WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) participated in a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing to discuss the problems that are facing the country’s education system. During the hearing, Sen. Tuberville spoke to education experts about ways to improve outcomes for Alabama’s students.
The panelists consisted of Dr. Eric Hanushek, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Dr. Martin West, Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Dr. Katie Jenner, Indiana’s Secretary of Education; Dr. Scott Muri, Superintendent Emeritus of Ector County Independent School District in Odessa, Texas; and Dr. Rebecca Winthrop, Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution.
Read excerpts from the hearing below or watch on YouTube or Rumble.
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for being here. Very interesting. I was a teacher and a coach for 35 years. I’ve been in high schools all over the country. And our number one commodity is kids in this country. And we got a lot of problems. About in a little over a year, I’ll be the governor of Alabama. My job is gonna be [to] educate kids in Alabama. We got problems.
As everybody does, we’ve got good teachers, and we’ve got some good situations. I’m just looking for answers before I get into that job. I wanna help kids, as I’ve done for all my life. Rewarding teachers is great. Social media is a disaster. We all know that. Disruptive students in the classroom, attention deficit drugs that our doctors are giving kids to settle down in the classroom. Testing for success to me is important, not testing for college. All kids don’t need to go to college. We know that. And it’s become a business.
We gotta build our workforce. And school choice. We just passed that now in Alabama. I’m anxious to see how that works. I’m gonna give you all a chance to talk. I’ve got about four minutes left. Doctor [Hanushek], you start. Say a few words of what you think about what I just said, any of those things. I’m just here to learn.”
DR. HANUSHEK: “I think you’re summarizing some very good things. What my position is that we’ve tried to fix the schools by adding little incremental things for a long period of time. And we have to look more seriously at the overall structure of our system. We had in 1983 a nation at risk, which said we were in trouble as a nation. And we’ve done all kinds of things since then—new graduation requirements, smaller class size, higher teacher pay, and on down the line, and they haven’t changed the pattern.
And so, we have to rethink the structure. Some of the changes that have been proposed of the federal government stepping back and putting more of the responsibility on the states I think is warranted. I think the same goes for the states of stepping back and letting good schools run and then watching over schools that need more help.”
TUBERVILLE: “We spend $12 billion a year on education in Alabama. It ain’t working. Something’s wrong. K-12, we’ve all done it. We all went through that. Is that the right way to do it? Should be something else. I mean, we gotta think outside the box. Mr. Winthrop talked about AI. It’s coming. It’s coming and we’d better be able to use it. Dr. West?”
DR. WEST: “Well, without disagreeing that extensive improvement is needed, I would also say that as you enter that role I would look at what’s already happening in Alabama, especially in the early grades. As I mentioned in my testimony, Alabama is one of the states that actually weathered the pandemic quite well and is now outperforming where it was in some areas in 2019. That’s also true of Louisiana. It’s also true of Mississippi. So, there’s a bit of a southern surge going on in the NAEP data relative to other states. So, I’d encourage you to try and learn from that.
One of the things we haven’t talked about much yet that may play a role in that improvement is they’ve paid a lot of attention to curricular content. You often hear the language of high-quality instructional materials. I actually prefer what Dr. Jenner used earlier, which is evidence-based curriculum because how you define quality as you try and ensure that districts are using it is really important, and we need to look at evidence rather than opinions in defining quality. So that’s a quick reaction in addition to the factors Dr. Hanushek mentioned.”
TUBERVILLE: “One thing, too, we have to remember half the kids in this country have one or no parent. OK? So, I had two parents. They kicked my butt every day when I got home about homework. I heard a teacher the other day says, ‘we wanna do away with homework.’ Have we lost our mind?! I mean, really, I mean, come on. Dr. Jenner?”
DR. JENNER: “Well, I don’t know who you’re running against, but I like your agenda. So, one thing I would caution, and I’ve had the opportunity to serve two governors now in Indiana. So often schools are asked to do all the things, and if we have schools boil the ocean, then we get nothing done. So, anything that you can do as future governor to really focus in reading, intentional STEM, redesign your high school, leverage the parent-decided education option where you’re pushing quality for all.”
TUBERVILLE: “Dr. Muri, real quick.”
DR. MURI: “Vision, strategy, execution. Clear vision for what you wanna do, what your school systems wanna do. Strategies that are all blended, braided together, and execute well. Sometimes we miss that final piece.”
TUBERVILLE: “I’ll be in touch. Dr. Winthrop, real quick give a few words.”
DR. WINTHROP: “Just two things to add to what my panelists have said. One is to think about building strong, trusting relationships between communities and schools. When there is strong, relational trust, schools are performing ten times better. So adversarial, competitive, relationships do not do children any good. I’ll leave it at that.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.
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