A Quality Education For All Missouri Students

I spent this past week doing what I enjoy most: traveling around North Missouri speaking with the people of the Sixth Congressional District. This area of land is truly an impressive place, consisting of 36 counties stretching from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River, from Nebraska to Illinois across North Missouri. In fact, this congressional district is larger than seven U.S. states.

Last week, my Education and Opportunity Town Hall Series stopped in Hannibal, Blue Springs, and Liberty to foster a two-way dialogue on ways to achieve a quality education for all of Missouri's students. Parents, teachers, and administrators expressed many interests and concerns, including Common Core Standards, the federal budget, IDEA, and ways in which we can avert the Obama Administration's current education policy.

With such diverse rural and suburban communities over a vast portion of America's heartland, the people of the Sixth District are presented with many varying needs and interests. That is why the Obama Administration's top-down, one-size fits all approach to our children's education isn't going to work. Our system works best when influence flows uphill from the local level, not the other way around.

Though initially promoted as state-based education standards, Common Core is nothing of the sort. The standards take away local control and put some private and home schoolers at a disadvantage. The truth is that there is little Congress can do to provide relief because states opted-in to the standards.

As a parent of a daughter who is still in school, I'm worried about these standards and what they are going to teach our kids. Although the ability to opt-out lies with the state, I will be working with the state legislature to provide relief to Missouri schools.