THANKS, W:

'Parent Trigger' Law to Reform Schools Faces Challenges (JENNIFER MEDINA, 9/25/11, NY Times)

The promise sounded alluring and simple: if enough parents signed a petition, their children's struggling school would be shut down and replaced with a charter school.

So, using a new state law known as the parent trigger, organizers at an underperforming school here in Compton collected hundreds of signatures from parents who said they were fed up. Parents were eager, they said, to turn it into a charter school, where students would spend more time in class with a staff of new teachers.

After months of legal battles, the status of that petition remains tied up in court. But in the meantime, a new charter school has opened just blocks from the struggling school, and parents at more than a dozen other schools in California are hoping to take advantage of the trigger law, demanding that their schools radically improve.

In essence, the law creates a parents' union, which advocates say will provide powerful and needed counterweight to teachers' unions and district bureaucracies. If 51 percent of parents in a persistently failing school sign a petition, they can force the school to change into a charter, close it entirely or replace the principal and teachers.

Similar legislation has passed in Texas, Ohio and Connecticut and is being considered in nearly a dozen more states -- but California, the earliest adopter, is furthest along. [...]

There is strong resistance to this whole notion from teachers' unions, which have long relied on steadfast support from parents against budget cuts and other changes. In many ways, the parent trigger can directly undermine their efforts.

At a meeting of the American Federation of Teachers this summer, the lobbyist for the Connecticut chapter delivered a presentation outlining the ways that the union was able to weaken the law after unsuccessfully trying to kill it. The presentation made it clear that the union saw the law as a threat.

At the end of the day it's just a matter of whether schools exist to educate kids or provide benefits for public employees.

Posted by oj at September 24, 2011 9:50 PM
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