Common Core: Bad for Kids

[Adapted from an article in the Oregon Federation of Republican Women's April-May 2013 edition of Republication]: Holly Swanson, outstanding author, activist and member of the Josephine County Republican Women warns, "The Education for Sustainability movement is drastically altering the curriculum in our schools, changing the role of public education and imposing a political agenda on our innocent children. The aim of this indoctrination program is to train America’s children to be against our form of government, free enterprise system, religious beliefs and much more." Holly urges Republicans to become active in attending school board meetings, writing their government representatives, researching, becoming informed and learning from their children and grandchildren what they are studying.

WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is leading an effort to ask leading Senate appropriators to restore state-level decision making about academic content in public schools in response to the way federal incentives have interfered and put a heavy hand on states to adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Grassley said the Common Core program was initially billed as a voluntary effort, and that current federal law makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education may not be involved in setting specific content standards or determining the content of state assessments. “The reality is that the U.S. Department of Education has made adoption of standards matching those in Common Core a requirement for getting waivers and funds,” Grassley said. “This violates the structure of our education system, where academic content decisions are made at the state level giving parents a direct line of accountability to those making the decisions. The federal government should not be allowed to coerce state education decision makers.”

In a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that funds education, Senators Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, Deb Fischer, Rand Paul, Pat Roberts, Jeff Sessions, and Ted Cruz urged appropriators to set clear restrictions on the U.S. Department of Education from setting academic content standards either directly or indirectly when they put together legislation to fund the U.S. Department of Education for the next fiscal year.

Get involved. If there was ever an issues for Republicans to get behind, it is re-empowering control of the education system to the states, local school boards and parents.

  Holly Swanson is the author of Training for Treason: The Harmful Agenda Behind Education for Sustainability and Set up & Sold Out: Find Out What Green Really Means. She is at the forefront of the fight to protect America's children from the indoctrination of a dangerous ideology that will steal their freedom and change America forever. Read More......

Feds to double habitat for spotted owl to 9.6 M acres in California, Oregon and Washington

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- The last building block of the Obama administration's strategy unveiled Wednesday to keep the northern spotted owl from extinction nearly doubles the amount of Northwest national forest land dedicated to protecting the bird by the Bush administration four years ago. ✧ Still, conservation groups that went to court to force the overhaul said key gaps remain, such as an exemption for private forest lands and most state forests. ✧ The full critical habitat plan will not be published until next week, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that 9.6 million acres of Oregon, Washington and Northern California will come under its provisions, almost all of it federal lands. ✧ The amount is down from nearly 14 million acres proposed last February but still exceeds the 5.3 million acres proposed in 2008. The biggest cut came in private timberlands -- 1.3 million acres. State forests covering 271,000 acres remain. ✧ Following a directive last February from the White House, officials revised the latest plan to make room for thinning and logging inside critical habitat to reduce the danger of wildfire and improve the health of forests. Read more at The Willits News... Read More......

Connie Mack: Trying to Balance the Budget a Few (Trillion) Pennies at a Time

By Ashton Ellis - What if a bill could provide a fail-safe way to reduce federal spending by one percent a year, cap spending at a historically sustainable level and balance the budget in eight years? ✧ If it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t. But it does need a grassroots movement to demand a vote on it in the House and Senate. Read more at Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF)... Read More......