Senator Jeff Sessions joined Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), James Inhofe (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Pat Roberts (R-KA) in writing a letter seeking to push back against the federal Department of Education’s increasing influence over state-level education policy.
The letter specifically asks the chair and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the U.S. Department of Education’s funding of the Common Core to require that any funds appropriated to the U.S. Department of Education not be used to develop, implement or evaluate state-level education standards, or to award grants or contracts for development, implementation or evaluation of state-level education standards.
The paragraph that sums up the Senators’ concerns with Common Core reads as follows:
“While the Common Core State Standards Initiative was initially billed as a voluntary effort between states, federal incentives have clouded the picture. Current federal law makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education may not be involved in setting specific content standards or determining the content of state assessments. Nevertheless, the selection criteria designed by the U.S. Department of Education for the Race to the Top Program provided that for a state to have any chance to compete for funding, it must commit to adopting a ‘common set of K-12 standards’ matching the description of the Common Core. The U.S. Department of Education also made adoption of ‘college and career-ready standards’ meeting the description of the Common Core a condition to receive a state waiver under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Race to the Top funds were also used to fund two consortiums to develop assessments aligned to the Common Core and the Department is now in the process of evaluating these assessments.”
The full text of the letter can be read below.
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