Jon Husted: 'I Can't Believe We're Still Having This Conversation As A Nation...'

Forbes Breaking News

During a Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) spoke about school choice.

Transcript

00:00We'll start questions now. We'll start with Senator Husted from the great state of Ohio.

00:07Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Great to join you and the ranking member today.

00:12Appreciate all of you being here. It's something I'm going to channel my best Bernie Sanders,

00:18if I could, today. He often asks, as the ranking member of the full committee,

00:23about whether health care is right. I'm going to ask each of you, yes or no question,

00:27do parents have the right to choose where their child goes to school? Start right here.

00:40Do they or should they? Do parents have the right to choose where their children attend school?

00:47I would argue that they should, but not all do. Okay. I would echo my colleague to my right that

00:54they should, but not all currently do have that option.

00:59Yes, parents do have that right, and we need to implement policies that ensure that they should.

01:04Unfortunately, we have 35 states doing that with private school choice and 47 with charter schools,

01:11so we're on the right track. In our district, they already do. We have a robust choice system of

01:18community schools, magnet schools, neighborhood schools, charter schools. Parents have full choice.

01:24Can they choose anywhere they want to go?

01:26Of course. Of course they can.

01:28Private school?

01:30And we have private schools that parents can choose to go to.

01:32Okay. So you get my point. And this is, I know we're still, I can't believe we're still having this

01:41conversation as a nation because, first of all, I want to thank all educators, whether you're in a

01:47public school, a private school, a charter school, a career tech school, a magnet school, whatever it is.

01:53It's a hard job, and it's a really, really, really important job. And, you know, we, it's just an

02:03amazing thing. Since I've been here, I have an appreciation for the fact that it seems like we

02:09always want to pass laws to tell people what to do with their lives, but we never really want to

02:14trust to give them the freedom to do the things that they think is best, they think are best for

02:18them or for their children. I come from Ohio. It's home of the Zellman case, 2002. Settled the score

02:25right there. Supreme Court. Parents have the right to choose. Voucher systems, scholarship systems are

02:33allowed in this country. And when I was Speaker of the House in Ohio, I created the EdChoice

02:38Scholarship Program. 4,000 students attend school of their choice. Now in Ohio, that's over 100,000

02:46parents who've decided that's a good idea for them and for their children. And I just, you know,

02:55think it's so important that we do that. I'll quickly ask, sorry, Ms. Gentles. Gentles. Okay. Tell me,

03:08what do you think about what we did in the Big Beautiful Bill in terms of giving the ability to

03:14fund scholarships through the program? Does that help? It's going to help. It's not going to be

03:19implemented until January, 2027. Want to make sure we know it's not an education program. It does not

03:25take dollars from education. It is a program that will be administered by the Department of Treasury

03:31and there'll be rulemaking that will be putting this program in place. And it's not a voucher.

03:37People want to donate to it, right? Yeah. It's not a voucher for $1,700. It's an opportunity for

03:43taxpayers to take the dollars that they would have given to Uncle Sam and send it to a scholarship

03:48granting organization that can create scholarships of whatever amount for students who might need

03:53support in order to attend schools of their choice. So I've been in the last 25 years to hundreds of

04:00schools, public schools, private schools, charter schools. And I, I'm serious. I think that what

04:06the people that, that work in all those schools as teachers and educators, God bless them. They're,

04:12they're fantastic. But one thing I've learned about kids is that not all of them learn the same,

04:17not of all the same passions. Not all of them come from the same background. So schools have very

04:24difficult choice being a one size fits all. And the more that we can do to help provide a menu of

04:31options for those families and those children, the better off they'll be because not everybody wants

04:37to go to college. There's career tech education. There are all kinds of things. But the one thing

04:41that I, we just will finish with this question for anybody who wants to take it. Coach talked about

04:48this. The science of reading is a proven method for improving literacy and reading. And we've had

04:58many, many places around this country that said, no, we're going to do it a different way. Now that's

05:03being exposed. Any of you who have an expertise in that want to share a thought about how that is the

05:09best way to do literacy and reading. I'm happy to take that, Senator. Thank you for that question.

05:16We have benefited from decades of research about how children learn to read. That's what rolled up

05:22is called the science of reading. Sometimes you hear people give that a shorthand of phonics,

05:26but there's actually five elements to that. Phonemic awareness was like, if you're a child who matches

05:31a letter with a sound, you learn that. Phonics, you're putting those together to learn how to sound

05:35out a word. Fluency, you're starting to get better at reading. Vocabulary, you learn more words. And then

05:42comprehension is sort of the holy grail, right? Where you can read a book or an article and think

05:46about it, ask questions, understand a main idea. That's generally the science of reading. It should

05:51not be controversial to teach what research has told us. There have been some problematic curriculum

05:57not based on research that have become very popular around the country. That was what was in my son's

06:02school. And I think we have to, state policy can really lead here to make sure that teachers

06:08understand the right way to teach. What is the evidence base? Why should I teach this way? Why does it

06:13make a difference for kids? And then have the instructional materials, the coaching, the

06:17support to make sure it's implemented. And then quite frankly, to measure the outcomes. We always

06:22have to be measuring the outcomes to know what's really happening for kids. Sometimes we get

06:26distracted by inputs that focus on adults, but at the end of the day, we're all here because we want

06:31children to be successful. So the evidence base is very clear about the right way to teach.

06:37Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it, Mr. Chairman.

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