It sounds so easy.
Take a vote. Get control of your school. Hire a new staff. Next year, your school is a great success.
The Heartland Institute recommends it for everyone.
This think tank in Chicago helped to write the ALEC model legislation to encourage state legislatures to pass a “parent trigger.”
This is meant to privatize public schools across the nation.
The only thing that the Heartland website doesn’t admit is that there is not a single school in the United States or anywhere in the world where a parent trigger has actually happened.
There is no example of a successful (or unsuccessful) parent trigger.
Please note there is no parent trigger for charter school parents.
Once the trigger is fired, there is no going back.
This has got to be one of the most idiotic of all “reforms” on the table.
No evidence, no experience, just privatization ideology as their guide.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s a question: How can the same people pushing the parent trigger also be pushing school consolidation? Aren’t they antithetical?
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A “trigger” and nebulous choice for the public schools but not for the charters? Doesn’t seem fair. Maybe that will change once the public schools have been eliminated, or maybe the goal is to just eliminate all schooling.
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What a beautiful site that promotes ugly results. I wonder how many parents will be conned or suckered in? The premise of course is that all schools are ‘failing’ (whatever that means) and they can be magically transformed. I guess we as teachers have never tried to transform a school or a students life. One last thing before I start my day, the idea that education reform should be brought back to parents is good. I wonder how many truly know and understand what is being done in their name.
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Idiotic like a fox. This is a calculated move to trap the public into tax payer-funded corporate education–The new extractive economy. Sell a vain, ignorant, and naive public on how bad their schools are, and how they, the wise voters of the marketplace of ideas, need only to take their God-given freedom in hand by demanding “choice”. That “choice” of course is controlled completely by corporate education, conservative think tanks, and silent and dark “philanthropies” that so dominate the politicians and media with their money that their desired “choice” is almost a foregone conclusion. And once the choice has been made it will be at least a decade before it can be undone.
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Looks like parents (mad mommas against drunk testing) are getting ready to pull another trigger here in Texas
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-stanford/texas-standardized-testing_b_1905972.html
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I have a question about parent trigger laws. If the trigger were to be pulled, who makes the decision about what comes in and takes over the school?
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Since no school has ever exercised the parent trigger, I can’t say for certain. It depends on state law. Parent Revolution, which is the backer of the parent trigger, wants charters. When the Desert Trails school board created a school improvement plan, PR was angry and threatened to go back to court to get a charter. Charter operators pick their own board, and the board answers to the charter corporation, not the parents.
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Thanks, Diane. I can imagine that the fight to close the school would be mild compared to the fight over who gets control next.
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I appreciate all of the information provided in your blog regarding the “Parent Trigger” legislation. In my 21-year career as a principal, I had two situations where a rogue PTA officer tried to rally support against me. One time bringing state PTA officers to challenge/embarrass me. But the effort backfired when I was able to expose the officer as a suspected embezzler of PTA funds. However, the other incident could have been devastating had it happened in today’s climate of choice, parent empowerment, and the potential vulnerability of school administrators after “Won’t Back Down” has its moment of glory.
I was a principal in a very affluent school in an urban district. One parent, an attorney, pitted the PTA against the Site Based Team regarding how the PTA funds would be spent. When she didn’t get her way, she attempted to gain support from teachers and other parents. When that didn’t work, she accused me of mishandling school and PTA funds and brought in the district financial officer. Although the allegations were false, and I was never in any danger, I know that given the current climate, had this happened today, I could have been put through much more stress and mental agony, all while trying to run a school.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a “School Trigger,” one that would allow teachers or principals to reject parents who act irresponsibly, or those who put personal desires ahead of the goals established for the good of the school community?
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If you really want local control of the school, a much better way to do it would be to split off a school or schools into a new, smaller school district with its own locally elected board.
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That’s what has happened over the years in the East Baton Rouge Parish. Three smaller towns in the parish that were once a part of the parish school system got the vote on the state ballot. The proposals must get approval in a statewide vote. This past session a group of parents and citizens in what we call Southeast Baton Rouge tried to get the legislature to support the formation of a district. It was not supported. Believe me it will be back. This small area of the parish is not even a separate city or town.
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I am curoius about the statement “once the trigger is fired, there is no going back”. What does that mean?
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Once a school becomes a charter, there is no provision for returning it to the public school sector. The trigger fires only in one direction: from public to private control. Charter parents do not have a trigger.
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Ms. Ravitch,
Thank you for helping publicize Heartland’s role in expanding exposure of the Parent Trigger idea. While we don’t agree on the issue (I’m one of the authors of the Heartland Policy Brief on the trigger idea), it’s good to see that we are getting the credit we deserve.
As for the issue at hand, the district model of education is a proven failure, particularly in the large and medium-sized districts, where job protection and payroll expansion take a back seat to education.
I would be more than happy to see a process where a failing charter can be shut down more rapidly, and either placed under a new charter, or returned to the district – all based upon the parents’ wishes.
As for the lack of actual triggers, it is pretty obvious that one reason for this state of affairs is the mendacious behavior of failing urban districts, which engage in bullying, lying, lawsuits, and intimidation – all to prevent parents from achieving change in the districts that are failing their children.
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Thanks for writing, Bruno. Why don’t you offer some citations to show where and when and how often charters are more successful than public schools? And please be sure to show how often charters are less successful than public schools and how often they push out ELLs, special-ed kids, and low-performing students.
Diane
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Ms. Ravitch,
You are well aware of all the data, some showing charters as marginal, and some showing them as effective.
Here is a link to a charter organization, and yes, it touts charter success. Their views deserve as much review and consideration as any other analysis.
The CREDO study, much touted among the anti-charter crowd, actually makes a very strong case for charters. Let’s look at the 30-second sound bite from CREDO.
“The study reveals that a decent fraction of charter schools, 17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.”
If we skip over all the debate about the validity of CREDO, and simply assume it close to accurate, it leaves us with plenty of reasons to rapidly expand charterization.
First, we know that 17% can deliver superior results. Let us then close failing charters, and turn their management over to these successful models.
As for the nearly 50% that deliver equal results, they almost certainly do so for less money than bloated district bureaucracies. “Same results for less money” is a compelling reason to drain districts of waste and turn over to more efficient models – even if only equal.
As for the 37%, I agree with you. Shut them down, converting them to more successful charters OR returning them to district control – all based upon parental control (not faked parental “input”).
In closing, I’m more than happy to discuss the meaning of ALL the data in every context. In an intellectually honest debate, defending the wasteful, failed and expensive urban dropout factories is a losing proposition.
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Defending the demolition of public education and its replacement by privatization is a losing proposition. Anyone who cares about our democratic society will not want to turn our children over to the same people who collapsed the economy in 2008. Do you?
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Forgot the links. Sorry.
http://incschools.org/charters/why_charter_schools/charters_deliver_results/
Click to access MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf
http://k12reboot.com/2011/03/22/new-research-from-stanfords-credo-on-charter-school-efficacy/
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Please name a few examples of this:
“As for the lack of actual triggers, it is pretty obvious that one reason for this state of affairs is the mendacious behavior of failing urban districts, which engage in bullying, lying, lawsuits, and intimidation – all to prevent parents from achieving change in the districts that are failing their children.”
And suburban or outer-ring suburban districts aren’t failing? One last thing. What is your definition of “failing”?
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