Great news right here.
Via Daily Caller:
A judge in Jefferson City, Mo. ruled on Tuesday that the state’s payment of more than $4 million in membership fees as part of a standardized testing consortium is illegal.
The consortium is the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two testing large groups seeking to create Common Core-aligned standardized tests that will be shared among multiple states.
Circuit court Judge Daniel R. Green, an elected Republican, ordered that Missouri won’t be among the states paying fees.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium “is an unlawful interstate compact to which the U.S. Congress has never consented, whose existence and operation violate” Article I, § 10 of the federal Constitution, the judge wrote.
The specific part of the Article I, § 10 on which the judge relies is a prohibition on agreements between two or more states without the prior consent of Congress.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium violates “numerous federal statutes” as well, the judge declared in finding for three plaintiffs who sued to block payment of the fees.