"There's nothing I can do to stop you," said Christie, "But then don't complain later that you're not getting the money that you used to. I have no problem with people making declarations of independence. It's a great country. But, those declarations of independence always have ramifications."
That's from today's Star Ledger. The context was a town hall meeting in Cedar Grove where a parent said that she would never let her daughter take a PARCC test and Gov. Christie reiterated Ed. Comm. David Hespe's remarks Tuesday (and U.S. Sec'y Arne Duncan's the day before) that districts with below 95% participation rates would face corrective action plans and the possible loss of federal and state aid. NJEA then erupted with a panicky press release, and no wonder: the union, of course, is largely responsible for high opt-out rates in high-income suburbia. Both NJEA and SOS-NJ assured parents that there there were no fiscal repercussions on districts with high refusal rates. They were wrong.
Also on NJEA's anti-PARCC propaganda site is this, by SOS-NJ founder Julia Sass Rubin:"So the NJDOE’s threat of Title I funding cuts at local schools seems premature at best given the past practice of the United States Department of Education to not sanction NJ schools’ Title I Funds for missing the 95 percent participation rate." Oops.