trigger

Real consequences of ‘school choice’

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For years, policy initiatives stemming from right-wing belief tanks have been wrapped in the rhetoric of positive outcomes that are, in fact, the complete opposite of what the measures are really intended to do.

A bill called Clear Skies that called for more pollution. Another called Healthy Forests offered incentives for cutting down valuable trees. No Child Left Behind, perhaps the crowning glory of duplicity, worsened the education of disadvantaged children it was purported to magically improve.

But without a doubt the most enduring of these wolf-wrapped-in-sheep’s-clothing ideas is the promise of “school choice” that’s been promoted to parents since the presidencies of Nixon and Reagan.

Sold as a way to “empower” parents to improve the education attainment of their children, school choice initiatives take on many forms, including vouchers, “scholarships,” and tax credits. But the most radical form of school choice is the so-called “parent trigger.”

The parent trigger has been relentlessly marketed to parents and policy makers as an “empowerment” that enables parents to conduct a petition campaign in their community to fire their school’s staff and change its governance. This has all the rhetoric of democratic activism – a majority of the parents deciding “what’s best” for the education of their children. But what are the results?

So far, the trigger has only been carried out to its fullest extent in one school: Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, California. A new video “Parent Triggers: Another Reform Misfires,” (see below) released by the Education Opportunity Network, recently looked at the results of the parent trigger in Adelanto and found that rather then uniting parents in doing what’s best for children, the parent trigger brought deception, division and disruption to the community.

Thus, parent trigger bills join the ranks of other school choice schemes that are proliferating across the country. And rather than giving parents more control of the trajectory of their children, these policies are leaving more parents overwhelmed and powerless.

So what should parents expect when the parent trigger or any other school choice scheme comes to town?

In New Orleans – perhaps America’s choiciest school district, where 70 percent of students attend charter schools – most of the schools remain the lowest performing in one of the lowest performing states, and parent activists have come to the conclusion that choice means “a choice to apply” while still remaining “trapped” in the same lousy schools.

A recent article in The Washington Post told the story of how the District of Columbia’s complex school choice landscape has led some parents to hire an educational consultant to navigate the public school system — and this is being seen by some as the wave of the future in districts around the country. More than 40 percent of the District’s 80,000 students attend charter schools. Even when parents do choose traditional public schools for their children, “more than half do not attend their assigned neighborhood school.”

“It’s just totally overwhelming,” one parent was quoted as saying in the Post story.

And the results? D.C. schools have among the lowest high school graduation rates in the country and the largest achievement gap of any urban school district.

According to this New York Times story, parents in New York City face a similar, if not more daunting, “school choice maze” that leaves thousands of children “shut out” of any real choice at all. Parents trying to navigate the complex system end up “feeling inadequate, frustrated and angry.”

Not to worry, school choice advocates reassure us. We’re told, as in this article at greatschools.org, to rejoice in the fact that while “it used to be that when it was time to find a school for the kids, most Americans looked no further than the neighborhood school.” Now we have a wonderful “open” system where our precious little darlings get to “compete” against the precious little darlings of our friends and neighbors.

Just make sure you’re one of the “smart parents” who knows how to “work the system.”

How could choice possibly lead to fewer options for parents?

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Pulling the Trigger

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Included in this years budget is a radical provision only one other state has recently implemented. The Parent Trigger. The Dispatch gives us a quick explanation

Gov. John Kasich's budget plan would give parents the power to force radical changes on chronically underperforming schools.
[....]
The "parent trigger" would apply to schools that rank in the state's bottom 5 percent in academics for three consecutive school years. If a majority of a school's parents sign a petition demanding change, the school would be forced to accept the reform the parents propose:
  • Converting into a charter school.
  • Replacing at least 70 percent of the staff.
  • Contracting with another school district, an effective nonprofit group or a for-profit group to operate the school.
  • Turning the school's operation over to the Ohio Department of Education.
  • Making "fundamental reforms" to the school's staffing or governance.

The article goes on to include a quote from JTF

Critics say they want parents involved in school reform, but perhaps not like this.

"I don't know how you don't create chaos when you've always got this specter of parents who are dissatisfied in some way saying, 'We're going to initiate this process and reconstitute this school,'" said Scott DiMauro, a Worthington teacher who heads the Central OEA/NEA, a regional union branch. He spoke on behalf of Join the Future, a new group advocating for public schools and teachers.

The Parent trigger has only been used at one California school, and the result was a mess, but before we get to the Compton story, EdWeek suggests that parents will be unlikely to want to use this trigger

Despite the fanfare since the law went into effect in Jan. 2010, few parents have taken advantage of their new leverage to create change. That's not at all surprising. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, which has been in existence since 2002, parents have had the right to transfer their children out of failing schools. But few have done so.

There are several explanations. In 2003, a study by the University of Texas found that parents often chose schools for idiosyncratic reasons, with low-income parents more satisfied with their schools despite low test scores. Echoing this finding, in 2005, the National Center for the Study of Privatization reported that parents frequently opted for schools based on holistic, social, logistic and administrative factors.

So why any concern? Compton.

There has been only one effort so far in California, in Compton, and it has proven highly controversial. California Watch has the story.

The issue of more transparency has emerged as a major source of controversy, and conflict, in response to the stealth campaign organized by Parent Revolution, which was able to gain sufficient signatures from parents at the McKinley Elementary School in Compton Unified School District to turn the school in a charter school, and to designate which charter school company would run it.

The petition was delivered to school district officials, who had no idea the petition drive was even underway, after weeks of signature gathering by Parent Revolution organizers who trolled Compton, knocking randomly on doors and stopping people on the street to locate McKinley parents, or parents from feeder schools.

After the petitions were delivered, many parents asked for their names to be withdrawn, claiming that they weren't fully aware of what they were signing.

So in short. A stealth trigger campaign was started by a for profit business (The Parent Revolution, has close ties to Green Dot public schools, a large charter management organization in Los Angeles) to take over a public school, and they did so by collecting signatures randomly and without properly disclosing their intent. The case is now pending before the courts.

That's the first and only instance of a parent trigger being pulled - and some want this debacle imported to Ohio.