House Appropriators Grill Literacy Experts on Why Two-Thirds of Kids Can't Read Proficiently

Why it matters

The House Appropriations subcommittee that controls the federal education purse held its first hearing of the year on February 10, 2026, tackling a question with a deceptively simple answer that Washington has struggled to act on for decades: how should the government help children learn to read? The hearing on evidence-based reading instruction landed at a moment of acute tension — the Trump administration says it supports the science of reading but has proposed eliminating $194 million in federal literacy grants and cutting the Department of Education's budget by $12 billion. Witnesses told lawmakers that the very federal research dollars now on the chopping block created the science that made state-level reading gains possible.

The big picture

Only 30% of American eighth graders read at proficient levels, according to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress — a number that has declined steadily since before the pandemic. The results, released in January 2025, were described by the American Enterprise Institute as a "five-alarm fire."

Over 40 states have passed laws requiring schools to adopt evidence-based reading instruction in recent years. Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have posted measurable gains. But the federal role in sustaining that momentum is now in question.

The hearing before the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee was designed to inform the FY2026 spending bill. Subcommittee Chair Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL-4) used his home state's reading gains as a centerpiece, while Ranking Member Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-3) used the same data to argue for protecting federal investments the administration wants to cut.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has called literacy "the cornerstone of academic achievement" and signaled that reading is a departmental priority. But the administration's FY2026 budget proposes eliminating Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grants entirely — the kind of funding witnesses said is essential.

What they're saying about the science of reading in Congress

The three witnesses — Bonnie Short of the Alabama Reading Initiative, Holly Lane of the University of Florida Literacy Institute, and Larry Saulsberry of Huntsville City Schools — presented a unified case: the science works, but only with sustained investment.

  • Lane delivered the hearing's sharpest line: "There's no equivalent of the FDA to evaluate reading programs. This leaves schools susceptible to every snake oil salesman."
  • Short warned lawmakers with a cautionary tale from Alabama: "Our vision changed, our policy changed, our investment changed, and our data changed. Not for the better."
  • Saulsberry put it in personal terms, describing growing up in Gee's Bend, Alabama, where his grandmother — a celebrated quilter — ensured he found joy in reading.

Lane, whose UFLI Foundations phonics program is now reportedly used in close to 700,000 classrooms, told the subcommittee that "the science of reading would not exist without" federally funded research. She warned that without continued funding, schools "will still be subject to the snake oil salesman."

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD-5) pressed Lane on proposed cuts to education research and NIH/NSF funding. Lane responded that eliminating that pipeline would leave the country with "no idea the effects of technological changes" on how children learn.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID-2) expressed visible frustration, asking why teacher preparation programs still teach outdated methods decades after the research settled the question. Lane acknowledged "a very wide range of quality, from outstanding to really, really poor" among preparation programs, with no safeguards.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD-1) steered the conversation toward family structure, citing Baltimore's Frederick Douglass High School as having "0% of their students proficient in reading now." Short responded that Alabama's approach "is working for all children" across every demographic.

Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA-9) asked the key implementation question: why have 40 states passed reading education policy bills but only a handful seen real gains? Lane's answer was blunt — "States like Alabama have expertise, people who know what they're doing leading the efforts. That is not true in all of the states."

Short used an Alabama football analogy to make her case for coaching: "Coaches are not just for the weak. Coaches are for everyone."

Political stakes

For the Chair: Aderholt framed the hearing as "evidence-driven policy", showcasing Alabama's rise from 49th to 34th in fourth-grade reading. But the testimony he solicited may give appropriators ammunition to preserve literacy programs the White House wants to eliminate — putting him in a delicate position between his witnesses and his party's president.

For the administration: The disconnect is hard to miss. Secretary McMahon says literacy is a top priority. The budget says otherwise. Witnesses told the subcommittee that the research infrastructure the administration is proposing to cut is what made the science of reading possible in the first place.

For the public: The stakes are straightforward. Two-thirds of American children are not reading proficiently. The hearing produced broad agreement on what works. The fight is over who pays for it.

Yes, but

Aderholt stressed in his opening that "increased spending alone is not always the answer," advocating for state-led reform over federal mandates. That framing aligns with the administration's preference for returning education authority to states. And the state-level success stories witnesses cited — Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana — did originate from state policy, not federal directives.

The tension is that those state programs relied on federal research to know what to implement, and on federal grants to help pay for it. As Education Week reported, Short told lawmakers that "meaningful reading improvement does not come from isolated programs or short-term initiatives."

What's next

The subcommittee will use this hearing's record as it drafts the FY2026 Labor-HHS-Education spending bill. Key decisions ahead include whether to preserve or eliminate the $194 million in Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grants and how to fund the Institute of Education Sciences research that underpins the science of reading. Multiple related bills are moving through the 119th Congress, including H.Res.163, which expresses the goal that every student achieve grade-level reading proficiency.

The bottom line

Both parties agree the science of reading works — the fight now is whether Washington will fund the research and programs that made it possible.

Spot something wrong? Report an issue with this article