Ending ‘Government-Run Monopoly’ on Schools Is Top Priority for Rep. Virginia
Foxx
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx,
R-N.C., greets then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at the
conclusion of a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on Capitol
Hill in Washington in June 2018. Foxx spoke to Education Week about her
priorities as she becomes chair of the committee for a second time.
Carolyn
Kaster/AP
Republican lawmakers—taking a move from the playbooks of GOP governors
and state legislators—have made parental rights in education a top priority
after assuming control of the U.S. House, and no member of Congress is
championing the issue more than Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.
In an
interview with Education Week, Foxx, who is the new chair of the House’s
Education and the Workforce Committee, said a national parents’ bill of rights
and a school choice bill are at the top of her agenda. Though the research is
mixed on whether school choice laws actually help improve student achievement,
Foxx has thrown her support behind “education freedom,” arguing more choice
for parents leads to better outcomes for students.
“We’ve had a
government-run monopoly on education for a long time, but it’s outdated,” Foxx
said. “It’s failed students.”
Foxx has been on the education and
workforce committee since she was elected to Congress nearly 20 years ago, and
this is her second time serving as its chair. She’s replacing Rep. Bobby
Scott, D-Va., who was chair during the last Congress and focused on issues
such as raising teacher pay, expanding access to free meals, and extending
learning time for students struggling with learning loss following the
pandemic.
Foxx plans to take a dramatic turn from the Democrat’s
agenda by supporting school choice policies that send public funds to private
schools and bills that give parents the right to oppose school curricula,
books, and other educational materials that don’t align with their values.
Those
policies will be hard to pass in a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate with Sen.
Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at the helm of the chamber’s Health, Education, Labor,
and Pensions Committee. But Foxx is optimistic.
What are your
top priorities when it comes to K-12 education?
My top issue is
education freedom. Education freedom is just crucial to our country. We’ve had
a government-run monopoly on education for a long time, but it’s outdated. It
has failed students. And students deserve the opportunity to learn in the
environment that works best for them.
A second high-level priority
is protecting parental rights. We believe that parents deserve transparency
and accountability, unlike the way the Biden administration treated
parents—they are not domestic terrorists. They have a right to have a say in
their children’s education. We’re going to do everything we can to restore
those rights.
(The Biden administration never referred to parents
as “domestic terrorists,” but the National School Boards Association said in a
2021 letter to the president that threats against school officials “could be
the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” The group
sought a federal review into whether such threats violated domestic terrorism
statutes.)
A third priority, particularly as it pertains to K-12,
is the devastating learning loss that has occurred, which is affecting an
entire generation.
I think that one of the first bills that
will come out of the committee will be the parents’ bill of rights. It has
five key rights. Parents have a right to know what their children are being
taught. They have a right to be heard by educators and policymakers. They have
a right to see school budgeting and spending. They have a right to protect
their children’s privacy, and they have the right to keep their children
safe.
Those will be in the bill that we will introduce probably
early in March.
How do you see the parents’ bill of rights
supporting students academically as they’re trying to recover from the
pandemic? How are parents’ rights and student achievement connected?
As
I’ve often said, the best thing that came out of COVID is the exposure of what
was happening in the schools. It has opened the eyes of parents and others to
how bad our school systems are and the need for us to make these reforms that
we’re going to be making.
Earlier, you said education freedom,
otherwise known as school choice, is your top priority. What do you see as the
value of school choice bills, and how do you think they will help support
students and parents?
Education right now in this country is
primarily a monopoly controlled by the teachers’ unions. Where you see parents
having the freedom to put their children in either public charter schools, or
there’s funding for private schools that’s provided both by government
encouragement or by other means through scholarships, then you see that
students who opt out of the monopoly schools do much better.
We
want to see students and parents have that choice. Because we don’t want to
see students, no matter what economic status they are, be controlled by the
government.
(Research findings on school choice policies’ impact on
student performance are mixed, with some studies showing that more competition
leads to increased student achievement and others stating that more options
don’t have any effect on student achievement and broaden inequality.)
What
would you say to critics of school choice policies who say they ultimately
harm public schools?
Well, what are public schools? They’re funded
by the taxpayers.
Parents pay their taxes. If they feel that
schools are no good, and many of them are no good, the parents should be able
to take the money that’s being given by the taxpayers with them to schools
that are going to provide [their children] with a good education.
Right
now, they’re not getting a good education in many public schools. When you
talk about the money that’s going to the schools, it’s coming from taxpayers.
They ought to have some say-so over how their money is being spent.
You’ve
also mentioned student achievement as a top priority for you. What can
Congress do to help students recover from learning lost during the
pandemic?
We’ll be doing a lot of oversight in that area. We’ll be
asking, how was the [COVID relief] money spent that was given to the schools
to offset the learning loss?
We need to know how that money was spent because it was being
given to the schools to try to mitigate learning loss. It was not given to
them to fritter away as many of them did.
Many schools are feeling
the impact of staffing shortages, and educators are worried not enough people
are going into the profession. What can Congress do to strengthen the teaching
profession?
We definitely need teachers, but what you need to know
is, I don’t always look for a federal solution. I’m always constantly looking
to the states because that’s what federalism is all about. We have the United
States. The word “education” is nowhere in the U.S. Constitution for us to be
dealing with. We’re dealing with it. Sometimes not very well. I’m always
looking for how the states are doing this and sharing that information.
