Parents: Don’t gut ‘parent trigger’
Unknown: Will lawmakers clarify (undo) law?
Five dozen parents from Compton and all corners of Los Angeles drove all night in a packed school bus to deliver their message, in impassioned one-minute speeches in Spanish and English, to the State Board of Education: Don’t undermine the year-old law giving parents the power to force structural changes in underperforming schools.
“Our children have a right to a university education,” implored one parent. “Failure is not an option.”
“We need your immediate attention,” demanded another. “Move swiftly to add to the mandate of a parent trigger law.”
Board members listened closely, and appeared moved.
“This is urgent,” agreed Yvonne Chan, a charter school principal from Los Angeles.
“Your bus trip was worth it and made an impression today,” said new Board member James Ramos.
“All of the Board is committed to move swiftly and thoughtfully to give you what you need,” said Gregory Jones.
Then, within minutes, high intention ran into Sacramento reality. It became evident in the Board’s discussion that turning aspiration into regulation, urgency notwithstanding, will not be quick or easy – and will likely be contentious.
If parents came hopeful, they left Sacramento Wednesday uncertain and not a little bit suspicious.
The “parent trigger” law that gives a majority of parents at a school the right to demand a change of leadership or bring in a charter school operator is “difficult,” said new Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson: “vague where it should be specific and specific where it should be flexible.”
The emergency implementation regulations that the State Board adopted last summer provided little guidance and are set to expire next month. Parents at an elementary school in Compton that submitted the first parent trigger petition in December already have filed suit – and have won a preliminary injunction over burdens that the district required for signature verification. Parent groups at middle schools in Carson and Sunland-Tujunga, in northeast Los Angeles, are deep in their own petition drives. Spurred by the organizers of Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution, parent activists want action now.
But the draft regulations that the State Board worked on for half a year doesn’t address the conflicts that already have surfaced in Compton over tactics and procedures. Groups representing teachers, school boards, administrators, the state PTA, and Public Advocates, which represents low-income families, asked the Board to take more time to get the regulations right.
Torlakson recommended – and the State Board unanimously agreed – to bring representatives of all of the groups, including Parent Revolution, together over the next month to hash out issues and provide direction to the Board.
But his disclosure that the Department of Education would also work with Julia Brownley, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, on a “cleanup bill” to clarify the parent trigger law caught parent organizers by surprise and alarmed them. As an Assemblyman with close ties to the CTA last year, Torlakson led the opposition to the parent trigger law. Brownley proposed a watered-down version of the law.
“We are certain to see a repeal effort under another name,” said Gabe Rose, deputy director of Parent Revolution. “I have never heard in all public hearings and conference calls for eight months before now CDE (Department of Education) staff once say, ‘This law is just too hard; we need cleanup legislation.’” (Go here for a short video interview of Gabe Rose.)
The Department’s position is that it is going to be difficult to craft regulations that hold up in court with the parent trigger as currently written. But Chief Deputy Superintendent Richard Zeiger told me that Torlakson, while offering to work with Brownley, is not leading an effort to rewrite the law. He opposed the parent trigger because of philosophical differences; he questions whether parents should be given the authority to take control of a public asset. But he also saw problems with the law’s language.
Important issues must be addressed, Zeiger said, naming off a few:
Definitions: Who is a parent? If parents from feeder schools have a say, how do you determine who?
Transparency: How do you set up a process where everyone can participate and make it equitable for all parties (teachers, parents)? How do you ensure there will be an accurate presentation of options? Should there be an officially sanctioned petition title with early disclosure, as with other petition drives?
Signatures: Does it matter if there are paid circulators? Should it be clear who is paying for the petition?
Procedural: Does a petition drive extend beyond one year? How long does it last?
Charter approval: Does a petition drive calling for a conversion charter school initiate a formal charter approval process, as with any new charter?
Parent activists have very different concerns: They want the regulations to protect them from harassment from district officials; they want simple and easy signature verifications; and they want tight deadlines. They know districts will try to drag out the process.
Agreeing that districts have a conflict of interest, newly nominated Board member Carl Cohn, a former superintendent from Long Beach and San Diego, suggested that county offices of education be brought in to oversee the petition and public hearing process. That likely would require a change in the law.
The State Board has a number of difficult decisions: Should it let the emergency regulations expire; replace them with new ones; adopt the draft regulations it inherited, with changes (because of formal review time line, that would take months, regardless); start the regulations process again and watch to see what the Legislature does, if anything?
For a State Board that wants to focus on issues of assessment, governance, finance reform and Common Core standards, the parent trigger issue will be time-consuming and controversial. For Gov. Jerry Brown, who will want a united campaign to pass tax extensions in June, any battle pitting parents against the education establishment would be perilous.
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Those are excellent questions — and also obvious; how could they have not been addressed in the original law?
Also, when parents at feeder schools are included as in the current law, how do you arrive at the total number of votes, so as to determine the number needed to determine 50 percent plus one?
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The Parent Revolution recruits are obviously being used by the professional organizers to create a national movement, as evidenced by simple google search of activists in other states
all of a sudden creating the impression that local parents are spontaneously rising up in protest with ready made Parent Trigger Law demands. This is a professionally organized and orchestrated movement, not something simply “thought-up” by desperate parents.
One remark by a bussed parent might reflect their having viewed the movie ”Waiting for Superman”, too much which is connected to the whole traveling road show. The mantra of the movie was repeated by the parent in Sacramento reported to have said, “Our children have a right to a university education”. Really? And when that may not be possible for a whole lot of reasons other than condition of elementary/middle schools, will there be parents bussed to Sacramento to demand entrance of their children to UC system “because they have a right to it”?
The fundamental elephant in the living room is being completely overlooked or ignored. Parents have every right to lobby for whatever cause they choose. But the legislators have no right to disenfranchise all the registered voters in schools districts who do not have students enrolled in the district’s schools. There is a CONSTITUTIONAL issue at stake here in which one interest group, parents in this case, are being persuaded that they can usurp the
franchise of every voter and tax payer in a school district to force their will on an ELECTED
school board which is accountable to the entire constituency, not just 50% plus one of the parents. I would be surprised if a legal challenge to the concept of parent trigger laws were not
brought, and would be won handily. Either this nation, state, county, school districts have representative governance with accountability to an electorate which elected representatives
be they, national, state, county or school district boards, or it doesn’t. Local school boards have the responsibility to represent all the constituents of a district, not just one set of stakeholders assembled by professional community organizers. School boards in turn, need to lobby for more autonomy from state and federal mandates, refuse federal dollar carrots from Race to the Top, etc., and set local standards within their districts. Parents who have students enrolled need to nurture their own children to make the most of what opportunities do exist in their district keeping in mind that nobody has a RIGHT to a university education. That needs to be earned.
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The education establishment seems to have a problem with activist organizers (like Barack Obama in his earlier days). Activist organizers from “outside” were responsible for civil rights protests in the 1950’s and ’60’s, and earlier for women suffrage, and earlier still for anti-slavery movements.
The real elephant in the living room is who decides what education the child gets. The education establishment wants it to be them claiming expertise due to what is in reality a laughable set of ed school classes. Parents, not surprisingly, want it to be them based on the fact that it is their kid and the teachers they meet are nice people (mostly) but half of them are scared of fractions, scared of competition, scared of any change whatever.
The education system hasn’t changed since 1800 when the school teacher was the most educated person in the village after the town lawyer and doctor. Teachers and administrators still have the idea of themselves as the only ones capable of deciding on curriculum. Which is really, really annoying and is fast losing them their few remaining allies, resulting in the current situation where you can’t tell the difference between Bush and Obama on education.
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Somehow, when I read the “constitutional” concerns of Mary Thompson but can’t find even a whisper of concern there about any constitutional rights of the parents to control their children education, it reminds me of the Tahrir square in Cairo. And of Mubarak’s “deep concerns” about the Egyptian constitution, about “law and order,” and about “foreign elements” stirring the pot. But he had 30 years to take care of them, hadn’t he? So his solicitous tone doesn’t impress me somehow.
Nor does Torlakson’s and CDE’s. Nor Mary Thompson’s or Caroline’s. Particularly their worries about “paid elements” when they should be worried about kids who has been miseducated for decades under the current system.
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I wouldn’t be worried about “paid elements” (not my quote) if they existed to support parents, Ze’ev. But the so-called Parent Trigger is not about Parent Empowerment; it’s about Charter Operator Empowerment.
Which of us — Mary Thompson or me — is supposed to be Mubarak? I wasn’t clear on that analogy. My kids do accuse me of being a despot sometimes.
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I don’t really worry about your “despotic” paternalism (maternalism?) at your family level. I fully trust you there (smile).
It is when you apply the same paternalism to other people’s children that I start to worry.
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Well, if you pit my interest in outcomes for “other people’s children” vs. Parent Revolution’s interest, the advice to “follow the money” applies. My interest is as a volunteer advocate with no personal gain to be had, while theirs is on behalf of the charter school industry, seeking ever-more-effective ways to divert public-school funding into private pockets.
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The tragedy is that the sad state of public schools wasn’t addressed by parents and others when the major thrust to “unfreeze the system” (a Rand Corp. term) started in earnest in the 1960’s. The process was nurtured by Federal involvement with ESEA, establishing of Dept of Education, Regional Centers to channel “innovations” for federally funded pilot programs in designated school districts in designated states. Those beginnings a couple generations ago, were resisted and fought by parents, and yes, some teachers, but most parents didn’t understand the full implications of it, some teachers left the profession rather than perpetrate the methodology
of the Human Potential Movement in their classrooms. There were even legislative hearings in Sacramento re: such things as Sensitivity Training in the classrooms as parent protests grew. The NEA was on board with the whole scenario to revolutionize the schools and fought any resistance. There were NEA booklets instructing education establishements how to neutaralize the resisters. The first really national thrust to start the dismantling of traditional education, was Family Life Education. Parents across the nation protested with rallys, organized to oppose it, headlines sensationalized the opposition by portraying FLE as sex education, ignoring the totality of the agenda spelled out in the FLE Guides which involved sex education only as a small part of a curriculum designed to undermine parental authority, traditional morality, self restraint, etc.,etc. Remember it was the 60’s and 70’s with general “unfreezing” of orderly
society. Most parents went along not wanting to cause any problems for their children in the classrooms, and the teachers went along to get along but didn’t like the so-called innovations.
The “unfreezing”, breaking down of an education system which made the U.S. the envy of the world continued as programmed until now parents, teachers, and society itself is experiencing the results. Rand Corporation had a term, “refreezing the system”, for restructuring when the deliberate dumbing down was accomplished. It was to restructure the education system on a new and different philosophical foundation of civic discourse. That is what is happening now.
A current generation of parents and teachers as well, who should be allies to restore real teaching and education have no memory of what was systematically destroyed over the last half century. Now they are being used by political forces and operatives to destroy the very concept of what makes our nation great, the concept of a representative democratic republic
with a government of ELECTED REPRESENTATION elected by franchised electorate.
Current headlines should cause everyone to take note of how others
in the world want that privilege of representative government with ELECTED representation.
Parent trigger laws are undermining that concept in principle.
I was a protesting parent in the 60’s and 70’s resisting the beginnings of the hijacking of the education system. Nobody fought harder in the interests of my and other’s children in schools at that time. i.e. 1972 speech given to a political women’s group which has been included in the book “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” pg. 110-111 available to read on line free at http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com Opponents of Parent Trigger Law, charter schools, etc. are not anti parent. But parents have not and are not addressing the root of the problem starting with the Department of Education, the fountain head of what has brought the schools to the sorry state everyone can see.
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Your interest, Caroline, is to diver the funding to their (teachers and adminstrators) pensions, benefits, and to lord over their ever ending failing system. You are an enabler that fail the children of Compton.
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Mary, you are another progressive elite who thinks of no one but what you all stand for. Never mind about the children. What is so hateful about charter schools, that actually educate our kids. What is so bad about parents actually wanting a better education for their children. No one reads your rantings and ravings. It is so frustrated with people like you. You are nothing but the public education mouth piece. Enough! Give the Compton’s children a chance to learn and become educated.
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Peggy, Mary: Let’s cool it, please.
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