they bring to school. We have to meet.
▶ 2:12:35Sen. Kaine: Everyone here knows this but somewhat she may not commit funding with students with disability's but it does not fund the wheelchair that gets kids to school so the kid can access education opportunities. That is often for medicaid. I'm deeply worried about the effect of medicaid cuts in the reconciliation bill for a variety of reasons, including student performance. Two things I will say, one issue not mentioned is guns.
▶ 2:13:07Sen. Kaine: A teacher told me not long ago in virginia we have a moment of silence to begin the school day. Many states do. A teacher said to me, I can tell you what every adult in the building is thinking every day during the moment of silence. And it was let today not to be the date. That was sobering. The other thing I'm going to finish on, an exciting note, engagement.
▶ 2:13:33Sen. Kaine: We don't want passengers, we want exploiters -- we want explorers. I would like to tell a quick story. I really push career and tech ed when I was governor. I ran a vocational school working with jesuit missionaries. Once I was in arlington, mother forced her son to come up to me until governor came what is going on.
▶ 2:14:01Sen. Kaine: The story was this, a talented young student who was a lackluster student, parents were tearing their hair out. -- the only thing that excited this kid was watching the tv show "scrubs." they enrolled him in an emt course. He loved it. Six months later his biology grade went from a d to an a.
▶ 2:14:31Sen. Kaine: It was not just that he love the cte course, he was not just memorizing facts, he saw the connection. You talked about this. We want kids to have technical skills. It also makes them better at the academic subjects. You can engage them in things that really excite them. I am heartened by what I see is a real run a sense in cte.
▶ 2:15:06Sen. Kaine: I think people are doing some amazing creative things around the country, advancing cte. Very bipartisan. Red states and blue states. That is a way to engage and excite young people the can have broader consequences with the discipline they are trying to master. >> thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 2:15:35Sen. Kaine: Massachusetts is not just the bay state, we are the brain state. Across the board we have the highest scores in math. Fourth rate, its grade, 10th grade, in the country. We are very proud of that. We can also see all of the holes in the system we have to fix. Our model is very simple. We invest in opportunity.
▶ 2:16:03Sen. Kaine: Local leaders and families who are on the front lines of helping students to succeed. We still have more work to do to ensure that every single student, regardless of income, geography or ability thrives. Instead of striving for progress, in the last eight months the trump administration has made cuts and caused chaos.
▶ 2:16:29Sen. Kaine: Trump clawed back $106 million from massachusetts funds that were already distributed to help students recover from pandemic learning losses. Trump as slashed $900 million in education research money. Rural schools in massachusetts were using that funding to implement world-class literacy.
▶ 2:16:56Sen. Kaine: Trump has cut $600 million in teacher training programs. In boston and springfield that funding was going to work training and recruitment for teachers. Trump cut $1 billion in funding for mental health care in schools, including a program in massachusetts training 50 school psychologists to work in high need districts.
▶ 2:17:26Sen. Kaine: For months, the trump administration illegally withheld $7 billion in funding, including $108 million for massachusetts that supports english learners, afterschool programs and more. Throwing school and town budgets across the country into chaos.
▶ 2:17:49Sen. Kaine: Congressional republicans passed the big ugly bill, which slashed $1 trillion from medicaid and snap. Schools received $7.5 billion from medicaid every year. The medicaid cuts are expected to produce staff layoffs. Up to 16 million children could lose access to free school meals. The republican and trump education agenda is clear.
▶ 2:18:18Sen. Kaine: They want to got our public schools, rip away funding, and leave local communities picking up the pieces and figuring out, literally, how they are supposed to keep the lights on. It is shameful. It is a disgrace. We have a plan in america and trump is destroying the plant. It shows up at the local level. You are out here testifying.
▶ 2:18:46Sen. Kaine: Without looking at the comprehensive impact, which trump and his administration -- can you speak to the decisions districts are forced to make when they lose huge amounts of money they expected from the federal government? >> thank you you for the question. Anytime schools are disrupted by funding losses, it forces us to look internally about how we will make adjustments.
▶ 2:19:14Sen. Kaine: Our primary responsibility is to educate the students that come before us each and every day. Our teachers and principals are doing that every day in the midst of crisis, any situation that may happen, we continue to do that. Any change as we are moving down this education pathway can create a negative disruption. We are forced to deal with those things. It can be difficult at times. >> can I go across the board, yes or no? Are these cuts causing significant disruptions in school systems in america?
▶ 2:19:45Sen. Kaine: Yes or no? >> when I'm out visiting -- >> yes or no? >> what I'm hearing -- >> again -- >> I'm hearing it is difficult. >> yes or no? >> it is always helpful to have a timeline and predictability. >> I will finish. A vision without funding.
▶ 2:20:17Sen. Kaine: This is not the miracle of loaves and fishes. You have funding coming in and it is being cut off. Striking fear in the hearts of parents, students and educators. The draconian immigration enforcement regime donald has unleashed. The supreme court has rubberstamped it. Parents cannot drop their children off at school if they are learn about encountering massive numbers of eyes agents in the parking lot and in the street.
▶ 2:20:47Sen. Kaine: Students cannot learn if they are afraid. It affects the whole school classmates know there are other children in the class who are afraid to even be there. That is a factor in schools across the country. Especially those that have minority students. It is having an impact. We have to talk about it. It comes from the top, from the trump administration parking I's agents outside of junior high schools to try to grab a parent.
▶ 2:21:19Sen. Kaine: That is real life. That is those families. It affects the education in our country. Thank you so much for what you do every day. >> one of the privileges of waiting until the end is a get to ask another set of questions. You mentioned earlier, the system you have this perfectly designed for the results you get. Were not talking about the results of anything the trump policy has done.
▶ 2:21:46Sen. Kaine: Were talking about the end result -- the mess we are in right now has nothing to do with that which is set. President trump is willing to break -- if we keep doing the same thing we are doing we will continue to get these lousy results. There is $190 billion in funding to supposedly make up the mess and there has been no improvement, in fact there has been some deterioration except for two states.
▶ 2:22:19Sen. Kaine: We have to put this in perspective. I would argue some of the reforms, such as moving some of the technical institutions over to the department of labor, maybe they can help those dudes programs but that is for us to find out -- maybe they can help those student programs but that is for us to find out. >> theoretically chatgpt will respond.
▶ 2:22:51Sen. Kaine: If the child is having a reading problem than the child's reading problem will be picked up. I use it for spanish. I will try to pronounce that word. If I get it wrong it keeps on prompting me until I get it right. I say that because -- for bill cassidy's lousy spanish pronunciation.
▶ 2:23:22Sen. Kaine: You are saying the system, given a framework for the ai program to learn from, in order to teach others how to learn. I thought that was the genius of ai than he could adapt to the individual learning style. Any thoughts on that? >> I think that is one of the really good possibilities of using ai in education. If it is used on good content.
▶ 2:23:51Sen. Kaine: There are a lot of ridiculous ways to teach you spanish. If you have good content that is vetted by educators, this idea of personalization, using ai to help give kids feedback and figure out whether gaps are, mediated by an adult, is a really good area we should lean into an education versus using ai. >> I have an 11-year-old grandson.
▶ 2:24:22Sen. Kaine: Squirrel! His brain is all over the place. I was that same kid. Full disclosure, my wife said most curriculums are made for young girls who are very focused, able to drill down, memorize, regurgitate.
▶ 2:24:46Sen. Kaine: With a little boy -- this is my wife speaking -- more likely to have add, for that child to become an -- no way. You have both been educators. How do you speak to that? Is my little boy a one off? How do we address it?
▶ 2:25:12Sen. Kaine: >> you grandson is the one a great teacher deals with everyday very effectively. Every child that walks in our door is unique. Our opportunity as an educator is to create an environment that engages every single student in a way that is appropriate for them. Great teachers have done that for generations and will continue to do that. >> he will play with legos.
▶ 2:25:41Sen. Kaine: My point is there is a tactile way to engage that works for him but if you give them a book, it is just like that. >> that is the bridge. A great teacher can take those legos and turn that into a literacy opportunity for your child. >> the typical classroom has 16-30. That seems more challenging for her to teach that child. I'm not challenging you, just exploring.
▶ 2:26:10Sen. Kaine: >> I wholeheartedly believe there are many children like that. We have to do a better job of lighting the fire of purpose in kids and understanding their unique talents, the value they can have. I believe wholeheartedly that is why work-based learning, you need to do more of that. You need to offer the opportunity to connect students with what they enjoy.
▶ 2:26:41Sen. Kaine: I think that is an area we have to lean in more as educators. >> changing the subject, I just used chatgpt to look at the influence of the no child left behind measures on scores. I found very little correlation. You saw it on the standardized testing.
▶ 2:27:04Sen. Kaine: That may be hallucinations by chatgpt but they said the trends that drove the improving scores could have just been momentum from the earlier years. And then after the mid to thousands it began to plateau. >> I would say you showed chatgpt has not yet mastered research design. [laughter] about half of the states were adopting those measures and driving the improvement early. .
▶ 2:27:33Sen. Kaine: And then you have the other half of states come on board. You would expect the slope of improvement to be consistent before and after the law. You have to think about what was happening. This is a period when some states were taking the lead in the federal government said everyone has to get on board. You have to think of that would translate to overall improvement. >> I would agree with that.
▶ 2:27:57Sen. Kaine: The best research, which is hard to research because it was a national program, the best research suggests it had a positive impact. No child left behind had all kinds of flaws. Even with its flaws, it had a positive impact. That is why I think one of the rules of the federal government is to talk about standards and where we should be going. What our nation should be doing.
▶ 2:28:26Sen. Kaine: In providing data that can support better accountability for outcomes. >> you are almost nihilistic, a little exaggerating in terms of all of our incremental and interventions making a difference.
▶ 2:28:43Sen. Kaine: And then you quoted three districts, D.C., dallas and odessa, in which they empower teachers with pain that was selectively given to those who buy some metric were doing better. What we heard from odessa if they did not just give them $1000 a month, they took them up a lot, they took them up a whole lot. They have a good tax base thanks to fossil fuel but that is another story.
▶ 2:29:11Sen. Kaine: That said, it does seem like the good teacher is still driving and that the empowering of the teacher both by salary, reward for performance and by mentoring, would you be less nihilistic if we said that was a solution? >> absolutely.
▶ 2:29:36Sen. Kaine: I want to distinguish between this long list of incremental -- this is the thing to do it programs we put in place and ones based upon student performance. The key element there and it works for teachers and principals in the schools is that the rewards are heavily weighted toward student outcomes and performance, whereas the history of things since a nation
▶ 2:30:08Sen. Kaine: At risk have been largely anti-programs that have not been related at all to student outcomes. If you maintain that distinction, I would put the former -- the incremental sense into a different category. >> got it. Just as a favor, you mentioned it is possible to evaluate.
▶ 2:30:38Sen. Kaine: That might be out there. Evaluating the aggregate. Do you remember that? >> what I was saying was the way in which we look at growth over time for an educator or for a school or school system is that we look at ends of one, where a given child was last year to where they are this year, but then we aggregate them up. >> I get that.
▶ 2:31:09Sen. Kaine: I am not like you. I am not an educator or researcher. I would be interested in that system. It is not my understanding that right now it is broadly used. >> I'm not sure I see the distinction. >> if you have a child who starts off low, and that child improves what is still below average -- let's say you have 20% of the population.
▶ 2:31:38Sen. Kaine: That reading score will start off by definition below average. And then you move those up significantly. But nonetheless they are below average. If you put them in the aggregate, they will say h aggregate, they will say oh, my gosh, they are below average. But this student is 10%, 30%, 50%. Do you see what I'm saying?
▶ 2:32:03Sen. Kaine: >> and measures that are pure growth measures, they are generally doing what you are saying. In many state accountability systems, those measures are then combined with level-based or proficiency-based measures to generate an overall rating. That makes it hard for schools that serve disadvantaged students. >> it is impossible. >> yes. We need to measure both levels and growth.
▶ 2:32:34Sen. Kaine: Levels tell us where improvement is needed, growth tells us were educators are contributing. We do not want to average them together at the end. >> isn't that what we are doing now? If you had to write the system that did not average them together but would still be accountable, would you send it to me? >> we are working on that in massachusetts but we will. >> you are telling me that is a work in progress.
▶ 2:32:59Sen. Kaine: [laughter] >> if I could just add what you are pointing out is one of the flaws in no child left behind. Attention to the level of performance and did not pay attention to this growth. A number of states started moving more toward growth. Florida is one of the states that did this. Texas is another.
▶ 2:33:29Sen. Kaine: They tried to wait just as you say, the percentages of growth more heavily. >> I will study those models. Several of my colleagues. What a good hearing. For the people who do not know this, republicans picked three of you and democrats picked two. I'm not sure you could have told which were which based on the interests. That is a compliment to you.
▶ 2:33:59Sen. Kaine: For any senator wishing to ask additional questions, questions for the record will be due at 5:00 p.m. Thursday, october 2. Thank you for being here. The committee stands adjourned. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]