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Floor Speech
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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am going to talk for a few minutes today about HB12. That is not HB12 from the U.S. House of Representatives; that is HB12 from the Louisiana House of Representatives. Why do I want to talk about it? Because it is important. It is important for my State, and I think it is important for other States.
HB12 passed the Louisiana House of Representatives yesterday--maybe it was the day before--by a vote of 88 to 15, and it is headed to my senate.
As the Presiding Officer knows, it is frustrating in that the American people can do things that take your breath away--we can unravel the human genome; we can take a diseased human heart--we can do that in America--and replace it with a new one and make it beat; we can send a person to the Moon--but we can't seem to teach our children how to read and write when we have 18 years to do it.
I don't come here this morning to assess blame. Our problem is shared in other countries. That is no excuse. Our problem is caused by a multitude of factors, but I believe and I will bet the Presiding Officer believes that every child can learn--that every child can learn. It is harder for some than others. I recognize that some of our children do not have a supportive home life, not just in America but in other parts of the world. It seems commonsensical to me that if parents do not love their child, the child is not going to stop loving the child's parents; the child is going to stop loving himself or herself. But I don't know how to fix that. All we can do is continue to believe that every child can learn--every child.
My State, like other States, has a problem with elementary and secondary education. Over half of my children--my young people--in Louisiana are not reading at their grade levels, and at some point, as a child is socially promoted in school and progresses, it almost becomes impossible for a child to learn if the child can't read.
It is not just money. Go look at a list of what States spend on elementary and secondary education--and not just States but local governments and the Federal Government as well. One of our States in America is spending $54,000 a year on their public schools. I mean, God bless them, but that is a lot of money. It is not just money. We have to try and we have to be courageous enough to try new things that we think will work.
Now, what does that have to do with HB12 in the Louisiana State Legislature? Here is what HB12 would do. It would say: Look, we are not blaming anyone, but if you are a child in the third grade in Louisiana and if you can't read, according to objective standards, at an acceptable level, then you are going to stay in the third grade. We don't care if you are 16 years old. We can hold you until you are 18. But we think you can learn, and you can't learn if you can't read.
Now, that doesn't mean that the child just repeats the third grade with no help. We will assign that child special tutors. We will assign that child special attention. We will give that child a number of efforts to demonstrate that child's proficiency after getting this special tutoring and attention. But we think every child can learn.
This approach has been tried in two other States--Mississippi and Florida--and it has worked in both States--in both States. We have copied it from Mississippi and Florida. We take no pride of authorship. I am always willing to copy other people's ideas that work and give them full credit. Let me just mention the success in Mississippi, and I hope my colleagues in the Louisiana Legislature--I love every one of them--are listening to me.
After Mississippi implemented its requirement that kids can't advance until they can read, this is what one analysis says of the results of that effort:
The results are stunning: In sixth grade, three years after the intervention, retained students outperform similar students by 1.2 standard deviations (a 0.8 effect size is generally considered ``large''), with no measurable impact--
None-- on student absenteeism or special education classification, negative indicators sometimes associated with retention.
Those aren't my words; that came from an in-depth study at Boston University.
This analysis goes on to say:
The magnitude of Mississippi's accomplishments with early reading is truly impressive and rightly deserves attention and replication by other states. For low-income, Black, and Hispanic students, by 2019, Mississippi had risen to the top five of all the states on the fourth grade NAEP, with each group showing more than a year's additional progress since 2013.
I could go on. I could cite you similar analyses and statistics for the State of Florida.
Every child can learn. It just requires a little extra attention and love for some of our children.
Now, HB12 in the Louisiana Legislature would copy the program in Mississippi and Florida. It has passed, as it did last year, overwhelmingly, as I mentioned, in the Louisiana House of Representatives. Last year, in the Louisiana House of Representatives, it passed overwhelmingly. This year, just recently, it passed by a vote of 88 to 15. Last year, when the bill went to my State's senate, the bill died. We are on our second try, and the bill is now before the Louisiana State Senate.
I know every member of my Louisiana State Senate. I respect all of them, and I am pleading with them. Please, please, please, pretty please with sugar on top, pass this bill. It has worked in other States. If it doesn't work in Louisiana, I will come right to this lectern and say it didn't work, that we tried it. We gave it our best shot, but it didn't work.
But I think it will, and I think our kids deserve the chance. Every child can learn. Every child can learn, but some of our children need special attention. This bill, HB12, before the Louisiana State Senate will provide that attention.
Please, members of my Senate, pass this bill.
I yield to my colleague from Hawaii.
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