School Reform : Parents Taking Charge!!

Innovation in school control is here and is taking hold through out the country. It is high time that the people that pay the bill for education have a controling say in how the money is spent and just who knows what is best for the individual child.

Just the thought of having a parent tell the NEA what the score is keeps the union big wigs up at night. After all it isn't about what is best for education, it's about power and control of the agenda. And the agenda is changing the way we think through the young. Just what do you think the fight was all about in Texas when deciding what was going to be in the new text books?

The fight was about telling the truth or changing history. It's just that simple. Luckily for all of us that cares about our future, the truth won!


The Radical School Reform You've Never Heard Of
Source: David Feith, "The Radical School Reform You've Never Heard Of," Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2010.

Debates about education these days tend to center on familiar terms like charter schools and merit pay. Now a new fault line is emerging: "parent trigger," says David Feith, an assistant editorial features editor at the Wall Street Journal.

Parent trigger, which became California law in January, is meant to facilitate the transfer of power from teachers' unions to parents through community organizing. Under the law, if 51 percent of parents in a failing school sign a petition, they can trigger a forcible transformation of the school -- either by inviting a charter operator to take it over, by forcing certain administrative changes or by shutting it down outright.

Schools are eligible for triggering if they have failed to make "adequate yearly progress," according to state standards, for four consecutive years.

Today 1,300 of California's 10,000 schools qualify.

California's example has already inspired legislation in Connecticut, although Hartford lawmakers ultimately passed a reform package that doesn't give parents as much direct influence. That hasn't stopped the idea from catching on elsewhere.

State legislators in five states -- Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey and West Virginia -- say that they plan to introduce versions of parent-trigger legislation over the next six months, says Feith.

The growing popularity of parent trigger challenges the common assertion that schools fail primarily because they serve apathetic families. Like charter school lotteries bursting with thousands of parents and students, trigger drives demonstrate that legions of parents actively reject their children's failing schools.