At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) questioned Education Sec. Linda McMahon about antisemitism on college campuses.
00:00Madam Secretary, I'm going to add my voice of concern with Senator Collins, and you and I have talked about this on the zeroing out, the elimination of the TRIO and GEAR UP programs.
00:10You mentioned that I actually did work in one of these programs many years ago.
00:15But my state and many of our states, but mine in particular, I think, has a lot of first-time college goers, a lot of students that don't have the aspirational goals either within their family.
00:26They're not looking at how they can achieve education or a certificate or whatever, and that's where I think these programs have been particularly useful.
00:36So I would encourage that we look at this again, and we certainly will as a committee because all of us have this issue within our states in terms of that first-time college goer or student that really needs the extra push, the camaraderie, the community that a lot of these –
00:54I've gone to their graduations and been their speaker, and it's really quite delightful to see how far they've come in a short period of time.
01:03So I'm going to move on from that question.
01:05I want to ask on anti-Semitism.
01:07I am – the morning before our education last year, there were protesters at Columbia University.
01:17I asked the then-secretary, how many people from the Office of Civil Rights have you had actually on the campus to see what's occurring there,
01:25to see what kind of violation of civil rights might be occurring on the Columbia University campus?
01:29And apparently there was nobody there from the Office of Civil Rights.
01:33Your budget proposes to decrease the Office of Civil Rights.
01:37How are you – this is not a problem that's going away on our college campuses.
01:43We see it now.
01:45Now we've got a little bit of a break.
01:46It's the summer.
01:48How are you going to make sure that the department is taking to ensure that all students,
01:52and in this particular case Jewish students, are able to learn in an environment free from intimidation?
01:58Well, thank you very much, Senator Capito.
02:01I think it is pretty evident from the actions that we have taken relative to Columbia and look into Harvard as well
02:10and fulfilling the promise that President Trump made when he was campaigning that he would not tolerate anti-Semitism on our campuses
02:18or discrimination of any kind.
02:21So I have personally met with, first, Katrina Armstrong, who was the president of Columbia when the first issue was addressed,
02:30and now with the second, Claire Shipman, who is there now.
02:34We've talked about the issues on Columbia's campuses, and we have worked with them, I believe, in how we can solve some of these issues.
02:43They have to set their policies and their priorities, and they have to enforce them.
02:47They can't allow encampments on campuses.
02:49They can't allow students to come on dressed with masks so that you can't identify these students.
02:55I think they have to also vet the students who are coming in better to see what kind of backgrounds that they have.
03:02Even professors who come on campuses, are they teaching ideology or more in subjects?
03:07So I personally have done this in conversations with these presidents, with other presidents of universities,
03:13to understand what their policies are.
03:16Our Office of Civil Rights has opened many cases looking at anti-Semitism,
03:20and we are actively enforcing that, as well as we have defunded some of Columbia's programs,
03:29$400 million there and about $2.2 billion with Harvard.
03:34We're saying we mean business.
03:36These programs and policies have to have teeth.
03:39They have to be enforced.
03:40No student should have to go on campus and be afraid to go to class.
03:44All right.
03:44Well, I agree with the substance of what you're saying.
03:47My concern is by cutting so much out of that particular – you're one person.
03:52You need the support and the backup of that office to be able to investigate these cases.
03:57So I'll leave it at that.
03:58Let's talk about literacy, because I mentioned it in my opening statement.
04:01These test scores are very troubling, I think, and you want to try to figure out how do we attribute to this.
04:11It's not like there's not great teachers everywhere all around this country trying to figure out how to get their students' achievement moving up in the right direction.
04:19I will say this, my state of West Virginia, the state legislature, recognizing this, did allocate additional funds for reading teachers in the very early grades one through three to try to move our scores up,
04:33because we have traditionally lower scores.
04:35We did actually make – that did make a difference.
04:37Having that extra teacher in the classroom where you can pull a child aside, give them that one-on-one attention, really does make a difference.
04:45How are – how is the budget that you've put together – is the answer to push it down to the states so that they can make those differences with our literacy and our math scores that we're falling behind?
05:00I think it's a chief concern.
05:03Well, certainly, I think that just what you were talking about, at your state level, you put an extra teacher in the classroom because you recognize the need there.
05:12I think that will make an incredible difference.
05:15You know, there have been a lot of programs that have been tried to make sure that we could help students to read, and they've not worked.
05:22But what we are seeing in states that are doing programs now that are returning to the science of reading – we saw it in Louisiana in the PASSNAPE scores.
05:35We have seen it in Mississippi.
05:37We've seen it in Iowa.
05:38The children that are learning to read and can read by the end of third grade are those that have the greatest opportunity for success.
05:47Up until third grade, we read to learn, and after that, we learn – I mean, we learn to read up through third grade, and then we read to learn after that.
05:54Right. Thank you.
05:56Senator Durbin.
05:59Thanks, Madam Chair, and welcome, Madam Secretary.
