End federal coercion of education, Roby says

A bill to end federal coercion in state education decisions that was introduced and championed by U.S. Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL) was included in the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed by President Barack Obama on Thursday.

“The federal government has overstepped its bounds in education policy and it’s past time to rein it in,” Roby said.

The Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaces the No Child Left Behind education law, passed the Senate on Wednesday. The new legislation returns education decision-making to states and local school boards.

Roby’s “state authority” provisions prohibit the use of funding grants and rule waivers by the federal government to coerce states into the adoption of the government’s preferred standards of curricula, including Common Core.

“Our ‘state authority’ provisions will prevent undue influence by the federal government by taking away the Department of Education’s ability to attach curriculum and assessment policy strings to special grants and waivers,” Roby said. “Local and state leaders are best positioned to determine policies that affect Alabama’s students because they have direct interaction with parents and teachers in their communities. Washington bureaucrats are not.”

Roby spent the last 2.5 years building support for the provisions, introducing the standalone Defending State Authority Over Education Act in May 2013 to end federal coercion of education policy.