Former State Senator Gloria Romero of California accused me of being sexist and possibly anti-Latina as well. (Please read the comments that follow the article.)
Romero is now an employee of the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ organization Democrats for Education Reform, which advocates for charters and eliminating tenure and seniority.
Romero is hurt that I did not give her credit for having invented the Parent Trigger idea (which I call the Parent Tricker law). She says I mistakenly gave credit to the far-right group ALEC, which has developed model legislation for Parent Trigger legislation.
Actually, I don’t care who came up with this obnoxious idea that 51% of the parents in a school can “seize control” of their public school and hand it over to a private corporation.
It is a ludicrous idea, and anyone associated with it should hang their head in shame. A public school belongs to the public, not to 51% of those who use it today. It is a public trust, paid for by taxpayers, owned by the public, created for future generations, not for those who happen to be there this week or month or year.
Did it start with ALEC or with Parent Revolution, the organization funded by Gates, Walton and Broad to organize parents to demand that private corporations take over their public schools? Even the Los Angeles Times called Parent Revolution “the force behind the law” and said the law was disappointing.
But again, I don’t think it matters who should get “credit” for a bad law, other than to try to understand their motivation.
If it started with Gloria Romero, shame on her. The “trigger” is a blatant effort to privatize more public schools. It is not in the interest of parents or children or communities, but in the interest of charter corporations.
Does she also support the idea that anyone who musters a 51% petition can privatize public parks, public housing, public transit, public libraries, and other public services? Does she also support the idea that 51% of charter school parents should have the right to convert their school back to the public sector?
Florida parents rejected the “parent trigger” this past spring. They lobbied their legislators and prevented it from passing. They knew that it was a transparent attempt by the charter corporations to take control of more public schools. They would have none of it.
Parents Across America has seen through the deception of the “parent trigger” and rejected it. Interesting that in more than two years since it was passed, not a single public school in California has used the “trigger” to convert to a charter.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bingo Diane! Can the trigger law be used to close down a charter? Like a charter school with a management company would ever let the parents vote. Another BS ploy. Romero should be ashamed of herself.
No, the parent trigger won’t be used against the privatized charter because as soon as that would happen the privateers will cry foul, that their property, legally obtained-not saying it had been ethically obtained, big difference-is being taken and therefore they will need to be compensated in full for full current value. What a great scheme-get public/common wealth for nothing and get full value in return when you fail to do what you promised, i.e., educate children, unethical, avaricious bastards that they are.
Um, all charters automatically have a sort of parental trigger built in. If enough parents leave, a charter school won’t be financially able to keep operating.
Leave and go where? There’s a dearth of schools in inner-city neighborhoods like mine (Westlake District, Downtown Los Angeles). Moreover, most impoverished families have transportation and work schedule concerns that the well heeled Mr. Buck could never conceive of. Buck makes it sound like there’ll be plenty of shiny new schools at the ready, much like there’s currently plentiful inexpensive markets selling healthy organic foods in Westlake District too (yes, I’m intentionally sardonic here).
It’s the contradiction that the birchers and choicers never admit. They say, with no sense of irony, that they want to give poor families the “same choices” as the wealthy have, all the while knowing that those so-called choices only come with privilege and from a context that the poor will never have until we actually address poverty itself.
What foundation funds your department at the University of Arkansas again Mr. Buck?
You can’t make this stuff up. I guess supporting teachers and kids over corporate bullies and scattered, illogical thinkers, is the new sexism. Really?
Evidently racist too, but only if you are Latino!
I found her defense to be pretty sad. When you have to pull out the race card and the gender card to defend your argument, something is missing. What is this ‘woman to woman’ nonsense? What does she want, a mud wrestling match?
Why is it that most people don’t understand basic civics? They think the majority should always win. That’s not what our Founding Fathers envisioned when they created our great society. If the majority always won, we wouldn’t need the Supreme Court, the rights of the minority would never be protected, Civil Rights legislation would never have passed, we would still have Jim Crow laws, and most likely we would be in a state of turmoil much like what is happening in Egypt and other countries in the world.
Our country is not about 51%,
On this 4th of July it is appropriate to quote our Declaration of Independence ,
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;”
If Former State Senator Gloria Romero of California wants credit for this un-American legislation, fine I can live with that.
To paraphrase from the Declaration,
On this Independence Day it’s time to declare that our public education system will no longer be subjected to a long train of abuses and usurpations, under a design to reduce it under absolute Despotism, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such forces, and to provide new Guards for future security of our schools!
The corporate reformers never have 51% of anything. They have nothing on their side but money, not the people.
When new ideas are generated, their exact origins can be hard to trace because similar thoughts emerge and are built upon. Maybe Ms. Romero did initiate some of the ideas that became law in California. But, if she is able to reflect back, she might recall the influences surrounding her. Perhaps unbeknownst to her, she was being fed some of those ideas. If one is good at manipulating, it is easy to make others believe an idea was theirs, works really well with people who are naive or need their egos stroked. In Georgia, it seems some legislators do believe these anti-public school laws are their own creation. Others are aware of the outside forces driving their local agenda and don’t mind being “bought.” Either way, the result is the same- BAD LAW that is BAD for children but good for the adults who will profit.
The accusation that Ms. Ravitch might have been sexist and enthnocentrist in this case gives me little faith in Ms. Romero’s abilities. it makes Mrs. Romero look bad.
I couldn’t help but also see this absurd response by Romero in terms of the limits of research and post about it on my own blog: http://audsandens.blogspot.com/2012/07/research-when-is-enough-enough.html
Ms. Romero’s done everyone a favor in clarifying things as this idea is as ridiculous as they come and sure to end up something that folks run away from; knowing exactly who to blame is useful and since I live in California–her base of operations– will be certain to attach Ms. Romero’s name every chance I get: The “Gloria Romero Parent Trigger Sham.”
Thank you, Diane for standing up to this nonsense…too many others have been cowed by such baseless claims as Ms. Romero tries to peddle here.
I think one way to counter the fast march to privatization might be to talk about stability.One thing that is important to parents and students, I would think, is stability. People move to certain neighborhoods because they like the schools. If those schools are subject to impulsive decision making processes, instability and even interruption of education could follow. I think our traditional system has been successful in providing some stability for communities. Starting in the 1920s or even before, we built large attractive buildings that were like temples of education. People are loathe to tear down some of these buildings and closing a school is often a heart-wrenching event. Part of what bothers me about charter school businesses is that they can be here today and gone tomorrow. Then a community has build a school from the ground up. Either that or charters take kids from all over a city tearing apart communities, leaving building vulnerable to sale. Getting rid of our education infrastructure seems a grave mistake. Even in our highly mobile society, the presence of schools that are not located in malls and that are run by elected officials and regulated by states can provide a common experience for kids.
It seems to me that Romero accuses Dr. Ravitch of sexism and racism for indicating that Romero didn’t invent the Parent Trigger herself, while simultaneously acknowledging that she DIDN’T invent it herself. The AstroTurf (fake grassroots) organization Parent Revolution invented it. It’s understandable why Mr. Romero lined up to support it. Her ongoing support for corporate education “reform” fads landed her her current nice job in the wealthy corporate “reform” sector after she lost an election for California state Superintendent of Schools — despite her bounteous funding from the “reform” sector and the fact that two non-“reform”-supporting candidates split the vote. (One of them, Tom Torlakson, won the seat.)
But that’s all irrelevant to the reality about the Parent Trigger. As Dr. Ravitch notes, there have been only two consummated attempts ever, anywhere, at using the Parent Trigger, and both have failed. Both were orchestrated by Parent Revolution.The usual line is that “union opposition” doomed both attempts, but that’s false — actually, parent resistance doomed them. When there’s fierce division among the parents at the school, that’s not a situation that leads to a smooth handover to an eager charter operator. (To be precise, one of those attempts is technically still on the table, at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, CA. But even the fraction of Desert Trails parents who support the Parent Trigger petition can’t agree on what they want to happen next.)
Meanwhile, even Parent Revolution admits to a fatal flaw in this grand scheme: Charter operators actually don’t want to take over existing struggling schools. They want to start their own schools where they can pick-n-choose their students and establish things their way, without dealing with a pre-existing situation. Since the concept was created to turn schools over to charter operators, yet charter operators are saying “thanks, but no thanks,” it’s irrelevant whether Gloria Romero, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers or my Labrador retriever created it. It’s designed to fizzle either way.
I was anxiously waiting for your response to Romero’s revelation and claim that she was responsible for the parent trigger law. You did it so graciously! Who really cares, is right! It’s wrong as you say. That’s woman to woman, Diane!
A couple years ago I happen to have been in Sacramento when a bill was being discussed by the Senate Education Committee which would allow parents to transfer students out of their current school district into any other school district basically “for cause.” (I was at the capitol with other librarians lobbying for more support for school libraries). A version of the bill did eventually pass into law. I really couldn’t believe they were seriously considering this piece of crap. I’m not at all surprised to hear she’s currently working for that superbly misnamed, Democrats for Educational Reform, which is indeed merely a lobby for privatized education. Thank God she wasn’t able to fool enough of the people of Calif. to become Supt. of Public Instruction.
I have the great misfortune of knowing Ms. Romero and can bear witness to her many years of serving solely the agenda of the California Charter School Association (cf SB 592) and other deep pocketed privatization concerns. Romero has absolutely no credibility with the Latino community in East Los Angeles (she’s actually from Barstow, not ELA, but what’s 115 miles between friends?). One of the nicer things said about her in the Lincoln Heights and Boyle Heights areas is that she is a “vendida” (translates as “sell out”). I can’t repeat the less-than-nice phrases I’ve heard spoken of her.
In 2009 Los Angeles activists staged “hungry for and education” hunger strikes and camp-outs in response to Yolie Flores and Mónica García’s drastic cuts to public schools (no such cuts to the charter industry). Those cuts saw the district laying off thousands (RIF in LAUSD parlance) of educators, predominantly and high poverty schools. Camps were held at John H. Liechty Middle School, Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, and the Beaudry LAUSD Palace. Just as with today, we were protesting district budget priorities that saw cuts to the classrooms and school libraries first instead of to the bloated bureaucracy (heck, Supt. Deasy’s limousine driver makes six-figures) and costly consultants.
One night Romero (who was still on the CA Senate Education Committee at the time) turned up at the Liechty camp out. She spend a good twenty minutes speaking with esteemed activist and hunger striker Martin Terrones. We all thought she was working on a way of securing funding in Sacramento so that the layoffs would be averted and the schools wouldn’t loose so many teachers. Liechty was going to loose 60% of their faculty, some of whom I had done a lot of social justice activism alongside. When Martin finished with Romero he told our group why Romero had come. She wanted to know if there was any way we could change the message of our protests and the hunger strike to one of blaming United Teachers of Los Angeles for it’s seniority clauses and other protections. That’s right, instead of trying to prevent the cuts, she wanted to pin it on the hard working women and men who teach in our communities! Despicable!
Let’s remember that all her fringe-right squawking about seniority, last in first out, etc. is predicated on the idea that it’s okay to continually lay educators off to begin with. The Shock Doctrine in action.
I’ve written about Romero and her connections to many of the most reactionary elements in politics again and again. Even if there’s a shred of truth in her statement that she didn’t know about ALEC when Bill Lucia and Ben Austin, er, I mean… she wrote the Parent Tricker draft, at the very least she was in close association with many ALEC members and other organizations belonging to ALEC. I did write a response to her nasty attacks on Professor Ravitch on Schools Matter last week:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/07/democrats-for-neoliberal-education.html
How incredibly lame to accuse you of being sexist or ethnocentrist. My first reaction was to laugh at such ridiculousness. Then, I became irritated.
Any intelligent woman knows that any woman in her 70’s endured real sexism. Gloria should respect what you struggled against which paved the way for her to someday become a Senator.
Next, knowing the sexism you endured in your twenties, thirties, and forties as a professional woman, as recounted in your books, made me angrier.
Romero weakens the credibility of women who are actually victims of sexism and bias.
I think I’ll go tell her that.
PS.
Dismissing an education historian’s views by calling them sexist and ethnocentric is known as “the lazy argument.” Aka, a lousy argument!
So what is the solution?
I think you give Florida parents too much credit, saying they “knew that it was a transparent attempt by the charter corporations to take control of more public schools.”
They also elected Rick Scott as their Governor.
The Florida parent groups turned out en masse to oppose the phony “parent trigger.” They said specifically that it was a trick to hand over their public schools to the corporate charter chains. And it was. I hope they will turn out in even greater numbers to throw Rick Scott out of the governorship if he runs again.
@Bo – Rick Scott won by a thin margin, and likely because voters did not turn out. Not all Floridians are parents. Real Florida parents and parent groups that are not funded by corporate dollars and worked hard and unpaid, deserve great credit in the defeat of Florida’s parent trigger.
The legislation was defeated last year, but there is reason to believe it will re-emerge in the upcoming session.
Bo.. as one of those Florida parents, I can promise you, we knew parent trigger was a very transparent attempt by corporations to privatize our public schools and turn education into a real estate venture. Believe me, having a Governor like ours tends to wake folks up. Floridians have awaken. Make no mistake of that.
Diane, … Romero states, “Quite frankly, it’s also a bit sexist and ethnocentric to assert my work actually came from someone else – that somehow the Latina senator from East Los Angeles couldn’t think on my own, or figure out how to write a bill and turn it into law.”
I say, quite frankly, as a Latina, myself – I am ashamed that she is associated with us, at all. As mi abuelita would say: “el que con perro se acuesta, con pulgas amanece” … when you lay down with dogs… you get up with fleas.
Romero can keep her fleas. Florida wants no part of her or parent trigger.