'I Can't Believe We're Still Having This Conversation': Jon Husted Calls For School Choice Freedom

Forbes Breaking News

During a Senate Health Committee hearing in July, Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) spoke about a family's ability to choose what school their child goes to.

Transcript

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

00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Great to join you and the ranking member today.

00:11Appreciate all of you being here. It's something I'm going to channel my best Bernie Sanders if

00:17I could today. He often asks, as the ranking member of the full committee, about whether

00:22health care is right. I'm going to ask each of you, yes or no question, do parents have the right

00:27to choose where their child goes to school? Start right here. Do they or should they? Do parents have

00:42the right to choose where their children attend school? I would argue that they should, but not

00:48all do. Okay. I would echo my colleague to my right that they should, but not all currently

00:55do have that option. Yes, parents do have that right, and we need to implement policies that

01:02ensure that they should. Unfortunately, we have 35 states doing that with private school

01:07choice and 47 with charter schools, so we're on the right track. In our district, they already

01:14do. We have a robust choice system of community schools, magnet schools, neighborhood schools,

01:20charter schools. Parents have full choice. Can they choose anywhere they want to go?

01:25Of course. Of course they can. Private school? And we have private schools that parents can choose

01:31to go to. So you get my point, and this is, I know we're still, I can't believe we're still having

01:40this conversation as a nation because, first of all, I want to thank all educators, whether you're in a

01:46public school, a private school, a charter school, a career tech school, a magnet school, whatever it

01:52is, it's a hard job, and it's a really, really, really important job. And, you know, we, it's just

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

02:08always want to pass laws to tell people what to do with their lives, but we never really want to trust

02:13to give them the freedom to do the things that they think is best, they think are best for them

02:17or for their children. I come from Ohio. It was home of the Zellman case, 2002. Settled the score

02:24right there. Supreme Court. Parents have the right to choose. Voucher systems, scholarship systems are

02:32allowed in this country. And when I was Speaker of the House in Ohio, I created the EdChoice Scholarship

02:37program. 4,000 students attend school of their choice. Now in Ohio, that's over 100,000 parents

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

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

03:07what do you think about what we did in the Big Beautiful Bill in terms of giving the ability to

03:13fund scholarships through the program? Does that help? It's going to help. It's not going to be

03:18implemented until January, 2027. Want to make sure we know it's not an education program. It does not take

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

03:30and there'll be rulemaking that will be putting this program in place. It's people who want to

03:36donate to it, right? Yeah. It's not a voucher for $1,700. It's an opportunity for taxpayers to take

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

03:48that can create scholarships of whatever amount for students who might need support in order to attend

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

04:01private schools, charter schools. And I'm serious. I think that what the people that work in all those

04:07schools as teachers and educators, God bless them, they're fantastic. But one thing I've learned

04:13about kids is that not all of them learn the same, not all of them have the same passions,

04:17not all of them come from the same background. So schools have a very difficult choice being a one

04:24size fits all. And the more that we can do to help provide a menu of options for those families and

04:32those children, the better off they'll be because not everybody wants to go to college. There's career

04:38tech education. There are all kinds of things. But the one thing that I, we just will finish with this

04:42question for anybody who wants to take it. Coach talked about this. The science of reading is a

04:49proven method for improving literacy and reading. And we've had many, many places around this country

04:59that said, no, we're going to do it a different way. Now that's being exposed. Any of you who have

05:04an expertise in that want to share a thought about how that is the best way to do literacy and reading.

05:12I'm happy to take that, Senator. Thank you for that question. We have benefited from decades of

05:18research about how children learn to read. That's what rolled up is called the science of reading.

05:23Sometimes you hear people give that a shorthand of phonics, but there's actually five elements to

05:27that. Phonemic awareness was like, if you're a child who matches a letter with a sound, you learn

05:32that. Phonics, you're putting those together to learn how to sound out a word. Fluency, you're starting

05:37to get better at reading. Vocabulary, you learn more words. And then comprehension is sort

05:42of the holy grail, right, where you can read a book or an article and think about it, ask questions,

05:46understand a main idea. That's generally the science of reading. It should not be controversial

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

05:58that have become very popular around the country. That was what was in my son's school. And I think

06:03we have to, state policy can really lead here to make sure that teachers understand the right way to

06:08teach. What is the evidence base? Why should I teach this way? Why does it make a difference for

06:12kids? And then have the instructional materials, the coaching, the support to make sure it's

06:17implemented. And then, quite frankly, to measure the outcomes. We always have to be measuring the

06:22outcomes to know what's really happening for kids. Sometimes we get distracted by inputs that focus

06:27on adults. But at the end of the day, we're all here because we want children to be successful.

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

06:35Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it, Mr. Chairman.

06:38Thank you. Ranking Member.

06:42Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you again to the witnesses.

06:46And Mr. Barrera, I want to follow up a little bit on your discussion about the diversion of taxpayer

06:56this.

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