Statement: Johnson Condemns Herbert’s Support for Continued Federal Overreach in Education

While entire Utah house delegation votes “no” on Every Student Succeeds Act, Herbert and National Governors Association actively support the federal legislation. 
 
Sasha Clark
Director of Communications
Sasha@HireJJ.com
M: (801) 719-1575

Herbert tweets support for ESSA and denies parents the opportunity to opt out their students from federal testing while giving full veto power to Secretary of Education.

Statement from Jonathan Johnson, Republican candidate for Utah Governor:

 “On Dec. 2, Gov. Herbert posted 17 tweets in support of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind legislation and reauthorization of the Elementary & Secondary Education Act, stating the bill ‘restricts the Secretary of Education from imposing one size fits all federal mandates on local schools.’ In fact, the legislation does the exact opposite, further tightening the grip the federal government has on Utah’s education system. While giving lip service to states’ rights, Gov. Herbert’s adamant support of ESSA again demonstrates his habit of looking to the federal government for funding and solutions rather than looking for homegrown Utah solutions. Below are some of the reasons why ESSA is bad for Utah students, teachers and parents.
 

• Under ESSA, the Secretary of Education can veto any state education plan. Although ESSA prohibits the Secretary of Education from controlling state plans, there is no enforcement mechanism. In other words, ESSA says to the states, ‘You can have any flavor of ice cream you want… as long as it’s the Department of Education approved strawberry.’

• ESSA dictates the process states must follow to approve the state education plan prior to submitting that plan to the Secretary of Education. The federal government should not legislatively prescribed process how states come up with their education plans.
• ESSA has a 95% participation in testing requirement. This means many Utah parents can no longer opt out their students from the 20-25+ hours of mandated federal testing.
• ESSA is 1,061 pages long. The No Child Left Behind legislation was just under 700 pages. ESSA is yet another example of the federal government attempting to fix the problem it created by making bigger government. Gov. Herbert was so eager to support ESSA he was tweeting his support a mere 48 hours after release of the bill. It appears he may subscribe to the Nancy Pelosi “we have to pass the bill so that you can find of what is in it” school of legislating.
• ESSA increases overall federal spending on education by 12 percent, further increasing the national debt. Rather than have yet another federal program that makes the federal government the middleman, we need to find ways to keep tax dollars in Utah – without funneling them through an inefficient and bloated federal bureaucracy.
• Although ESSA supposedly prohibits future federal overreach, the claimed prohibitions are inadequate because the language is substantially the same as that in the three federal statutes (the Elementary & Secondary Education Act, the Department of Education Organization Act, and the General Education Provisions Act) that the federal government has already violated without consequence.

As a businessman and attorney I’ve lead and participated in many negotiations, including negotiations on various pieces of federal and state legislation. I understand the give-and-take and compromise that happens during negotiating.  However, if Gov. Herbert has been involved in negotiating ESSA for Utah or on behalf of the National Governors Association, it is clear he has not taken positions to protect Utah students, parents and teachers or to ensure stronger states’ rights against the constant encroachment of the federal government in matters rightly left to the states.”
– Jonathan Johnson, Republican candidate for Utah Governor