Jonathan Butcher - Sr. Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Five point fifty two our time here in Houston's borning news.
The problem is that not that our kids can't read,
They just can't read a grade level, which I guess
is a little bit of a problem. Right when a
fourth grader's reading at a second grader level or a
third grader level, then they're falling behind. Jonathan Butcher joins
US senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Not surprised, Jonathan,

(00:21):
I guess let's start with the cause. What do we
think the problem is? Is this leftover COVID hangover from
when we had all the schools locked down.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, the score declines were actually going down even before
COVID hit. I mean there was a downward trend really
dating back about a decade. At this point, I think
that we can point to some of the federal policies,
but really this has to do with the influence of
local teacher unions taking the focus away from core subjects
and away from math and reading and putting it on

(00:52):
things like sel and critical race theory related you know,
they won't call it critical race, but the idea of diversity, equity,
and inclusion, you know, all of these things that have
radical views on race and gender. I think that has
really distracted from the core ideas of what education should
be about.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
In other words, we're not doing the basics. We're doing
all these social programs. We're not spending our time doing reading, writing,
and arithmetic, which is what the schools were all designed
to do give kids the basics.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I mean, certainly not enough. I mean it's hard to
make the argument that what's been done by these interest
groups have helped, right. I mean, we're looking at historically
low reading scores, especially in eighth grade, but also in
fourth grade. There was very very little achievement in math.
I mean it was almost negligible and spotty right in

(01:44):
different parts of the country. So the same has really
been true across even other subjects like Civics and geography
on the nation's report cards for many years too. So
you know, we can be and should should be disturbed
by the drop in math and reading, but we got
to recognize this is happening across the subject So there
is something very fundamental that is not working in the

(02:07):
assigned school system.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
All right, Well, you know, let's look at the other
end of the equation too, though. Let's look at the
students and let's look at the parents. We live in
a highly technological world where reading is sort of obsolete.
I hate to say that, but you know, we have
kids that are going home and they're playing video games,
they're doing anything but picking up a book and reading. It.
Is that part of the problem.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, it could be, could be some. I mean, I
would say that there's been heightened attention to reading in
recent years. In fact, there was a story of a
man who posted videos of himself teaching himself to read
after being released from prison, and his videos caught fire
on Instagram and he wound up on the Today Show. Right,
So I mean, I think I think this idea that

(02:51):
there is something valuable to reading, and that when you
teach yourself to read, you've you know, unlocked the future
potential for yourself. So I think that appreciate ciation still
exists among the American public. I think that the distractions
from social media in general, I think are a real problem.
I mean, the amount of time that children spend on

(03:12):
social media. According to some surveys, it's almost eight hours
a day, sometimes more so. I mean, kids are spending
almost an entire working day, right, the equivalent of that
on social media so you know, the policies around phones
in schools are getting a lot more attention these days.
States are prohibiting that or otherwise putting limits or pretty

(03:33):
strict restrictions on the use of phones in school during
the school day. And I think that's a good step.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, you know, even conservative states of Don demithin this
Here in Texas, for example, the reading scores for eighth
graders were really abysmal. I mean, I guess there wasn't
one area of improvement. Minorities we're doing a little bit better.
Non English speaking students, we have plenty of those, We're
doing a little bit better. Is the attention again going
to maybe special needs, you know, minorities groups that are

(04:04):
non English speaking groups. Are we putting too much attention there?
Not enough on you know, students who who have been
here for their entire lives.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well, there are two things really, I mean, one is
that the students who are scoring at the very bottom
of the achievement scale sell even worse. Right, So this
achievement gap that we've now talked about for I mean generations, frankly,
that achievement gap is not getting any better, right between
students at the top and bottom of the achievement scale
that can be paired with the achievement gap between students

(04:35):
at the upper and lower levels of the income scale. Okay,
so there's a real there's a relationship there. I would
also say that even among white students, okay, their scores
are so troubling that even if we close the achievement gap,
we would still have students on average scoring below where

(04:59):
they need to be in terms of being on grade level. Okay.
So this is not just a matter of closing the
achievement gap, although that's important, it's a frankly, it's a
matter of getting all students up to a place where
they're scoring at grade level. So it's really a problem
regardless of background.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
A lot of reason it's behind it, but anyway, look
at it, we're not getting the job done. Jonathan. Thanks
Jonathan Butcher, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.