From Utah:

Local School Board Member Asks Parents to Take Action on Federal ESSA 

Wendy Hart, a star board member of my local district, Alpine School District, is so dedicated to transparency that she keeps a blog about her work.

"In June, I attended a training session on ESSA presented by the National School Boards Association (aptly titled: A New Federalism).  The presenter, an attorney, recommended that we work with our legislators to remove the ability of parents to opt their kids out of state testing.  The consequence, she said, would be to jeopardize our federal funding under ESSA.  So, the one avenue parents have to protest and to protect their students is under attack by the ‘new’ supposedly kinder, gentler, less-federal-encroachment law.  Additionally, I asked how they would be able to do this when some states, like Utah, for example, have opting out codified in state law, the state law predates ESSA, and under the 10th Amendment, the states would have jurisdiction in this area that the feds clearly do not.  Her response, paraphrasing, “Since the monies in ESSA are ‘voluntary’, you will not be able to get someone to challenge it on 10th Amendment grounds.”  In short, by taking the federal monies from ESSA, we are subverting state (and natural) law–voluntarily."


http://wendy4asd.blogspot.com/2016/07/feds-and-bonds-summer-happenings.html


https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/local-school-board-member-asks-parents-to-take-action-on-federal-essa/