The Anaheim School District lost their battle to block a seizure of a public school via the notorious Parent Trigger.
This is a victory for the privatizers, for Ben Austin and Eli Broad, ALEC, DeVos, and the Trumpistas, who would like to take over and privatize more public schools in California.
It is a loss for public education and the common good.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s time for a California parent to “trigger” a takeover of a failing charter.
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Of course there is no garanteee that closing this school and opening another will solve the problem of chronically poor test score performance.
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Please stop putting Broad in with #45 and DeVos if you expect to defend public schools effectively.
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Broad belongs with the Waltons, ALEC, DFER, and all the others who paved the way for DeVos and 45.
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Why?
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They all have the same goal, privatizing the public education system.
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Thanks for the response but I’m interested in hearing why Wendy believes what she has written.
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I seem to be the voice in the room who has followed the Parent Trigger from the beginning. This is really sad for the school, its community and the district, but on the other hand, in context of its history, the Parent Trigger has floundered so badly that this one fluke doesn’t strike much of a blow. Here’s a little background.
California passed a law allowing the Parent Trigger in 2010, with Ben Austin of the billionaire-funded operation Parent Revolution the force behind it. Many politicians and editorial boards with a neoliberal viewpoint enthused. It was widely predicted that the Parent Trigger would turn dozens of California schools into charters in a short time.
Since then, Parent Trigger laws have been passed in a number of other states, with similar fanfare (and many outrageous flying lies, including false testimony before legislators that Parent Triggers had “transformed” many California schools).
OK, it’s been seven years. The Anaheim school brings to a total of TWO (2) the schools that have been turned into charters using Parent Triggers anywhere in the country. Both of them ripped apart school communities and only succeeded after ugly court battles, including with dissenting parents — we’re not just talking about battles with districts. Reports on the success/failure of the previous one (Desert Trails Elementary, Adelanto, Riverside County, CA) are wildly mixed. After all the hoohah and fanfare about passing Parent Trigger laws in other states, there are zero reports of Parent Triggers in those other states.
One issue is that the purpose of the Parent Trigger was to turn struggling schools over to charters, and charter operators actually don’t want to take over existing schools with existing problems — plus when the school is in a spotlight because of the Parent Trigger, it’s a lot harder to kick out all the kids they don’t want, which is normal charter procedure.
Also, as for the operations behind this con job: Ben Austin separated from Parent Revolution and went into some other education “reform” scam that doesn’t involve Parent Triggers. Parent Revolution dropped doing Parent Triggers completely and conned its billionaire funders into funding an entire new “mission.” The former state legislator who authored the California legislation in 2010, Gloria Romero, had some new organization that ran the Anaheim Parent Trigger. All these people and operations seem to turn against each other after awhile, despite the billionaire bucks raining down upon them. So the overall Parent Trigger story is a crashing failure despite this one sad blip in Anaheim.
Also, Eli Broad is totally on the same page as Trump and DeVos — it’s all about attacking and privatizing public education — despite any faint efforts to claim the contrary.
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I realize I neglected to include in this comment the fact that all parent trigger efforts have been based on flamboyantly lying to parents in getting them to sign the petition. “Sign here to improve our school!” “Sign here to beautify our school!” “Sign here to improve parking around our school!” At Desert Trails in Adelanto, the big court battle involved the many parents who wanted to remove their names from the petitions after discovering what they’d signed. the court ruled that they could not remove their names.
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The ruling said the school had to be turned over because it hadn’t met AYP, which no longer exists. Brilliant. It’s like a ruling based on phrenology. Prescription: leeches.
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I prefer blood letting.
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The judges misdiagnosed the school as failing and called for charter leeches to come in and suck out the funds. Yeah, I think I also would prefer actual leeching.
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