THE HILL, BY FORMER REP. JOHN KLINE (R-MINN.), OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
After Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos declared recently that “there really isn’t any Common Core anymore,” partisans on both the left and the right pounced.
One leading blogger who is known to carry water for organized labor concluded the new federal education chief “can’t seem to make an accurate statement” about the standards. While Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, insisted the standards haven’t been repealed and that classroom curricula prove it.
So who’s right — Betsy DeVos or her critics?
Answering that question requires some historical context.
Eight years ago the Obama administration began using the lure of federal funds to incentivize, pressure, and even coerce cash-strapped states to adopt a specific set of K-12 academic standards. Like so many other well-intentioned liberal programs, the Race to the Top initiative — funded by the notorious $850 billion government stimulus — led to a bipartisan grassroots revolt.
The question of how to repeal those federalized standards is one of several that lawmakers, including myself, grappled with for months on end in 2015 as we were working on a legislative replacement to the erstwhile No Child Left Behind law.
As Chairman of the House Education Committee, I came to the conclusion that the very best way to put an end to federalized standards, and the most effective way to ensure they never return, is to erect a statutory prohibition that prevents the Secretary of Education, the Department of Education, and for that matter, anyone else in Washington from pushing specific education standards onto states.
So with my Senate counterpart, Chairman Lamar Alexander, we coauthored the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to shift education authority and accountability out of Washington and back to the states, where it belongs…
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