Transcript
Kevin: The United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce plays a key role in guiding education policy in our country. As schools face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and other future issues, federal policy will be an important factor in determining how we build the future of education. What role does federal policy play in K-12 education? How can the federal government best support all types of K-12 schools? And what is the future of federal education policy in the United States? This is What I Want to Know. And today, I'm joined by Congressman Bobby Scott to find out.
Kevin: Bobby Scott represents the third district of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives. He is the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and was chair from 2019 to January 2023. His career is focused on education policy, and he oversaw the largest K-12 spending initiative in American history to help support students and teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, he joins us to discuss the role of the federal government in education and the future of federal education policy in the United States. Congressman Scott, welcome to the show.
Bobby: Kevin, thank you. It's good to be with you.
Kevin: We've known each other a long time. We've talked about education policy. I've testified before you years ago. But in researching you for this show, I did not know that your father was a surgeon, and it was just interesting to see that you came from a family that valued education early on. I'm sure they had an influence on where you are now.
Bobby: Well, and add on, my mother was a schoolteacher.
Kevin: That's right. I saw that.
Bobby: So yeah, education is a great tradition in the family, and it's just assumed that I grew up in a family where it wasn't a question of whether you would go to college but where you went to college.
Kevin: Yeah.
Bobby: So, I had a very good background from that perspective.
Kevin: It's interesting, Congressman, that my father was a pharmacist and grew up on a farm in South Carolina. In fact, Jim Clyburn knew a lot of my relatives who went to South Carolina State. My father went to South Carolina State. And it was the same reality for me that we knew we were going to college; we just didn't know where. And it does create a different dynamic. Unfortunately today, a lot of young people aren't even sure about the value of education. It shows how far we've come.
Bobby: Well, let me just say two things about that, and Elijah Cummings talked about this frequently: A lot of our students are counseled against college because they're not college material. And that in my judgment is one of the huge values of our historically black colleges and universities, HBCUs, because whatever your counselors tell you, you know that in this area, Hampton University and Norfolk State, they're there. And you see people going to college, and I don't care what the guidance counselor says; I will have that opportunity. Now, one of the things you also alluded to is the cost. Thirty or forty years ago, the Pell Grant covered 70%, almost 80% of the costs of going to a state college. You could work your way through school, with a summer job, 15 hours a week during the school year and come out with no debt. Now, you can work 40 hours a week all year and not be able to afford college without incurring a huge debt, a crushing debt.
And some people look at it and just calculate they're not willing to take on $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 worth of debt in order to get an education. I think that's the wrong calculation, but the other calculation ought to be: What are we doing as policymakers and making sure we get back to the days where the Pell Grant covered a substantial portion of the costs that were for going to college? States are at fault. They used to cover two-thirds of the costs of a state college. Now, it's on average about one-third. And some colleges in Virginia — less than 10% of their budget is state money. So we have to make sure that states are putting up what they need to put up and we make college affordable so that people can afford to go and don't make the calculation that the transformational value of an education is beyond their reach.
Kevin: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And speaking of the federal role in education, as you said, you were the chair from 2019 to January 2023 of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, and you oversaw the largest K-12 spending in American history, which I know you're proud of. A lot of it related to your support for not just HBCUs but supplementing the college experience in states that really have fallen short in this area. But let's talk about the federal education policy role. As I talk with school district leaders, and we have a lot of superintendents who watch this show, many of them over the years have begun to feel like the federal relationship was more of a punitive relationship as opposed to an asset, and I think you were one that was trying to change that.
Bobby: Well first of all, the federal role started with Brown v. Board of Education, when the court said that it's doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity is a right, which must be made available to all on equal terms. Okay.
Kevin: Yes.
Bobby: Then you look up and notice that we funded with real estate tax, which guarantees that the wealthy areas will have more resources for education and better opportunities than low-income areas, and that's where the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 came in. We funded Title One, which put money into low-income areas. Under George W. Bush, the bipartisan No Child Left Behind recognized that money isn't the only thing; achievement has to be recognized. And if you have equal spending but unequal achievement, well, that's not good either.
Kevin: Yeah.
Bobby: And so he had a plan to identify achievement gaps. Unfortunately, the way you identified achievement gaps and the lack of any meaningful response to the achievement gaps made No Child Left Behind very unpopular. But later on, we passed the Every Student Succeeds Act just a few years ago, which requires school systems to ascertain whether or not there are achievement gaps. They'll tell you how to do it, but you have to have an assessment. And when you find achievement gaps and you know you're going to find them, you have to have a credible plan to do something about it and to eliminate those achievement gaps. Doesn't tell you what you have to do, but it has to be a credible plan to do something about it.
Kevin: It's interesting when you talk about No Child Left Behind and the bipartisan effort there; we all agreed that we need to identify those achievement gaps, and you're right in terms of Every Child Succeeds. I mean you really haven't had a chance to make sure that states have put together the credible plan. We don't have the assessments that we used to have. But don't you think that going forward, the balance is between the federal role and the state role in education, because most of it is state money; we know that. And most, as you said, of the state funding plans are through real estate, and sometimes that fuels the inequity. There needs to be stronger conversations to ensure now that we're getting our sea legs back, if you will, that those gaps are being addressed because, in my humble opinion, what I see around the states, Congressman, is that some states are serious about it and some aren't.
Bobby: Well, the federal role is a unique role. First of all, in terms of achievement gaps, you have to have some sort of assessments, and there's a move to try to eliminate the testing because they are in fact an aggravation. And some states have laid on such burdensome tests as to be problematic. They're not required by the federal government — that's a state problem — but you have to have some assessment to know how much the problem is and where it is. Otherwise, it's hard to address achievement gaps if you don't know what the gaps are and where they are.
Kevin: Yeah.
Bobby: So, you've got to have meaningful assessments, and you've got to eliminate them. Once you've identified a gap, you've had some schools that have been unaccredited chronically. Well, if you've got a problematic school, it seems to me that you ought to go in there with better teachers, smaller class sizes, whatever it takes to bring this school up to par and not allow any children to be relegated to chronically unaccredited schools. You find some who have the solution to it say, "Well, what you need to do is to let students choose to go to another school." Well, that is a solution for the privileged few, the privileged few that can figure out what the school is and how bad it is and they can get their kids out. Obviously, all of them can't leave because there's no room in the better schools.
And if you have school choice, any intelligent group of parents will choose the best schools. They can't all go to the best schools. We need to make sure that every effort is made when you find a school that is not coming up to standards to make sure they come up to standards so that all children in the school system get a class education.
Kevin: What's interesting is I know folks in Houston, and I've heard all sides of that discussion because some folks are saying, "Well, the school district has been chronically underperforming for years, and the state's taken over," but then other folks are saying that they didn't get the support and resources. We're in a time now where you have to look beyond the surface headlines to really understand what's going on, and I think in fact to try to find solutions.
Bobby: Well, it's not an easy solution, and you can't use so-called solutions that only help the privileged few. If you have a public school system and say you have a choice to get out of a bad school, well, 90% are going to be left behind at the bad school, and you've solved the problem, you've solved two problems. One, the 10% that got out took care of themselves, but you also solved a political problem because the people that left will probably cause political problems if they still had to go to the school. You'll have parents go to the school board and say, "If you don't get this school fixed, I'm going to get you at the next election." Well, if their kids can be taken care of, that takes care of that political problem. That 90% left behind are still getting an inadequate education; you haven't solved anything. And so, we have to have solutions that really solve the problem for all of the students.
Kevin: Let me ask you about teachers. We do have a teacher shortage in this country, and many more leaving the profession. One of the things you always hear teachers talking about is more pay, more support. But how do you view the teacher crisis in terms of fewer teachers, or fewer young people are seeing it as a profession? But we need to, as you mentioned your mother — it was a time when teachers were revered. How can we recapture that way of celebrating the teaching profession and really get more and more young people interested in going into the profession like your mother?
Bobby: I think any conversation that purports to address teacher shortage that doesn't start with salaries I don't believe is a serious conversation. If you want to deal with this shortage, start off with increasing salaries so people want to go into teaching. They say, "Well, it's not a fun occupation anymore." Let me tell you, if you increase the salary significantly, a lot of those problems would evaporate because people would... And as you said, young people don't want to go into teaching. They look at all of the opportunities they have, and one thing they look at is what the compensation is.
Kevin: Yeah.
Bobby: And if the compensation for teaching is low, and you look at the skillset, you've got to have a college education. You have to have organizational skills. You have to be able to handle public speaking. You get those kinds of skills and look at what people with those kinds of skills are getting paid in other professions. Teaching is lowering the scale. So you'll go into other professions, and we’re surprised there's a teacher shortage.
Kevin: Yeah.
Bobby: If you started with those salaries, I think the teacher shortage could take care of itself.
Kevin: Yeah. Let me ask you this on our program, and as I mentioned to you, we have listening audiences all over the country and it's growing, but one of our more popular programs has been around the banning of books and the whole fervor around the cultural wars and what you teach and how you teach and history and what history and selective history. Talk to me a little bit about that because it's frustrating. My view is that if you aren't clear about the history that has happened before us and you start to edit and delete from a political point of view, then clearly... What's that expression? If you don't know history, you're doomed to repeat the mistakes. So talk a little about the culture wars we see and how that's permeated our educational system.
Bobby: Well, all of that came to light in the so-called Parents Bill of Rights, which was what we call a message bill. There wasn't any substance to it. It was just an opportunity to get all these things out in the open and facilitated book banning; it promised rights that you already have. There was a provision in there that gave you a federal right to address your school board. Most people would be surprised to learn that you needed the federal right; most thought you just sign up and speak. I had an amendment to that provision that said it can be subject to reasonable limitations, like three minutes. That amendment was deleted. Now, if that bill ever became law, which it won't, what would your right be? If you and a hundred of your friends showed up at a school board meeting, do each and every one of you have a federal right of action to speak and have your say however long it takes? I mean, how does the school board get any business done if everybody has an unlimited right to address the school board?
If there's an issue coming and you've heard the first 50 people speak on one side, nobody on the other side, do you really have to listen to the next 50 people say the same thing over again no matter how repetitive? I mean that's the stuff that's in the bill. There are bathroom bill provisions for how to deal with transgender children. A lot of attack on LGBTQ community. Most of the rights you already have are conspicuously absent with any funding to facilitate parental involvement. There are amendments offered to fund parental coordinators. Most of the school systems have problems getting the parents engaged and parent coordinators have done well in bringing them into the PTA meetings so that they can participate. No funding for that. No funding for counselors. You talked about history and what history is taught. Well, there's one thing about the federal role in education: The present position of the Federal Department of Education is that the federal government has no role in the curriculum.
We're not going to tell you what to teach. In fact, we wanted to raise the standards and Every Student Succeeds Act, and we ended up with something as convoluted as the standards have to be high enough for high school diploma so that if you have a high school diploma, you ought to be able to get into a state college without remediation. We don't tell Atlanta, Georgia, and Boston, Massachusetts, what history to teach. There's no federal history course. And so, the school systems have to figure out the curriculum on their own, so we stay away from that. But we do provide support for groups that are generally left behind, low-income and low-income areas and the normal give and take in politics: those areas are shortchanged. That's where Title One comes in, English as a second language. A lot of school systems wouldn't do much, so we come in with federal money for those learning English as a second language.
Kevin: Congressman Scott, I have one last question to ask you, and it relates to the future of education. I think many of us feel that the future of education is going to, in many ways, be reflected by some of the technological advances. I mean, people talk about artificial intelligence, augmented reality, drone technology. I know in a lot of the schools that we run, we use drones, and it's just a whole new world. And of course, social media. But if you look at the future of education from the point of view of the federal role, how can you as a member of Congress best ensure that these new technological advances are evenly distributed and equitably distributed and they're done so, dare I say, with some ethical consideration? Because I think the biggest challenge with some of these things is that they're not used in the best way for children. And I know a lot of this comes down to the state issue, but there is a power of Washington, there's a power of the bully pulpit, and you've been one to speak out on some of these issues.
Bobby: Well, I've been focusing on what we can do to improve educational opportunities. There is a growing feeling that education has to be able to be monetized. That is, when you get an education, you ought to be able to get a job in that area that your education enabled. And if there's no money at the end of it, there's less value to the education. Well, I believe that there is inherent value to a four-year, on-campus liberal arts education where 90% of the value is not what you learned in the classroom, but just the experience of being in college for the four years. If you look at people in college, most of us, about 95%, have four-year degrees, most of which have nothing to do with what we did either in Congress or even before Congress.
It's just that there's a transformational effect of a four-year, on-campus liberal arts college experience. Okay, that's becoming a luxury. I would like to have that as an option just for people as they're maturing, becoming adults. There are people that just want to get a better job, and education has a significant role in that. We are considering right now what we call short-term Pell, and that Pell Grants can only be used for college courses or long-term courses that lead to certain credentials. The short-term courses are six to 12, less than 16-week programs. If all they lead to is a good job, can't use a Pell grant. Well, that's ridiculous.
Kevin: Yeah.
Bobby: If it leads to a good job, you ought to be able to use a Pell Grant just like somebody going to a four-year liberal arts college. Trying to figure out how to actually implement that so that only good programs get funded. And so, that's what we're trying to do to open up opportunities for these jobs that require some skills, not all that many skills, skills that the average person could acquire if they just took the course and they can do well. And then we also looking to what we call stackable credentials. You see them in nursing where you start off as a certified nurse assistant and then an LPN and then an RN, and then you go into independent practice. You work your way up. Welding: You go up all the way up to a nuclear welder. Stackable credentials, so that people can start at the bottom and work their way up.
Those are the things that we're looking at, and these short-term Pell grants can enable that in a way that we've never seen before, and that'll open up opportunities for young people. The opportunities are there. You go to the Workforce Council, and they will fund a lot of this education, except that the money runs out in the middle of February. There's one other thing the white people in Washington, D.C., know, and that is the value of summer jobs. You can talk to many people of all ages who'll tell you that Marion Barry got me my summer job, and that was transformational. We need to make those opportunities available to everybody.
Kevin: Yeah. In fact, the whole idea of the summer job program is a great gateway to get kids further engaged and go back to school and want to do more because they really understand the work world much better. Congressman Bobby Scott, look, thank you so much for joining us on What I Want to Know.
Bobby: Thank you. It was good to be with you.
Kevin: Thanks for listening to What I Want to Know. Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app so you can explore other episodes and dive into our discussions on the future of education. And write a review of the show. I also encourage you to join the conversation and let me know what you want to know using #WIWTK on social media. That's #WIWTK. For more information on Stride and online education, visit stridelearning.com. I'm your host, Kevin P. Chavous. Thank you for joining What I Want to Know.
Meet Bobby
Bobby Scott represents the 3rd District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives. He is the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and was chair from 2019 to January 2023.
His career has focused on education policy, and he oversaw the largest K through 12 spending initiative in American history to help support students and teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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What I Want to Know
In this podcast, you will hear from leaders in education as we talk through learning solutions for homeschool, online school, education pathways, and topics tailored specifically to online students and parents.
