House Passes ESEA 359-64

Sadly, the hugely bureaucratic FedEd ESEA bill, now called the Every Student Succeeds Act, S 1177 passed the US House by a vote of 359-64.  We are grateful to the 64 principled Republicans that voted No. Here is the full roll call:   http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2015/roll665.xml, and here are the 64 courageous Republicans that voted no:

Amash Babin Bishop (UT) Blackburn Brat Bridenstine Brooks (AL) Buck Chabot Chaffetz Clawson (FL) Culberson DeSantis DesJarlais Duncan (SC) Farenthold Fleming Franks (AZ) Gohmert Gosar Gowdy Graves (LA)

Guinta Harper Harris Hice, Jody B. Holding Huelskamp Johnson, Sam Jones Jordan Kelly (MS) King (IA) Labrador Lamborn Loudermilk Love Lummis Marchant Massie Meadows Miller (FL) Mooney (WV) Mulvaney

Palazzo Palmer Perry Poe (TX) Ratcliffe Rogers (AL) Rohrabacher Rothfus Salmon Sanford Schweikert Smith (MO) Smith (NE) Stewart Stutzman Walker Weber (TX) Wenstrup Yoder Yoho

Thank you very much to all who visited, called, tweeted, emailed, messaged, and faxed. Please see HERE for more details on the debate, but here is one clip from floor debate that demonstrates in no uncertain terms that the appalling purpose of Common Core that is cemented into this bill is psychological manipulation and profiling of our kids:

It also appears that the reason this bill was rammed through after a holiday with only two days for the public to review final language of this 1061 page monstrosity was to try to help Jeb Bush’s imploding presidential campaign before Iowa.  See HERE for more analysis on why taking credit for this boondoggle will not help:

The likely final Senate vote will be Tuesday 12/8. There is a new Twitter Action Page

The federal education bill gives hollow protections against federal interference. (If they ask or try to tell you otherwise, you can give them these with details at the first link below):

• The secretary of education has veto power over the state plans that are still required to have statewide standards and assessments.
• The language of the bill itself puts forth many requirements for the types of standards that must be in the state plans, so it is essentially irrelevant what the secretary does or does not do.
• The language of the bill itself requires that standards align with ELEVEN different federal statutes that will make it likely that states have to keep the Common Core standards or those like them, even if they call them something else
• .The language prohibiting federal interference is essentially the same in statutes that Secretary Duncan ignored to give us Common Core and waivers.  Then and now, there is no enforcement mechanism.

For more details on these first two points see this summary regarding standards and assessments with specific language citations from the American Principles Project. Also see the video above if anyone needs proof.

Thank you for everything you are doing to protect the hearts and minds of our children!