Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (NC) joins the Students Over Systems podcast to discuss the federal government’s role in education policy. Rep. Foxx outlines her goals as chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee and delves into the hearings and legislation her committee has prioritized this year. We talk about steps the federal government can take to protect parental rights and expand education freedom.
TRANSCRIPT
Ginny Gentles:
Today on Students Over Systems, we’re celebrating a federal champion of education freedom and parental rights. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx joins us to discuss her leadership of the US House of Representatives Committee on Education & the Workforce.
Welcome to Students Over Systems, a podcast that celebrates education freedom. I’m your host, Ginny Gentles. At Students Over Systems, we talk with the creators, advocates, and beneficiaries of education freedom. On today’s episode, we’re focusing on federal education policy. For this important conversation, we’re joined by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. Congresswoman Foxx is the chairwoman of the Committee on Education & the Workforce and represents North Carolina’s 5th District in the US House of Representatives. She is a relentless advocate for America’s students, parents, workers, and jobs creators. Congresswoman Foxx, thank you so much for joining us.
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Thanks, Ginny. And I love the title of your podcast, Students Over Systems. In the past few decades, our education systems have taken over unfortunately, and I love the emphasis that you have and I love your emphasis on freedom too. I think that is so important that we talk about that our country was founded for freedom for the people in this country. We are still the freest people in the world, but we’re losing that freedom in many areas. And in education, that’s been a real problem for a long time.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, parents and students can be assured that they have an advocate, a very strong, relentless advocate in the House of Representatives in you. You’ve made that clear not just in this Congress, but for many years, and you have a reputation of being one of the hardest-working members of Congress. In fact, there was a recent really cool profile of you in Politico. Former House Speaker John Boehner told the author, “She’s just a bull and she just charges in every day nonstop from sunup until way after the sun goes down.” And you and I had a recent conversation where you told me about your schedule. I mean, it’s quite something. It is before sun up and until late at night. So what are the core principles that motivate you to work so hard?
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Well, again, I believe in this country, and I believe in trying to save the opportunity that this country provides. I’m in the office between 6:30 and 7:00 AM and I don’t leave till five minutes to 11 because they lock the door at 11 o’clock. And if I don’t get out by 11, I have to walk a long way to get out. So I’m motivated by saving time always. And I grew up Ginny in houses with no electricity, no running water. My family was very poor. My husband was living in a bus when I met him. He never had running water in his house. We both came from extraordinarily poor, what is known as underprivileged homes. His father died when he was 10. His mother and father were both illiterate. Where in the world could two people who grew up like that be able to be successful? Tom is very smart, and he had teachers who recognized that. We had no school choice when we were growing up in the ’50s, but we grew up at the best time in the world in this country. I will say that again and again.
We were fortunate when we grew up that we were in small schools where teachers understood we had some potential and they encouraged that potential. They encouraged the development of that potential. And so, I want to preserve that for other people in the future, now and in the future. And so I am driven, truly driven to help others have that opportunity to develop their talents. I don’t think that being in Congress is the pinnacle for anybody’s career. It happens to have been for me, but I think being the best electrician, the best carpenter, the best singer, musician, artist, whatever talent God gave you needs to be developed to the fullest. And I want the opportunity for young people, I want them to have that opportunity to find out what their talent is and develop it.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, Dr. Foxx, you mentioned your upbringing and you went on to be, I believe, the first graduate of high school in your family. And then you continued on to becoming the Dr. Foxx that you are today. In that career that you had before coming to Congress, you were a professor at the higher education level, you led a community college, and I believe you were also in the state Senate in North Carolina for a number of years. So you know very well that education is primarily a state and local policy issue. You’ve lived it at various stages of your career. What’s the role of the federal government in your opinion? And specifically, what role does your committee, the House Committee on Education & Workforce play?
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Well, you are completely correct, Ginny, that education is a state and local issue. I don’t have my pocket copy of the Constitution in front of me, but I always point out to people that the word education is not in the Constitution as a federal responsibility. It is not there. However, the federal government has gotten involved in education. It got heavily involved in education 1965. Before that, the GI Bill got the federal government involved a lot.
But what I like to point out, number one, the word education is not in the Constitution. So we really don’t have a role in education, but the powers that be have assumed a role. So the 10th Amendment, by the way, is an exclamation point on that. That’s why I like to have the Constitution. It says if it wasn’t given to the federal government to do, then it’s left to the States and to the individuals. So the lack of the word education, plus the 10th Amendment emphasizing that it’s up to the states and the individuals, is what I like to point out. But what has happened again is the federal government’s got very involved and it taxes people, takes the money to the federal level, and then gives some of it back.
So my responsibility, as I see it, is to make sure that the money, the taxpayer dollars that we are spending, are spent as well as they can possibly be spent at whatever level we’re talking about, whether it’s elementary and secondary or post-secondary. And we want accountability for those funds. And we want the spending to go in the direction that the American people want it to go in, not where the leftist in Washington want the money to go, or the teachers unions want the money to go. It’s up to us to discern the mood of the people. And we are a center-right country, Ginny. We really are. And every poll will tell you, I just saw another one the other day where most people in this country consider themselves conservative, and yet when it comes to education, we have gone totally over to the liberal left when it comes to education, again, at all levels.
Ginny Gentles:
Right. And certainly, the teachers unions and the politicians that they elect are driving that. So I appreciate you taking those on. And you do that as the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, and you got right to work when you returned to your role as chairwoman of this committee. Let’s talk a little bit about the education hearings that you’ve held so far this Congress. I was there for one of them. And it was interesting to be a witness in the current environment in the current Congress. What are your goals with these hearings?
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Well, the hearings allow us to bring out information. In many ways, they’re not very efficient because it takes a lot of time to set up for hearings and we ask witnesses questions in a five-minute block. But the idea is to get out information that is useful to us as we write legislation. So we are having a lot of hearings, as you know, and anybody paying attention to Congress, I don’t have the numbers, but it’s like we’ve had 600 plus hearings, I think, throughout the Congress already in the seven months that we’ve been in session. But the goal of the hearings is to establish the framework for legislation, and we are working on a lot of legislation, some of which we’ve already passed.
Now, let me mention that our committee, in addition to having education and workforce issues, we also have jurisdiction over healthcare for all employer-sponsored healthcare. So we cover 150 million people whose healthcare or health insurance are provided by their employer. That’s the largest number of people in the country covered by a program. Then we also have all pension legislation and of course labor. Our committee’s called Workforce, the Democrats call it the Labor Committee, but we have everything in the labor department to deal with too. So our hearings are widespread, but again, you’re mostly interested in the hearings and education. We’re laying the groundwork now for at least two bills, probably three, that will be coming out. One is a bill for Workforce, PELL, where we want to be able to have people be able to take short-term courses that will provide the opportunity for them to gain skills to get into a job. We’ll be doing a reauthorization of WIOA, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, and then also the Higher Ed Act.
Ginny Gentles:
Okay. Well, earlier this Congress, you held hearings and championed HR 5, the Parents Bill of Rights.
And that dealt directly with the issues in K-12 education, which is what we focus on here at Students Over Systems. You shepherded that bill through mighty efficiently and forcefully. What did you hope to achieve with the legislation? What are the major provisions there?
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Right. Well, number one, well, let me say the majority party always saves the first 10 bill numbers for its priorities. And the fact that Speaker McCarthy gave us the number 5… Which by the way happens to be my favorite number. And I didn’t ask for 5, but it was an omen to me that we got the number 5. So HR 5 is the Parents Bill of Rights, and we were very proud of that bill. Julia Letlow and I led the bill in the House, but every Republican member of the committee signed onto it. We think it’s so fundamental and it’s almost laughable that we have to pass a bill to say these things, Ginny. And what we’re proud of in addition to the fact that we passed it out of the House is that many states are passing similar bills.
North Carolina has just passed a similar bill. The governor vetoed it, and the legislature overrode the veto, I believe, with bipartisan support. But now, let me say again the essence of the Parents Bill of Rights, and we can talk more about it. Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught. Parents have the right to be heard by educators and policymakers. Parents have the right to see the school budgeting and spending. Parents have the right to protect their children’s privacy, and parents have the right to keep their children safe. Now, we expand on that in the short-term version, and I’m sure you’ve spoken about it yourself in podcasts, but those elements, again, are so simple and so essential to what we know or feel in this country that parents have the right to direct their children’s education.
Ginny Gentles:
Yeah. I’m an older parent. I have a high school-age student and a middle school student, and it’s been shocking to me to see the very swift transition of the school system just in the period of time that I’ve had my children in the system and then now thankfully out of the system in private schools, where of course parents have the right to see textbooks and curriculum, and of course parents have the right to review library books and ensure that their children are not exposed to things that they’re not comfortable with. So as always, I’m definitely an advocate for school choice and feel that if parents can pull their kids out of the system and put their child into a school that respects their rights, that is one solution to what’s going on. But I appreciate what you’re doing in tackling the system and helping the families who are still really wanting to keep their children there or feeling like they have to keep their children in the public school system. How does this work at a federal level? How does the Parents Bill of Rights work if it was to be enacted?
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Well, we believe that this underlies the abilities of parents to go, again, to the school boards and to the principals, to the superintendents and state what they would like to know and what they want to see in the school system to make sure that the privacy of their children is protected, that their children are safe. We know that some school systems sell information to groups about students in the schools. We think that’s wrong. Parents should have a right to protect their children’s privacy.
We know in Loudoun County, for example, that a boy who pretended to be a girl sexually molested a girl in the girl’s bathroom, and that the school board kept that a secret and then transferred that student. The parents were not told what happened to the little girl that was molested, and then that little boy was transferred to another school where he did the same thing. That’s wrong. If a child commits a crime, and that is a crime, no matter what age the child is, then the parents need to know about it and need to be able to demand the safety of their children. So we want the parents to have that bill under their belts, so to speak, when they go to the schools to talk to them about these essential rights.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, and all of this is a reminder to parents that there are these federally given rights through what’s called FERPA through PPRA, that’s another federal legislation. And then we have the Elementary Secondary Education Act, ESEA, which has various names in various eras. So now it’s ESSA. So I appreciate what you’re doing through hearings, through bills, through interviews, and events. I got to participate in a really fun Parents Bill of Rights announcement event earlier this year to get that message out to parents. “You have rights. They exist in federal law. They also can be strengthened by adjustments to the existing federal law, but know that you have rights and know that you are empowered to go and push back on what’s happening in the system.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Right.
Ginny Gentles:
So, thank you for being a steady, constant voice reminding parents of that they don’t have to be helpless in light of what’s happening. So we talked about hearing-
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Can I make a quick comment about that?
Ginny Gentles:
Yeah.
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
We didn’t mention in talking about my background, I served 12 years on the school board.
Ginny Gentles:
Okay.
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
And how-
Ginny Gentles:
You’ve done it all.
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
I have done it all. And so, I was a member of the League of Women Voters, and the league was asked members to go to various elected officials’ meetings and observe. So I was at a school board meeting one night, 1973. The school board was being particularly incompetent. I mean, it was really incompetent. And so, a guy sitting next to me and sometimes at school board meetings, there was nobody there to follow what was going on. He turned around to me and said, “Why don’t you run for the school board?” And I said, “No, I’m not qualified.” He said, “You mean you’re not as qualified as those turkeys are?” Well, I had a master’s degree in teaching. I was teaching at Appalachian. I was running a program and I had a child in school.
So I went home that night to my husband who’s really the political one in the family. I’m the policy person, although he’s policy also, but he’s really smart politically. And I said, “Rochester thinks I should run for the school board.” He said, “Well, I think that’s a good idea.” Well, I was shocked that he said it. So I ran and I lost the first time. And I always say that to people because I think it’s important.
Two things about my story. Number one, women tend to underestimate their abilities in terms of not just… But particularly in running for office, women underestimate themselves. And I did that night big time. Then you can lose and live. I mean, I lost that first election by 200 votes out of about 6,000 that were cast. There weren’t a lot of people who voted. Our county was rather small at the time. But I ran the next time and I was the top vote-getter. And so what I say to people is, “Don’t underestimate your abilities.”
Now, what happened on what I have observed in going to those meetings is that 10 people could come in and change the minds of the school board. Well, that’s fine to do, but the school board ought to have policies that it goes by month by month. And that was what I was seeing happening in school board meetings. And when I got on the school board, I found out they had not a single policy written down, not one.
I spent my first two years on the school board putting together a policy manual by going back through the minutes of the school board meetings for years. And we had a very thin policy manual. But anyway, it’s important, I think, that people get involved and you can make school boards or legislators change policy. I have this thing behind me. You can’t quite read it, but I give this quote out to people a lot. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead. I have given that. I gave that to a group of people down in one of my counties who started a charter school. I didn’t think there was any hope for them to do that, but I gave them that quote early on, and they’ve lived by that. So you can change the world.
Ginny Gentles:
Oh, I love that. And I see so much of that happening in the education freedom world with yes, starting charter schools, but increasingly starting these small micro-schools, educators are forming these small communities and they’re thriving and education freedom programs are enabling that.
In Florida, for example, you have over 400,000 students who are receiving scholarships now or education savings accounts. And that allows these educators to go and create these innovative or sometimes traditional options for families. So we love talking about that option at Students Over Systems. You can run for school board, you can push policies at the local, state, and federal level. You can also start a school or find a great option for your child that exists. And you can push policies at the state and federal level that support education freedom.
So let’s talk about some of those federal school choice policies. You have always been so supportive. Whenever advocates bring young people who’ve benefited from school choice programs to Capitol Hill, you are there. You are right there talking to them and meeting them, and I so appreciate that and I know the young people do too. What are some of these programs that you have been advocating for over the years? We could start with the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, for example.
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Absolutely. I give John Boehner a lot of credit for that. He started that program. We’ve been able to keep it going despite the fact that the Democrats have wanted to kill it. I mean, one of the biggest disappointments I think people in DC had was that President Obama did not support that. And we had to fight to keep it. We’ve had to fight every year to keep the DC scholarships. And we know, again, when the students have a choice, when they have the freedom to go to a good school, that they will succeed. So yes, I’m very much a fan of the DC Scholarship program. I’m very much a fan of charter school programs and very much a fan of what we hope is going to pass, and I can’t remember the exact title of the bill, but on choice for students. You’ll remember, it’s in Ways and Means, Educational Choice for Children Act.
Now that bill, its number one place in the system, is in Ways and Means because it has to do with the tax structure, but we have a referral in education also. And what we hope is that that will be one of the prime bills that we pass in this session of Congress so that we can allow people to donate to a nonprofit that will give scholarships to students and then get a tax credit for it and expand exponentially the number of children who have the freedom to leave a failing school and go to a school that will help them be successful. And that is the choice that they and their parents want to have. So anything that we can do to promote education freedom, I am in favor of.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, again, I so appreciate your longstanding support for these education options. And right now, the tax credit, as you mentioned, Educational Choice for Children Act is getting a lot of attention. I believe there’s over a hundred co-sponsors in the House, which is remarkable for a school choice bill at the federal level.
The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program needs to be getting some attention because even though we’re in its 18th year, once again, the Democrats are trying to make sure it withers on the vine. And Dr. Foxx, we have single-digit proficiency for Black students in DC right now. It should not be a question that we have a DC Opportunity Scholarship Program that allows families to explore alternative options. The public system continues to fail minority students in the city and parents for years, including Virginia Walden Ford, two decades ago, have been advocating for these options. They want the freedom. I hope that those issues will be addressed and that we can revisit the idea of portability of education funds. Special education is an ongoing challenge for parents across the country. That is failing these kids with special needs. And if we can make those IDEA funds portable, that would be great too. So, I am looking forward to exploring that with you.
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Again, portability is the way we should be going. The funds that are appropriated for a child should go with the child. We do that in post-secondary education. People get a Pell Grant and they can go anywhere they want to do that if it’s a Title IV approved school. So students can do that. The Democrats though will never listen to that. They don’t like the analogy of that because the teachers unions control the Democrats and they control the public schools. There’s an article today in the news about how the Governor of Pennsylvania went back on his word. He campaigned saying that he would be for education freedom and he would be for expanding the scholarship program that they have in Pennsylvania. He’s gone back on his word because of the teachers unions.
And even now, there’s been a deal, as I read it, the Senate Democrats and the Republicans and the Governor have come up with a deal to fund this program not at the same level the governor said he would when he was campaigning. But to do that, they are giving the same amount of money to the public schools that the students will leave. And so, their funding incompetence and this teachers union still won’t let go and let that pass in the budget. So they’re a month past. They’re supposed to pass their budget the end of June. It’s now near the end of August, and they will not allow that to pass because they know once that is done, students and parents will choose the freedom they have to go to other schools and it opens the floodgates. So, unfortunately, the teachers unions control the Democrats when it comes to school freedom.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, the Democrats were definitely not friendly to me when I testified before your committee earlier this year. The nature of the unfriendliness, calling me an extremist for expressing concern about learning loss, advocating for education freedom, and expressing support for parents being informed about their student’s health and mental health, really it was a surprise. I did not know that things were going to be so acrimonious. So you definitely have your hands full as you’re conducting these hearings, shepherding legislation through, and focusing on these things that are so important to students and parents.
Before we conclude with our last question, I think we’d be remiss in not addressing the learning loss crisis that we have in the country due to the extended COVID closures, which were inspired by teachers unions and their advocates. Will you be continuing to shine the light on this learning loss crisis?
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
We absolutely will. These students who suffered from being taken out of school during COVID will never get over this. I am convinced that they probably will never get over it. Even in North Carolina, we’ve made some headway with that, and I’m proud that our superintendent was there at a hearing recently to talk about that. But in most cases, the students are just going to suffer.
In addition to that, Ginny, students have disappeared. There are a lot of students just have not come back to school. Period. And we don’t even know where they are. So we will continue to shine a light on the learning loss. And again, you can lay 99% of the blame at the feet of the teachers unions. Mike Pompeo, our former Secretary of State, was asked recently, “Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Was it Xi or is it Putin?” He said, “No, it’s Randi Weingarten.” He considers her the most dangerous person in the world because of the impact she’s having on learning. And it’s so hypocritical of the Democrats to claim that they are representing these people and that they want to trap them in failing schools. It just makes you want to cry that we, as the Republicans, are fighting so hard for everybody to have a good experience, and the Democrats are harming the very people that they claim to support.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, I hope that there can be an acknowledgment, a bipartisan acknowledgment of the chronic absenteeism of the learning loss crisis because we’ve got over 50 million K-12 students who need all the adults in the country to come together and be serious about their futures and about their current education path. As we conclude today, we always ask our guests, what is the education freedom myth that bothers you the most and that you want to dispel today?
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Well, I think that the education freedom myth that I think is so harmful is that people who choose to not be in the typical public school but go to a charter school or go somewhere else, that it’s the elite who do that. It’s not the elite. It is ordinary people who care about their children, who understand the importance of their children getting a good education.
And so, a recent study that was talked about in the Wall Street Journal, and I don’t have it in front of me, showed the diversity that’s in particularly in charter schools, that they are serving a wide range of students and people from different income levels and mostly from low-income levels. And they’re also helping students who are challenged physically and mentally. So it’s a myth that the freedom that parents exercise is only in one category of parents, it’s not. It’s across the board. And so, our charter schools and our schools that are not the typical public schools or the private schools have a range of people in them, a range of students. So I think it’s very important that we can continually talk about that.
Ginny Gentles:
Absolutely. Well, Congresswoman Foxx, I’ve enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you-
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Thank you, Ginny.
Ginny Gentles:
Yeah, thank you so much for all that you’re doing for parents and for students, and thank you for joining us on Students Over System.
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Well, I’ll tell the people watching and listening to your podcast, pray for us, okay?
Ginny Gentles:
I think that that’s a great way to wrap up our conversation today. Thank you.
Rep. Virginia Foxx:
Take care. Bye-bye.
Ginny Gentles:
We hope listeners found today’s conversation informative and encouraging. If you enjoyed this episode of Students Over Systems, please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcast app. And don’t forget to share this episode with your friends. To learn more about the work of the IWF Education Freedom Center, please visit iwf.org/efc. Thank you for listening to Students Over Systems. Until next time, keep celebrating education freedom, and brighter futures.
