Raise Your Hand Texas ACTION ALERT
Bad Bill Alert!
Your Action Is Needed TODAY!
March 27, 2013
Let the Senate Education Committee Know You Oppose SB 1263!
SB 1263 by Senator Larry Taylor is the “Parent Trigger” bill.
The “Parent Trigger” Is About Destroying Public Schools, Not Saving Them
SB 1263 radically undermines efforts to turn around a struggling school and may be voted out of committee Thursday (tomorrow) if we don’t act now.
We already have a parent trigger.
Texas’ current parent trigger law operates only after the Commissioner has reconstituted the campus, developed an intervention plan, and the campus has remained academically unacceptable for three years. SB 1263 blows up a campus for two years of academically unacceptable performance before any of the proven methods of intervention have been tried.
Historically, interests outside our school districts and even our state are the ones pushing for parent triggers. This is no exception.
SB 1263 undermines the authority of elected school boards: SB 1263 undermines the authority of locally elected school boards. While the statute allows the school board to petition the Commissioner to take a different action, it only he says he “may” order the action requested by the elected school board.
SB 1263 is brought by well-heeled national advocacy organizations, not parents. Many of the same groups pushing for school vouchers and other means of privatization are pushing this legislation.
Let the Senate Education Committee know you oppose SB 1263 by Taylor today.
Contact these legislators:
Dan Patrick, Chairman
(512) 463-0107
Dan.patrick@senate.state.tx.us
Eddie Lucio, Jr, Vice-Chair
(512) 463-0127
Eddie.lucio@senate.state.tx.us
Donna Campbell
(512) 463-0125
Donna.campbell@senate.state.tx.us
Robert Duncan
(512) 463-0128
Robert.duncan@senate.state.tx.us
Ken Paxton
(512) 463-0108
Ken.paxton@senate.state.tx.us
Kel Seliger
(512) 463-0131
Kel.seliger@senate.state.tx.us
Larry Taylor
(512) 463-0111
Larry.taylor@senate.state.tx.us
Leticia Van de Putte
(512) 463-0126
Leticia.vandeputte@senate.state.tx.us
Royce West
(512) 463-0123
Royce.west@senate.state.tx.us
To learn more, please visit our website
David Anthony, CEO
RAISE YOUR HAND TEXAS
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is exactly the kind of Parent Trigger law I have been talking about that is unacceptable. In California parents, teachers and community can vote to have themselves run the school. In the situation in Texas as I just read and think I understand it to mean that it is in control of the state. This is no good. That is not what this is supposed to be about. Texas, as usual, has morphed the law into a parent and student “UNFRIENDLY” law. They are using the usual “Orwellian” doublespeak.
When we Texan’s continue to see stuff like this
http://samuel-warde.com/2013/03/teacher-turns-herself-in-for-affair-with-student-rather-than-pay-blackmail-video/#comments
we question “public” schools.
It may be an unfair assessment, but most of us are low information parents
that see only what the main stream news publishes. With stuff like
that above and so many more in the past why would anyone want
their kid in a public school?
There are also bad cops. Should we sell the police stations? Corrupt DA’s mean get rid of the court system? Nurse kills patient: turn the hospital over to a private owner? There are bad apples in every profession. The good news is that these people get fired, like the teacher in your article. Schools aren’t run like the Catholic church or penn state where it’s allowed to continue.
Sadly, there’s no way to prevent these things from happening. Predators look for jobs where they will be trusted and will have authority. That doesn’t mean all teachers are rotten.
KinderTeacherinFLA
Until we can deal with the low information voters that hate public education because of stories like I posted, we will lose the education debate.
How, when we see a story like that plastered over all the main stream news channels,
can we support public education? If we don’t have numbers we lose.
% of public school teachers
versus
% of non-public school teachers
that do these things. Show the issue to be a non-public school issue, but
an adult-controlling-children issue and public schools are out of the discussion.
That would be my preference.
And when public school parents and teachers see stuff like this we question “private” schools. A very prestigious all girls school in CT….attended by many elites including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Miss Porter’s Teacher Charged With Sexually Assaulting Student
Rajkumar is accused of having sexual contact with one student, but police said they are working to determine if any other students are involved.
According to the Miss Porter’s website, Rajkumar arrived at the school in August 2009.
http://www.courant.com/community/farmington/hc-farmington-teacher-arrested-0328-20130327,0,6864844.story
As I said:
Show numbers for all teachers, not just public schools.
I’m thinking the issue is not a “public” school problem, but
an “adult in control of minors” problem.
However, the main stream media always publish these stories
(teacher has sex with student)
as a public school issue.
You read with a filter then. I have read many, many, many accounts of private school, especially boarding schools, sexual abuse incidents.
I don’t ask for a partial score of teacher bad’s.
I ask for the total score. Public schools versus private schools on this issue can definitively debunk those who hate public schools for stories like this.
Numbers confound the low information voters and compel them to think or acknowledge they are uninformed followers.
And Ed one more here:
Prep-School Predators – The Horace Mann School’s Secret History of Sexual Abuse
Shortly after my arrival, a new friend walked me around the school, pointing out teachers to avoid.
“What do you mean? Like, they’re hard graders?”
“No. Perverts. Stay away from them. Trust me.”
I heard about some teachers who supposedly had a habit of groping female students and others who had their eyes on the boys. I heard that Mark Wright, an assistant football coach, had recently left the school under mysterious circumstances. I was warned to avoid Stan Kops, the burly, bearded history teacher known widely as “the Bear,” who had some unusual pedagogical methods. Even Clark came in for some snickering: he had no family of his own, and he had a noticeably closer-than-average relationship to the Bear, another confirmed bachelor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/the-horace-mann-schools-secret-history-of-sexual-abuse.html?pagewanted=all
It might help if the plans implemented to turn around a failing school actually worked in most cases. Instead of blaming the other side we need solutions as to why fixing failing schools has always been a problem that doesn’t seem to work.
Someone has to be accountable. Is the problem the system itself, administration, lack of motivation by the students, lack of parental involvement? Poverty?
Friends in Texas: We have almost beaten this back in Georgia, but will know for sure at midnight on Thursday, when the session ends. Here are the talking points I developed and we have sent in some form in hundreds of emails to legislatures. Feel free to paraphrase, use, anything that will help you ! Focus FORWARD!
1. Parent Triggers don’t work! So far, none of the parent trigger efforts in the U.S. have resulted in anything other than rancor, divided communities and expensive lawsuits. One fight has gone on for months while the children are in limbo.
2. Parent Triggers are bad for business recruitment! No business scout is likely to look twice at a community where the schools are the subject of a huge community fight.
3. The majority of taxpayers are shut out of the process! Only about a third of Georgia households have children under 18. People like me, who pay their taxes and care about schools have no vote. That’s just plain wrong. I volunteer two days a week in my neighborhood elementary school and am much more engaged in the school than most parents, but would have no voice in processes set up by this law.
4. Parent Triggers are expensive! Any of the processes—turnaround models or charter conversions—are expensive and time-consuming. They use money that should be used to restore a full 180-day school schedule, eliminate teacher furloughs and purchase resources necessary for our children to succeed.
5. Parent Triggers can destroy small school systems and divide small communities! Throughout Georgia, schools are the core of the community. These districts and communities are already struggling to make ends meet and provide necessary services. A fight over a parent trigger creates divisions and leaves scars that can be decades in healing.
Finally, here is a link to my recent Athens Banner-Herald column on why a parent trigger does little for achieving students with involved parents and nothing for low-achieving students whose parents are not engaged in their education. Who does that leave? http://bit.ly/ZQDK8x
I think that is shows a lack of critical thinking to post a story about a sexually predatory teacher as being the “reason” people mistrust education…that is really petty and lacking in thought.
All over the country, every day, there are 100’s of 1000’s of teachers working to educate kids. I just got home now.
Arrived at 7:45, morning duty at 8:00, meeting after school till 5:30, running the after school program till 8:00. I was there till 7 last night, and 8 the night before that.
Yet the first thing I see, when I turn on my email, after a 12 hour day, the third of the week is stupid comments about how sexually predatory teachers are…if you are so lacking in common sense that you let occasional stories like that influence you, than I suggest that you march on down to your local impoverished public school and do some volunteer work so you see what thousands of us are doing every day.
It is pathetic how ignorant that “logic” is: we are all working very hard and I am sick of being dragged through the mud by people who are so ignorant.
TIER is very concerned that one of the leading groups who favors “local control” of school districts is so adamant that parents have no say in how to fix failing schools. Please remember that, in many cases, these parents do not have the means or the ability to remove their child from a failing school. This is an effort by a “well-heeled” organization to favor educrats over parents.
This same group opposes expansion of charter schools, deregulation and innovation, and other key reforms that can produce Texas high school graduates who are capable to engage in the 21st-century workforce. Who are they serving . . . the students, or the education establishment?
Rep George Miller said it best “The fact of the matter is, when we look at developing a model for real change and improvement in public education, it’s pretty hard to do without parents.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-austin/trigger-law-education-board_b_877859.html
This is a sorry defense of the parent tricker law, which enriches corporations
Oklahoma is also trying to pass a trigger law, SB1001. It passed the Senate and is on it’s way to House of Representatives. There are so many things WRONG with the Parent trigger law it is almost impossible to list them.
1. It is based on Flawed A-F ratings. The Oklahoma system for rating schools was declared “Fatally, irreparably flawed” in a Peer Reviewed study by Professors at Oklahoma University and Oklahoma State University. This system will be used to enact the “Trigger” .
2. The Bill actually REMOVES Parents from the entire education process once it is enacted. Once the School is turned into a FOR PROFIT Charter, the parents have ZERO say in what the school does.
3. The bill co-opts large segments of the voting public from having a say in the School System. Currently any registered voter in the school district can vote in school elections. This bill limits voters to those who have a child in the school. The only ones who can sign the petition are the parents of school children. Never mind that the tax dollars of non parents are used to fund the school. Even the immediate families of students are denied a say, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. If the Trigger petition gains enough votes, the only people who can vote to retain or close the school are people who signed the petition! This forces people to sign a petition they disagree with just to retain their voting rights.
4. Once the Trigger is pulled the Principal and staff can be removed by the incoming FOR PROFIT Charter.
5. No matter how poorly the new Charter does it cannot be removed. All say in school operation is now held by the FOR PROFIT Charter.
6. The FOR PROFIT Charter school may be religiously oriented,
7. The For PROFIT Charter Schools could even be like the Gulan Schools from Turkey. Run by an Imam and used to bring uncertified educators in from another country.
8. These FOR PROFIT Charters may even bypass the school bid process for awarding contracts. Thus opening the door to corruption, bribery, kickbacks and abuse.
9. This Bill is ALEC sponsored, nuff said.
SB 1263 was voted on by the Senate Education Committee headed by Sen. Dan Patrick (a sportscaster from Houston). The committee approved it and SB 1263 now moves to the full Senate for an up or down vote.