Rep. Tim Huelskamp: 'Replace Common Core with Rush Limbaugh's Book'

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) tweeted a congratulatory message to conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh who won the children’s author of the year award Wednesday.

Huelskamp also made the suggestion that Limbaugh’s award winning children’s book, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans, replace the controversial Common Core, a nationalized set of academic standards that states were lured into adopting both for competitive grants, through President Obama’s Race to the Top stimulus program, and for waivers from the federal No Child Left Behind policy. Many conservative groups are fighting against the implementation of the Common Core standards.

The National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and nonprofit progressive education think tank Achieve, Inc. were mainly responsible for the Common Core initiative, and both the NGA and the CCSSO are the publishers of the Common Core State Standards. All three organizations were privately funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and none of these groups are accountable to parents, teachers, students, or taxpayers.

The state boards of education, most of them unelected, that signed onto the unproven Common Core standards did so with little, if any, public or media scrutiny, prior to even seeing the standards themselves.

A total of 34 states now have had some form of legislation raised against the standards themselves, the aligned testing, or the associated student data collection.

The centralized standards and aligned curricula and assessments allow for a greater presence of government in education, higher levels of social engineering, student data collection, and teacher evaluations based on student performance on the assessments.

There is no official information about who selected the individuals to write the Common Core standards. In addition, none of the writers of the math and English Language Arts standards have ever taught math, English, or reading at the K-12 level. In addition, the Standards Development Work Groups did not include any members who were high school English and mathematics teachers, English professors, scientists, engineers, parents, state legislators, early childhood educators, and state or local school board members.

As Breitbart News’ Warner Todd Huston reported Thursday, Limbaugh won the coveted Children’s Book Council (CBC) award despite a controversy that erupted over the decision to place the conservative host’s name in contention for what the CBC says is “the only national book awards program where the winning titles are selected by kids and teens.”

Limbaugh, who has already published a second children’s book entitled, Rush Revere and the First Patriots: Time-Travel Adventures With Exceptional Americans, said as he accepted his award, “I have to tell you, there’s a mission behind these books, and that is to teach the truth of American history to people.”

“I do. I love this country. I do wish everybody did,” Limbaugh said. “There are parts of me that don’t understand people that don’t like this country. The intellectual side of me understands why, when you factor ideology and so forth, but it is without parallel. This country, in human history, is as unique as anything in human history is.”

In March, Limbaugh’s liberal critics demanded that CBC remove the conservative host from the contest. CBC, however, refused to do so.