GOP resolution blasts Common Core standards

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) and more than three dozen other House Republicans introduced a resolution Wednesday that criticizes the Obama administration’s effort to set education standards through the Common Core program.

The resolution, H.Res. 476, finds that Common Core standards started as an effort by a few national organizations to set education standard, but has turned into an “incentives-based mandate from the Federal Government.”

{mosads}”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,” Duncan said Wednesday.

“The Washington-knows-best approach has repeatedly failed the very children it proposes to help,” he added. “It’s time to roll back Common Core and return education to the people who it matters most to — children, parents, and teachers.”

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), one of the sponsors of the resolution, added that he wants parents around the country to know that “they have partners in Congress working to roll back this harmful policy.”

The resolution argues that decades-old law prohibits federal education standards. But it notes that the 2009 stimulus bill created federal grants under a “Race to the Top” program — to get these grants, states have to implement certain educational standards established by Common Core.

As a result, 45 states have adopted Common Core standards, which the resolution says is leading to less control by those states over their own education system.

“[N]ational standards lead to national assessments and national assessments lead to a national curriculum,” it reads. “[B]lanket education standards should not be a pre-requisite for Federal funding.”

The non-binding language concludes by saying the government should not be in the business of creating incentives to meet national education standards, and that no more federal incentive grants should be given out once the resolution is adopted.