Key Vote YES in the Senate on H.J.Res. 57

On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to vote YES on H.J.Res. 57. This resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act would cancel the Department of Education’s Accountability and State Plans Rule.

The Department of Education’s Accountability and State Plans Rule implements part of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and leaves open a loophole that federal bureaucrats could exploit to force Common Core on states that haven’t implemented the standards. Education officials from several states and local jurisdictions strongly opposed the rule when it was being crafted.

By further involving the federal government in the classroom, the rule ignores the intent of ESSA and interferes with what should be a state or local issue, requiring states to provide evidence of curriculum standards and bringing back federal test-based accountability, which ESSA was supposed to end.

FreedomWorks Foundation drove more than 21,000 responses in opposition to this rule to the Department of Education during the comment period. Unfortunately, the Department of Education ignored the responses against the rule and published it on November 29, 2016. The rule took effect on January 30, 2017.

The Congressional Review Act gives the legislative branch the power to respond to the outcry against the rule that bureaucrats at the Department of Education ignored. H.J. Res. 57 passed the House on February 7 by a vote of 234 to 190.

FreedomWorks will count the vote on this resolution of disapproval when calculating our Scorecard for 2017 and reserves the right to score any related votes. The scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes Members of the House and Senate who consistently vote to support economic freedom and individual liberty.

Sincerely,

Adam Brandon, President, FreedomWorks