Ben Austin is stepping down as head of the organization called “Parent Revolution,” which is funded by the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and numerous other foundations. Austin was instrumental in passage of California’s “parent trigger” law in 2010. Under that law, if a majority of parents sign a petition, they can take control of their community’s public school and hand it over to a private charter operator, fire staff, or make other changes.
In the past four years, several other states have copied California’s “parent trigger” law.
Despite the millions spent to promote the idea of the “parent trigger,” very few schools have actually utilized it. According to the article, four years after the law’s passage, only three schools in the Los Angeles area have converted to charters, and three have used it to force changes (like the firing of a respected Hispanic principal). There are as yet no results for the schools that converted to charters, since they are so new. Actually, the only school I am sure was turned into a charter by Parent Revolution was Desert Trails in Adelanto. If you know of others, please let me know.
The conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz made a movie (“Won’t Back Down”) to publicize the “parent trigger” idea, but the movie did poorly at the box-office and didn’t have much impact, despite an excellent cast and extensive publicity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He can join Mrs. Johnson and start a reformy rehab.
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Perhaps all the negative publicity depicting his manipulation of inner city parents, plus other lesser known activities, finally convinced him to leave. Or maybe the $14 million dollars that the Waltons and Broad, and some others invested/donated to his parent trigger actions was not enough.
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I think it was poor/no return on investment. It looks like parent trigger laws may no longer be part of the ed-deformers agenda.
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Ben Austin is to be applauded for the changes he brought about in a failing district that wasn’t going to change one thing if it didn’t have to. I know because I was there. The parents had to go to court twice just to get the district to listen to them and to what the court ruled. Ben was by the parent’s side each step of the way. And if they had wanted to, they could have turned more failing schools in that district into charters, but unlike what the media often says, they don’t go looking for schools. Test results by the way, especially in science and reading are looking good for the nation’s first school created by pulling the trigger!
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Gosh, did you ever read about the first Adelanto charter school? It was closed down for financial self-dealing.
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That’s because it was started by the district of Adelanto.
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“Ben Austin is to be applauded for the changes he brought about in a failing district that wasn’t going to change one thing if it didn’t have to. I know because I was there. The parents had to go to court twice just to get the district to listen to them and to what the court ruled. Ben was by the parent’s side each step of the way. And if they had wanted to, they could have turned more failing schools in that district into charters, but unlike what the media often says, they don’t go looking for schools. Test results by the way, especially in science and reading are looking good for the nation’s first school created by pulling the trigger!”
– – – – – – – –
Wow. Basically, every single thing in this above paragraph is false, demonstrably false.
The last sentence refers to alleged charter school success story in this article:
capitalandmain.com/adelanto-report-card-year-zero-of-the-parent-trigger-revolution/
There’s even a video version of the story at this link.
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Gee, Jack. Were you there in Adelanto, too?
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Gosh, that charter actually scored lower than the schools around it and most of the kids at the school it replaced are no longer there.
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So the fact that there were at least as many people protesting the changes (if not more) doesn’t bother you? The fact that some of the “supporters” were duped or pressured into signing the trigger doesn’t bother you? The fact that people weren’t allowed to remove their signature when they learned the truth doesn’t bother you? The fact that only parents of current students were able to participate in the decision making doesn’t bother you? The fact that only those who voted for the charter school got to vote for the charter operator doesn’t bother you?
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Out come the charter trolls and their over-baked talking points…
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Michael…’changemaker’ refuses to identify him/herself, but is probably a Parent Rev troll who always jumps in here to defend the notorious and ever conniving Ben Austin. Austin, who is known to only work on projects that produce large income for himself, probably has found a more lucerative gig…or maybe he plans to run for office as John Deasy has said he is considering.
Either way, these two partners in potential crime have both resigned.
Hopefully, some of the issues surrounding the sleazy and inept management of LAUSD by Deasy and his other Broad-trained accomplices will come to light with the FBI Federal Grand Jury investigation after the FBI raided LAUSD and took the records of the iPad fiasco. However, in learning so much this week about the slanted issues that Grand Juries see through the eyes of only prosecutors, maybe this is one more exercise in futility.
FYI…I am being interviewed today at 3 PM Pacific Time on KPFK on all of this, should anyone wish to tune in.
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Oh, so this man receives praise for screwing what he and his pro-private gurus are supposed to do for charcoal businesses–not accountability for wasting money, and burnt-up charcoal pits being closed? Boy, that is quite ironic. He proves himself that he is not even qualified as an entrepreneur.
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Cause the image I want associated with children and teachers is a gun…that’s real revolutionary thinking there.
While imaging itself to be truly democratic in some way, why then could it not be put to a regulated vote, instead of continually bullying people for signatures, tricking people by putting together a side by side petition for something noone could say no to, and refuse to allow people to rescind their signature if they realized it wasn’t in their interest in a process that refused to be as formal as a ‘real’ election.
I think the real reason he’s moving on is because the deformers have realized the real power lies with the people that people put into office and not with the “base” and that trying to change schools this way is slow, monotonous, has poor chances of succeeding, and is actually sensitive to what people want for their children.
Meanwhile, people who are elected, may not have children in public school, may not be effected by the decisions they make, they have the power to make sweeping changes, and they can have financial and political clout in elections from power brokers.
It’s obvious why Parent Revolution failed – our representative democracy has concentrated power with our representatives, and that’s who they’re going after.
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These petitions can be found online. In the Weigand School takeover which was manipulated by parent trigger advocate Austin’s group (financed by Waltons and Broad), where a minimally trained Principal was then put in charge of the new charter embedded there, one parent indicates on the signature page that she voted for the parent trigger because the Principal did not say hello to her.
This is the kind of fallout from this very flawed California law. The print media this week touted that Parent Empowerment laws were now passed in 6 states, but they do not report that they were rejected by voters in another 20 states.
Sheer nonsense and ignorance can destroy a local public school forever, with a short term group of ill informed parents making decisions based often on lies told to them, that affect the community in perpetuity. Can anything be more unfair and ill advised?
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Speaking of guns, are you aware that the former supt. of Adelanto moved to Compton and he and his board have armed all the security guards there? Check it out.
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Could be just a turnover in leadership? Another Broadie Brownie may want this kind of resume…
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I reprint in its entirety—solely minus the emoticons—what I wrote on this blog under a posting of 10-24-2014:
[START REPEAT]
Old Teacher: excellent points.
Let me reinforce what you said about the undemocratic nature of this whole “parent trigger” [i.e., shooting the gun of self-styled “education reform” at unsuspecting parents) business as it has worked itself out in reality, not in rheeality.
I reprint the first part of a comment I made on this blog on 1-14-2014 under a posting entitled “Two Anti-Parent Revolution Parents Accused of Vandalizing Charter School.” Also see my comment on this blog, 6-28-2013, under the posting “A Sad Graduation Day at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, CA.”
[START REPRINT]
Simply as an aid to the owner of this blog—and to head off distracting molehills of tiny correction that divert from serious discussion—I include two excerpts below re the numbers involved in the charterization of Desert Trails Elementary School.
Please go to the articles linked below (and others; google) for more context.
I simply remind those viewing this blog that the parents who voted—53!—were not only a very small minority of the original petitioners, but also voted for the huge number of parents past and future. Among the charterites/privatizers, this is called “choice” — which as Chiara Duggan has pointed out, substitutes in their minds for “voice.” And in my mind, substitutes for “democracy.
[start quote]
Only 53 of the original 466 parent petitioners voted, and amongst those who did, the vast majority voted in favor of LaVerne Prep.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.vvdailypress.com/articles/trails-38493-adelanto-approved.html
[start quote]
But some school officials and parents expressed concern that only 53 ballots were cast in the charter election. Although the school has about 400 families with 610 students, only 180 parents who signed the petition for a charter campus during the campaign last year were eligible to vote under the parent-trigger law.
“Fifty-three votes cast the direction of the school,” said LaNita M. Dominique, president of the Adelanto teachers’ union. “That’s a little disheartening.”
[end quote]
Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/22/local/la-me-parent-trigger-20121023
[END REPRINT]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/14/two-anti-parent-revolution-parents-accused-of-vandalizing-charter-school/
But why let decency, compassion, facts and logic stand in the way of self-proclaimed “education reform”? Parent Trigger! Parent Revolution! Choice! Miracles!
Or am I exaggerating? Surely this is an outlier. Or maybe, as in the case of Steve Barr and his offhandedly cruel abandonment of John McDonough High School in New Orleans, this is just another example of ed business as usual in the pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$. Which in rheephormish, as Bob Shepherd would remind us, means that, most dear and near to the hearts of those leading and enabling the charterite/privatization movement are the acronyms “ROI/MC” aka “ReturnOnInvestment/MonetizingChildren.”
For McDonough, see this blog—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/10/23/the-miracle-that-wasnt-steve-barrs-failure-in-new-orleans/
Just my dos centavitos worth…
[END REPEAT]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/10/24/capital-and-main-the-failure-of-the-parent-trigger/
It is worthwhile going to the links provided above and reading the related threads.
I also refer people to a comment I made on a thread on this blog six days ago—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/11/29/albuquerque-parent-speaks-out-against-testing-despite-efforts-to-silence-her-and-teachers/
Ben Austin is to “parent” and “revolution” what—
Well, it is so outrageous to associate him with either of those words in a positive sense that one can only wonder if he has a secret desire to make himself a hideous caricature of a decent caring human being:
“Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.“ [François de la Rochefoucauld]
But then, when $tudent $ucce$$ calls—“it’s all about the kids!”—some homegrown talent already knew the type:
“Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.” [John Steinbeck]
Wonder if Ben Austin and John Deasy are planning a get-away adventure together anytime soon? I hear that North Korea has a great jobs program for people that think democracy and compassion and honesty are not part of this cage busting achievement gap crushing 21st century…
They should think, however, about the retirement/severance plan, which (according to the usual unconfirmed rumors) involves 120 dogs that are having a very very very bad day…
Just sayin’…
😎
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Here’s a great investigative report on charter school fraud in South Florida;
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/NBC-6-Investigation-Charter-Schools-Not-Making-the-Grade-283919571.html
————————–
Tuesday, Nov 25, 2014 • Updated at 10:30 PM EST
Charter schools are so popular they’ve doubled in number to more than 600 across the state. But lately charter schools have made headlines for a rash of closings in South Florida—that aren’t just upsetting parents, but are costing taxpayers money.
Charter schools are publicly funded, but operate independently. Forty-nine charter schools have shut down in South Florida in the last five years, more than 40% owing school districts millions of dollars in tax money–and leaving parents like John and Mariya Wai scrambling to find a new school.
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The Wai’s thought they found the ideal new school this year for their eight year old son, Luca Mancinelli.
“I thought it was a perfect match,” said John Wai.
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The family says administrators at Magnolia School for the Arts, a new charter school in Plantation, even promised laptops for every child. The Wai’s say the new school was supposed to offer classes with challenging academics while nurturing his artistic talents.
“Luca loves photography and loves to draw. I thought it was,” said John Wai.
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But that’s not how it turned out. When school started, the school building wasn’t ready so class moved outside the Young-at-Art museum in Davie.
“On the first day it was five hours with the sun in our faces. It was very hot,” said Mancinelli.
That first day of school was a scorcher with a high of 93. Plus, Mariya Wai says classes seemed disorganized and chaotic. The principal promised school would soon move to a permanent building and things would settle down.
“She assured me everything’s going to be ready–don’t worry mom,” said Mariya Wai.
But after week two—a stunning development on the school’s website: a letter saying the school could not open and parents would need to find a new school.
“I was sitting there just being scammed and just given a story.”
“I was very mad, sad, disappointed,” said Mancinelli.
“It’s horrible,” said Mariya Wai.
The closure left the Wais scrambling to find a new school for Luca — and the Broward school district missing more than $283,000—money it supplied to get the school up and running for three months.
After Team 6 investigators began asking questions, the school refunded some money for uniforms parents had to buy. No one from the school would talk on camera and neither would anyone from the school’s management company, Newpoint Education partners.
But by phone vice president, David Stiles said, “All public funds are accounted for.” He said the money is “collected” or the school board is “in the process of collecting it.”
Records show 12 charter schools have shut down in the last five years in the Broward school district, leaving more than one million dollars in taxpayer money unaccounted for. In Miami-Dade, failed charter schools did not return almost $1.5 million and in Palm Beach, the figure is $800,000.
“It’s not right. Somebody needs to step in and take a look at this and reevaluate how the charter school system’s applications are processed and monitored,” said John Wai.
The Wai’s question if it’s just too easy to open a charter school. Broward school superintendent Robert Runcie says his team thoroughly vets applications– and he regrets green lighting any school that fails. He believes the state should require security from applicants.
“Some type of surety bonds or escrow needs to be in place to protect taxpayer dollars,” said Runcie.
The Department of Education’s Adam Miller defends the state’s track record.
“I don’t believe it’s too easy to open a charter school and I think if you look at the data you’ll see over the last 5 to 7 years you’ve seen a dramatic decline in the percentage of applications that are getting approved,” said Miller.
Based on their experience, the Wai’s think the number of approvals should be even smaller.
“I’m very angry at this– that they’re using our money and it’s being used to distribute to people who aren’t qualified to run this type of organization and it’s got to stop,” said John Wai.
Two hundred and forty-six charter schools closed in Florida in the past five years.
As for Newpoint Education Partners, this isn’t the first time the management company has had problems. The Florida Department of Education gave its Pinellas County school an “F” last year.
The NBC station in Tampa reports that same school turned away dozens of families at the last minute because the school wasn’t going to be ready in time.
Team 6 Investigators wanted to ask Newpoint about the Pinellas school, but they did not return our repeated phone calls.
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4 years is a long career in ed reform.
I love that one of the things they hope to teach our children is “persistence”. They never stay with one thing long enough to get really good at it. People work a decade to hone skills and learn how to run something, but not the Best and The Brightest! Give them three years and they can “transform” the State of Tennessee.
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It’s a lot longer than they want us teachers to have, that’s for sure.
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I thought he didn’t have enough grit to stay at the helm, but your post made me see he may be one of the grittiest reformers.
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“Over the past six years, we have invented an idea, passed it into law, implemented it, built an organization and scaled a movement,” Austin said in a statement. “In the wake of the successful Parent Power Convention and the recent agreement with the LAUSD to work collaboratively on Parent Trigger, we are at an inflection point. We have normalized the idea of parent power and institutionalized Parent Trigger laws into our legal and political framework.”
Ed reformers should take the word “scaled” out of their 150 word business-speak vocabulary. You can’t credibly promote “rigor” for third graders when you talk like this.
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Vouchers and parent triggers are designed to “dismantle public education.”
The Heartland Institute has played an important role in this attack on community schools and, when you look closely and read between the lines — parent rights. Connecticut took a different path.
http://www.rethinkingschools.org//cmshandler.asp?archive/26_01/26_01_bacon.shtml
Rachel Tabachnick wrote a good history and analysis I think (2012):
http://www.politicalresearch.org/2012/08/01/the-rights-school-choice-scheme/#. #longread
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For those who do not know the Heartland Institute, please google them and you will see the most reactionary people in the nation on their Board. This 501c3 NGO does not have to pay taxes to support their politcal indoctrination. How come?
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Maybe the expose in Capital & Main hastened Austin’s departure. Desert Trails Charter is a total disaster. Kids are leaving in droves with teachers and principals quitting in large numbers too. Promised materials did not appear.
The school points to a parent survey as proof of success, but Parent Revolution commissioned the survey, so how can anyone believe it’s authenticity. Also, the higher test scores on the 5th grade science test were due to kill and drill the teachers were forced to impose. And, who knows what kids were left in the spring to take the test with so many leaving during the year.
At the two LAUSD schools that used the trigger, staff quit too, even though in both cases, the parents never complained about the teachers being any part of the “problem”.
At 24th St. Elementary, the parents didn’t like the charter choices, so former Superintendent Deasy, no doubt a close associate of Austin, helped to develop an illegal EMO called Practitioner Center Schools(look it up, it doesn’t exist) to take over the school. The parents bought the idea, as they had no other reasonable choice left.
At Weigand Elementary, the parents were not criticizing either the principal or the teachers, but Austin was able to talk the parents into pulling the trigger anyway. In this case, the school did not opt for the restart model, but instead replaced the principal. Almost every teacher quit the school and asked to be transferred in support of their principal. People forget that this kind of disruption creates all kinds of problems with absolutely no proof that any of this will make a positive difference.
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I just think it’s nuts to set up a system where parents who are currently at the school have an “election” and make decisions on a school that belongs to the whole community.
It’s bizarre to me. We had a long drawn out local debate to build a new school here. Two elections, umpteen meetings, letters to the editor, factions, the whole works. I cannot imagine if we had said “parents with kids in the school right now will be the only community members weighing in” I think there would have been actual unrest. They’re PUBLIC schools. The whole public funds them, and they belong to the whole community.
To me it;s like polling the riders on a single bus route on a single day to make decisions on a public transit system. I have a child in the public school here but I don’t own it, anymore than anyone else here owns it.
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What a great analogy for educational “research”…could be no more than a single instance in a single class somewhere and that justifies it to be quoted as “research”…..the statistics of reformers are not to be trusted.
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Desert Trails Prep is not “a total disaster.” Compare the leavings with the transiency of students in the whole district of Adelanto–kids, parents, administrators, including superintendents. Adelanto is a rural poverty area with 5 prisons in the area. No administrators who work in the district want to live in the area; few teachers do, either. One needs to look at the entire culture of the district and area to understand much of what has taken place there.
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but the attrition happening at Desert Trails is not typical of the community. Students are quitting and going to other local elementary schools, not just leaving the area. The only explanation is that the parents pulled them out due to dissatisfaction. Last year, several principals quit as did many teachers, some in mid-year. That too is far from normal. No principal or teacher working for any school district would dare take a job that they couldn’t commit to for the year. Breaking a contract is serious business as schools do not like the turmoil created when staff quits mid-year, especially in large numbers. But, in a charter…..who cares as long as the money keeps flowing from the state. Parents who wanted to complain went to the district, but they were directed to go back to the school. In a sense, parents at Desert Trails have less power than they did when the school was part of the district. Why? because charter board members are not elected by the parents as they are for the district. AND, the Capital & Main article pointed out that at least one charter board member was also on the payroll.
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Changemaker, are you familiar with the history of the original Adelanto charter school? It was closed down because of financial shenanigans, self-dealing, conflict of interest. Where public money goes, public scrutiny must follow
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The Nevada legislature is hot in the process of passing a parent trigger law here. We take every failed California idea and run it through the mill again! We just can’t seem to understand that bad ideas did not fail due to faulty execution, they failed because they are lousy ideas with no basis in reality.
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Changemaker, Tim. Are there other nom de plumes? It (he or she), tho I think it is Michelle, spend too much time waiting to pounce, drop their load of nonsense in this case, rhetoric in others, then run for hills, so smug and satisfied that “it” told us~!
I love the smell of BS in the morning.
The reformers are cowards. They hide behind their rhetoric, their money, or the money of others, their political “power” (or bought politicians), and they trick people into signing petitions by doing a switcharoo, or something like this “would you like 4 quarters, or 10 dimes?” They wear shirts calling for quality education and great teachers — but their agenda is TFA temps, closing schools, etc. They get APPOINTED by governors, not elected, to boards, or into jobs as supers.
Then, they leave in disgrace, quite hated by the public, for doing what they did. Some of them can’t help but continue to talk the talk because they are still in bed with the 1%’s money in one fashion or another (Rhee, selling manure, so she can advocate, again, for manure–perfect).
Thank you for the chuckle Changemaker. You made my morning.
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I my official capacity, I go to 24th St. on a weekly basis. The Elementary School is still LAUSD. They replaced the principal and made the teachers reapply for their jobs. Most chose to transfer out. It is now staffed by young teachers, most of whom are very hard working and bright…many UCLA grads. I don’t think they’ve seen a great leap in standardized test results. The biggest effect of the trigger Is a charter Charter Middle School called Crown Prep Academy that is co-located on the campus. They take up a lot of space.I am no expert, but it is clearly of the “no excuses” philosophy. The parents tell me they don’t allow the children to smile. It sure looks that way. Depressed stressed out young teachers in their ties and depressed looking kids.The staff turnover rate is horrendous. I don’t think the parents really had an idea of what they were hoping would replace the school in it’s former configuration.
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