GOP Education Chairman Anticipates Vote on Education Bill (HR5)

The Washington Post reports that HR5 will most likely be returning for a vote.  Read the article here. We must stay vigilant. Please sign my petition to ask Virginia Foxx not to support re-authorization of the Bush-era failed no child left behind policy. I brought over 70 letters/comments to her the day before the House tabled HR5, I will continue collecting and will bring them to her before any vote on HR5 or anything that resembles it. Sign the petition here.

Virginia Foxx Wrote an OpEd in support of HR5. You can read it here. Contrary to what the Congresswoman says, HR5 does NOT reduce the federal footprint on education.

Remember that I blogged earlier about HR 5  and it does the following:

No Child Left Behind takes power away from parents and students and empowers bureaucrats and unions. The federal government has become too involved in education. Education should be controlled locally! H.R. 5 lacks an opt-out of federal programs and mandates for states. Since education should be controlled closer to home, states should able to opt out. Bureaucrats in DC do not know better than parents and localities.

H.R. 5 does increase portability, but only to public schools and public charter schools. Rep. Luke Messer (R-IN) had proposed an amendment in committee that was withdrawn. This amendment would have extended portability to private schools of choice, IF a state so chose!

H.R. 5 Does NOT protect against Common Core.  It prevents future coercion by the federal government in forcing states to adopt Common Core standards, but does not stop it.

H.R. 5 claims to replace the current national accountability system with state-led accountability systems. "They" claim  this frees states from federal interference. Heritage Action states, "Although the proposal wisely eliminates counterproductive and prescriptive Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) mandates, H.R. 5 maintains the current NCLB mandates for states to establish standards in reading and math and to test kids annually between grades 3-8 and once in high school."

H.R. 5 orders that academic achievement standards "include the same knowledge, skills and levels of achievement expected of all public school students in the state" and mandates that states must also use "the same academic assessments...to measure the academic achievement of all public school students in the state." See the link to the Heritage Action brief above for more information.

H.R. 5 consolidates more than 65 programs into a Local Academic Flexibility Grant, but does not eliminate them. This doesn't reduce federal spending. We need to reduce send and eliminate programs!

Finally, H.R. 5 does eliminate the AYP requirement, but maintains requirements for states to develop their own "statewide accountability structure, a system of school improvement interventions to be implemented at the local level for ...schools the state determines to be poorly performing."  Just as in North Carolina, renaming common core under a different education standard mandates doesn't make it go away, rebranding AYP as a federally mandated state run requirement doesn't make AYP go away. See the brief above for more details.

Read the Heritage Action Brief on HR 5 here.  Read the Heritage outline of what Congress should do here.