Cruz and Rubio AWOL Again
Both NH Senators Kelly Ayotte (R) and Jeanne Shaheen (D) voted YES to the re-authorization of a very unconstitutional education bill that would continue to deprive states of local control.
And in keeping with their current status of missing 80+ votes since beginning their respective presidential runs, Senators Marco Rubio (R) and Ted Cruz (R) were AWOL on this important vote.
See the complete ROLL CALL HERE.
Update: Judge Napolitano expresses his disappointment for Cruz’s lack of understanding about how the federal government has constitutionally NO right to tell states what to do about education.
According to education experts with whom we work:
What’s wrong with ESSA? It’s impossible to list all the dangers, given that no one has had time to analyze it, but to mention just a few:
– ESSA maintains the same federal testing mandates present in No Child Left Behind, providing no relief from the strict teach-to-the-test mentality abhorred by parents and teachers alike.
– It authorizes $250 million for a preschool grant (one of Obama’s priorities) to be jointly administered by the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. This allows more federal dollars to flow to programs structured like the failed and harmful Head Start and to ensnare more toddlers in the government’s institutional-education web.
– Despite claims that the bill prohibits the secretary from forcing states to adopt the Common Core national standards or otherwise influence state standards, it requires states to “demonstrate” to the secretary that they have adopted standards that are coordinated with 11 separate federal statutes — including the Soviet-style Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the Head Start act. The result of this coordination requirement will be states sticking with Common Core or something very much like it, because those standards already meet the requirement.
– It incentivizes the creation of Obama’s pet project, “21st-century community learning centers.” The idea is to make the school — and therefore the government — the center of every child’s life, providing sweeping “services” designed to make parents, churches, etc., less influential.
Read more of an expert analysis here: Girard at Large
Note: Cruz also voted to EXPAND data mining via the CISA bill, and Rubio was AWOL.