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Floor Speech
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Mr. MORAN. Madam President, I was sitting home reading the newspaper, something I still do, and last month I read an article that captured my attention. National test scores of American students showed an alarming decline in the education of our children. Reading scores in America have continued to worsen since the height of COVID-19 pandemic, dropping to the lowest scores in decades.
The troubling deterioration in American education was demonstrated by average scores on the 2023 National Assessment of Educational Progress known as the Nation's Report Card. The report showed that 13-year-olds declined nine points in math compared to 2020. This was the largest drop for 13-year-olds seen in 50 years.
When 13-year-olds are struggling, it portends even worse problems ahead, because mastery in seventh and eighth grade is necessary to progress to more complex knowledge and analytical abilities required in high school and beyond. We know that failures in early childhood education, in early education have a long-lasting consequence.
We must turn these test scores around and accelerate the education of America's young as though our future depends on it, because it absolutely does.
America's strength as a global power--let me say that the education of our children is hugely important to our students and their families. But, also, America's strength as a global power doesn't just depend upon a strong military or possessing the latest weapons. Those things are important, but it also depends upon our economy and our ability to maintain a technological edge over our adversaries. And that all begins in the classroom, equipping our students to read, multiply, divide, and succeed.
The mental health, confidence, and contributions of young Americans cannot be thought of as a secondary issue. It is not a secondary issue to other national security imperatives. What that means is that the well-being, health, confidence, contribution, the capabilities, knowledge, intellect, and intelligence of our children have consequences to our security--our national security.
One of those greatest threats in our national security is China. China understands that to force their way into being a global superpower, they must be able to challenge the U.S. militarily and economically. This can be done by dislodging the United States as a leader in key technology areas that will dictate the success of nations in the coming decades.
Those technologies include semiconductor design and manufacture, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, aerospace engineering, advanced manufacturing, and biotechnology. If China were to overtake the United States in any of these areas--in any of these areas--the United States would lose out on trillions of dollars in economic value, our military edge would erode, and the Chinese global influence would increase dramatically.
As we grapple with the implications of a new Cold War with China and as we take stock of many of the associated challenges more complex than the old Cold War, the fact that our youth remain grades behind in math poses a concerning obstacle to future competitiveness. Advances in science and technology will build on basic math. Right now, our children are unprepared; and, therefore, we are unprepared to meet this challenge.
While we work to regain this ground in education, particularly in these STEM fields, we also need to create more opportunities for others that have gained a STEM education here in the United States to practice their profession in this country and contribute to the U.S. economy.
Educating people, only to send them back to strengthen their own home country, at a time in which the U.S. demand for STEM talent is through the roof, defies logic. Only 11 percent of foreign-born recipients of a bachelor's degree and only 23 percent of those who earn a master's degree manage to find a way to stay and work in the United States.
The U.S. semiconductor industry alone could face a shortage of 70- to 90,000 workers over the next few years, and there is a projected shortfall of 300,000 engineers and 90,000 skilled technicians by 2030. It would be naive to believe that these positions can be solely filled by our American students.
As the Wall Street Journal opinion section recently read, the foreigner working in tech ``isn't taking an American job; they are helping keep that job in the U.S.''
Foreign-born scientists have been integral to our preeminence as a scientific and military power. Most famously, nuclear physicists from Europe were the intellectual forces that propelled the Manhattan Project; and, today, more than half of the Silicon Valley startups are led by foreign-born entrepreneurs. This is why we have worked to pass the Startup Act in each Congress since I arrived in the Senate.
This bill would ensure that those with advanced STEM degrees would be able to stay in this country while they are engaged in STEM-related professions.
This would fill the immediate and increasing need for STEM-educated professionals, while we work to improve STEM education for America's youth.
There is no ``one size fits all'' approach to solving the challenges in the classroom. Regaining ground after schools were closed during the pandemic will take hard work and ingenuity. But the success of our Nation depends--again, the success of our children depends, but because that is the case, the success of our Nation, our country, depends on young minds grappling and mastering the basics of math and reading and writing and science.
We must make certain we are taking an ``all of the above,'' long-term approach to national security, and that means making strides in the classroom and investing in our students. Our schools are there to take care of our children and their future, but failure to do so means that we are damaging our Nation's future.
For the sake of our country, its national defense, its economy, and for the sake of all American families, we need to make certain that we reverse course in making certain that our students are learning and are achieving at a rate that allows us to be successful.
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