Statement on the Enactment of the Every Student Succeeds Act

The following statement was released by Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch and the executive director of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition, and Randy Osborne, director of education for Heartland Research and Florida Eagle Forum, on the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act:

The president and Congress have chosen to give the parents of Florida and America a huge lump of educational coal this Christmas by enacting the Every Student Succeeds Act.  Despite this lopsided vote against the Constitution and parental rights, we are deeply grateful to the Republican members of Congress that voted to protect children from the tyrannical government intrusions in this bill. The wisdom of those twelve senators and sixty-four House members,  as with those who had the foresight to vote against No Child Left Behind in 2001, will be prescient. We are incredibly disappointed in the wholesale sellout of our children to Big Government, Big Corporations, and Big Data by the legislators of both parties.

We also thank presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for their steadfast opposition to the ESSA. Support of this disastrous bill by presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Linsdsey Graham, Bernie Sanders, and the failure of Marco Rubio to be involved in final deliberations for this incredibly important federal legislation will certainly not help their cause among this very active and engaged grassroots voting block. Parents, who are desperately seeking to protect their children from the terrible Common Core system of inferior and manipulative standards, psychologically profiling assessments and invasive data mining, want a candidate that will fight to slay the federal leviathan, not feed it or ignore it.

Sadly, on the day before the Senate vote, the Obama administration was already giving more than 200 parent and citizen groups in 46 states plenty of ammunition to say, “We told you so.”  According to state legislators meeting with US DOE chief of staff Emma Vadehra, the law now embeds “College and Career Ready Standards (the other name for Common Core) and because of the way the law is written, US DOE “does not expect any states to get away from the standards.” Vadehra also admitted the bill “solidifies the Department’s plans for full pre-K expansion.”

Any bill longer than No Child Left Behind that this president was giddy to sign, that received 100% support from the big government party of Congress, and that was endorsed by the owners of Common Core’s copyright and other proponents, does not “end the Common Core mandate” or protect parental rights. Our allegedly conservative Republican leadership has chained our children to expanded federal government control of education.  This is a day that will not be forgotten by the parents of this nation.