During a segment about reading and math proficiency in the United States, Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade made a comment that shocked his fellow hosts

Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade made a controversial comment(Image: Fox News)

Brian Kilmeade made a controversial comment on a recent episode of Fox and Friends.

During the September 9 episode of the morning show, hosts Brian, Ainsley Earhardt, and Lawrence B Jones discussed the decline in math and reading proficiency in schools across America. “High school seniors are falling further behind. More students than ever are scoring below the national assessment of education progress for basic skills. And this is the first time since the pandemic these tests were given to 12th graders.” Ainsley said, with her last statement regarding the 2024 results.

The program then showed a graphic relaying the percent of 12th-grade students who are meeting proficiency in math and reading. For math, it was 26% in 2013, 25% in 2015, 24% in 2019, and 22% in 2024. As for reading, it was 37% in 2015 and 2019, but dropped to 35% in 2024.

“Unacceptable,” Lawrence commented. “Not even a fourth of high school seniors can read,” Ainsley added.

Math proficiency is down(Image: Fox News)

“If you can’t read, you can’t do anything,” Brian added. “I don’t know what we’re going to do, but keep reporting this.”

But the next thing out of Brian’s mouth appeared to stun his co-hosts. “I know most Republicans are for this, I am just not comfortable with the education department collapsing and things getting better because the same states that are having a problem are going to get worse,” he said.

He continued, “And the ones who don’t have a problem probably don’t need the supervision. But then we lose total control at the federal level.”

The other co-hosts were flabbergasted (Image: Fox News)

Ainsley quickly interjected, “But think about this, Republicans care most about Republican states, right? They care about all of them, but they care really about their voters, people who voted them into office. So if the money goes, let’s use South Carolina, for example, to South Carolina, and you live in New York, you’re not happy with DEI in your schools, you’re not happy with talking about gender, you move to South Carolina. You move to Florida.”

“Why not have the federal authority to say DEI got to go?” Brian asked. Ainsley replied, “You can for four years if you have Donald Trump.”

A user on X, formerly known as Twitter, shared the video on the site. Social media users were quick to react to the right-wing view of education. “They could’ve tried to fix it but no, they just gut the Dept of Ed. And they don’t have a plan in place for when it’s gone. What is their plan?!” one person commented.

“Do they not know that the 75% with failing marks will become parents?” Another asked. “That’s who you want to decide curriculum? How about we go back to leaving it up to the experts? Also, the anti-DEI states are the reason our scores are so low.”