Chair Cassidy Delivers Remarks During Hearing on State of K-12 Education

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, delivered remarks during today's hearing on the troubling state of K-12 education. According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 12th graders are leaving high school with the lowest levels of math and reading scores ever recorded.

Click here to watch the hearing live.

Cassidy's speech as prepared for delivery can be found below:

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will please come to order.

The K-12 system is potentially one of the most powerful tools we have to lift children out of poverty, giving them a chance at success.

Education transforms and it can transform a child, a family, and even a country's future.

Through education, a child can achieve the American dream.

Without access to a quality education, that child has a much worse life.

A child who doesn't learn how to read well is more likely to turn to crime, and less likely to graduate high school, and find a job.

If we want the United States to succeed, we need children to succeed. And for children to succeed, they need to know how to read.

So, it should concern us all that students' reading, math and science levels have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels.

The scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released last week were the lowest we've seen in over 30 years. Only one-third of high school seniors are at a proficient reading level. Nearly 60% of employers say high school graduates are not job ready.

Students are leaving high school unable to read and unprepared for the workforce. We need to act so children are not left behind.

In August, I joined Secretary McMahon and other educational leaders in Louisiana for a roundtable discussion on how to strengthen literacy. One thing we discussed was Louisiana's successful implementation of evidence-based strategies in the classroom, like the "science of reading," and how these efforts can be replicated nationwide.

The lesson is clear: success in education is not determined by how much we spend, but by who makes the decision and how wisely resources are directed. When states and local communities are empowered to tailor solutions to meet the unique needs of students, innovation follows.

It's important to recognize that not all children learn the same way. In medicine, we used to treat all people with cancer in the same manner with limited results. Now, we have specialized care for each type of cancer, dramatically improving patient outcomes. We need the same approach with improving literacy.

This includes ensuring federal resources can be used towards early-detection screening for learning needs, like dyslexia, that cause students to struggle reading.

I'm grateful President Trump and Secretary McMahon are committed to reforming our broken education system so that it works better for American students and their family.

They understand the simple truth that parents, not Washington bureaucrats, know their child best. So, it should be the parents making the decisions regarding their child's education.

School choice empowers parents to free children from failing schools and give them the best education possible.

And by the way, for parents, that is what you want more than anything-to give your child a better education to have a better life than you yourself had.

I thank President Trump and Senator Tim Scott for working with me to pass the first federal school choice legislation in history, our Educational Choice for Children's Act.

I'm looking forward to hearing our witnesses' ideas on how we can improve K-12 education so that our children and our country can have a brighter future.

With that, I recognize Senator Sanders.