Forty-two U.S. House members have signed onto a resolution condemning the Common Core State Standards as destructive to American education, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) announced in a press release on Wednesday.
The resolution, H. Res. 476, denounces the use of federal coercion to lure states into adopting the Common Core standards.
Duncan, a father of three sons and a bold conservative congressman never afraid to challenge leadership in either political party, said, “Common Core is one of the most frequent concerns I hear from parents when I’m traveling across the district.” He further articulated:
Parents and teachers alike are alarmed by this top-down approach to education that wrongly ties education money for states to the adoption of academic standards that do not fully reflect the values of South Carolina. Beyond the most important constitutional issues with federal education standards, many education leaders have been raising concerns with the content of the standards themselves.
The House bill is a companion resolution to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (SC-R) S. Res. 345, which also emphasizes the importance of education issues being decided by the states. Graham, who is up for reelection this year and facing a crowded field of primary challengers, has been moving slightly to the right as he seeks to fend off those primary challengers.
“Education needs to be personalized and flexible, which means education policy needs to originate from our local communities and not from some bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.,” said Duncan. “The Washington-knows-best approach has repeatedly failed the very children it proposes to help. It’s time to roll back Common Core and return education to the people who it matters most to – children, parents, and teachers.”
Common Core is a federally-led education initiative introduced in the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus bill through a competitive grant program called Race to the Top (RTTT). States could apply and compete for federal grant money as long as they adopted the Common Core, a set of uniform standards and aligned curricula that allow for a greater role of government in education, higher levels of social indoctrination, student data collection, and teacher evaluations based on student performance on assessments aligned with the standards.
Forty-five state boards of education, most of them unelected, signed onto the unproven Common Core standards with little, if any, public or media scrutiny, prior to even seeing the standards themselves.
The implementation of Common Core has been privately funded primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, underscoring the alliance of big government political elites and corporatists in this academic initiative.
“Classrooms cannot and should not be coerced into adopting federal academic standards,” Duncan said. “That’s not just my belief; it’s federal law.”
Original co-sponsors of H. Res. 476 include:
Joe Wilson (SC-02), Andy Harris (MD-01), Mick Mulvaney (SC-05), Trent Franks (AZ-08), Doug Collins (GA-09), Randy Hultgren (IL-14), Tim Huelskamp (KS-01), Thomas Massie (KY-04), Marsha Blackburn (TN-07), Lee Terry (NE-02), Justin Amash (MI-03), Tom Cotton (AR-04), Mike Rogers (AL-03), Matt Salmon (AZ-05), Bob Gibbs (OH-07), Walter B. Jones (NC-03), Pete Sessions (TX-32), Mike Pompeo (KS-04), Mark Sanford (SC-01), Jack Kingston (GA-01), Leonard Lance (NJ-07), Kerry Bentivolio (MI-11), Paul Cook (CA-08), Kevin Cramer (ND-AL), Steve Daines (MT-AL), John Fleming (LA-04), James Lankford (OK-05), Rob Bishop (UT-01), Randy K. Weber (TX-14), Marlin Stutzman (IN-03), Mark Meadows (NC-11), Ted Yoho (FL-03), Doug LaMalfa (CA-01), Louie Gohmert (TX-01), Bill Flores (TX-17), Steve King (IA-04), Steve Chabot (OH-01), Tom Rooney (FL-17), Chris Stewart (UT-02), Rick Crawford (AR-01), Paul Gosar (AZ-04), and Dan Benishek (MI-01).
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