HSLDA Alert: Congress Tackles the Common Core National Standards and Databases

William A. Estrada, Esq.
Director of Federal Relations

Last week, HSLDA sent a nationwide alert asking you to call your U.S. senators and urge them to sign a letter from Senator Chuck Grassley exhorting Congress to defund the federal government’s role in the Common Core Standards and Curriculum.

Thanks to your calls, eight senators joined Senator Grassley and signed onto the letter. They include Mike Lee (UT), Tom Coburn (OK), Jim Inhofe (OK), Deb Fischer (NE), Rand Paul (KY), Pat Roberts (KS), Jeff Sessions (AL), and Ted Cruz (TX).

These senators understand that parents and teachers, not federal education bureaucrats, should decide how and what children learn. They understand that the Common Core has become a one-size-fits-all approach to education and that the federal government has no business using tax dollars to entice the states to adopt the Common Core. You can read the letter here. And please take a moment to send these nine senators a short thank-you email for standing against nationalized education. You can send them an email from this page.

Speaking Out

The Senate was not alone in opposing the Common Core. Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO) also circulated a letter to his colleagues in the House opposing Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s support of the Common Core, as well as the national databases which are threatening the privacy of children’s data. Thirty-three other representatives also signed the letter. You can read Rep. Luetkemeyer’s letter here, and if your congressman signed onto the letter, please thank him or her.
You can use this link to find your representative and send a thank-you email for signing onto Rep. Luetkemeyer’s letter.

HSLDA is grateful to these members of Congress for exposing the dangers of the Common Core.

HSLDA will be providing more information about the dangers of the Common Core in the coming days and weeks. We encourage you to continue to fight against national curriculum standards, national testing, and national databases in your states by contacting your governor and state legislators and sharing your concerns. Homeschoolers know that a one-size-fits-all approach to education is bad for children and dangerous to our fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of our children.

Other Resources

HSLDA: National Databases—Collecting Student-Specific Data is Unnecessary and Orwellian
HSLDA: Common Core State Standards Initiative—Too Close to a National Curriculum