Parent trigger: Can parent takeovers improve schools?
Are parents the solution to failing schools?
That’s the theory behind parent trigger laws, which allow a majority of parents in a failing school to petition and win control of the school and impose their own reform blueprint. Originating in California in 2010, the laws allow parents to take over a systematically failing school if they collect signatures from the majority of families.
But do the trigger laws really fire blanks?
A increasing criticism of parent trigger laws is that, while they involve parents at the start in organizing the petition drives to pull the trigger, the most realistic outcome is the hiring of an outside management firm to run the reconstituted school.
In fact, the possible ascendancy of for-profit education management companies contributed to the defeat of a parent trigger bill in Florida last year because parent groups argued that the law would lead to corporate interests exploiting the schools.
The Georgia General Assembly is now considering the Parent and Teacher Empowerment Act. If Georgia adopts the bill — and the debate around it will be fierce — it would become the eighth state to do so.
In explaining the rationale for his parent trigger bill, sponsor and House Majority Whip Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta, cited the need to get parents and school boards talking.
“It creates an additional avenue of communication directly from the parents to the school board, which I think is critically important,” said Lindsey
Georgia House Bill 123 allows a majority of the parents or a majority of the teachers to petition for a complete overhaul of a the school by converting to charter school status or another turnaround model. The bill specifies that the parents can remove school personnel, including the principal, or mandate the complete reconstitution of the school.
The bill requires school board approval, but Lindsey erected a high wall for a board to reject a parent trigger petition; a two-thirds majority of the school board must vote to deny a petition coming from 60 percent of parents.
However, the yea/nay power accorded school boards in the bill led Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, former chair of the Senate Education Committee, to ask, “What’s the point?”
“Remember, these are locally created public schools created by the local boards,” said Lindsey. “Given that fact, I do not believe we should cut these local boards out of the process. The purpose of the bill is to create a process for direct communication between a local board and the parents and students it serves. I respectfully disagree with my friend Fran Millar. I believe that elected school boards will listen to parents and teachers on the operation of their local schools.”
In a feature unique to Lindsey’s bill, even parents of high performing schools may apply for their schools to convert to a charter school.
“Any local traditional school may apply to be a conversion charter,” he said. “However, I did add a provision allowing for parents or teachers in a low performing schools to seek an overhaul of the management of the school. Let me also add that this section allowing teachers to petition for a management overhaul came as a result of past comments from teachers on your blog.”
Parent Revolution, the California-based advocacy group that created the parent trigger, sees the parent trigger as both an action plan and a negotiating tool. Recently, the specter of a parent trigger takeover led administrators and teachers in one Los Angeles school to sit down with parents and begin a collaborate effort to improve the school, according to Parent Revolution spokesman David Phelps.
But, if a parent takeover is required to transform the school, Parent Revolution opposes the reins of a school being handed to for-profit management companies. Such a prohibition is currently not part of the Georgia bill. “We take a very strong position that it should only be a not-for-profit that will continue to involve parents,” said Phelps.
Also, Parent Revolution wants an appeal process spelled out in Lindsey’s bill. “Because school boards can be very political, very divided, the law ought to make sure that if a school board rejects the parent petition, that there is some appeal process that can be in place,” said Phelps.
Phelps said it was unusual for a parent trigger law to address schools that are not failing, as does Lindsey’s bill. The case for a change to a charter school is weakened if a school is performing well. The point of parent trigger is to give a voice to parents in schools where children are not succeeding, he said,
“When you can see that there is a consistent history of failure, then you are able to say that this is a school where we would like to help parents organize for a change,” he said. “It narrows the universe with which you are able to work.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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90 comments Add your comment
I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...
February 2nd, 2013
2:40 pm
@ Truth “Teachers, would you say that $50,000/year is your average pay? I’m doing a survey.”
Average? Well, I make less than this, with a masters and 20+ years under my belt, so I suspect the “average” is less.
More Furloughs
February 2nd, 2013
3:10 pm
Before or after the 4 years of furlough days? That and the rapid increase of insurance cost. I make less today than I did five years ago. I don’t need a raise, but I would like to actually get paid for a full year.
JamVet is an idiot
February 2nd, 2013
3:16 pm
Public schools are failing all over the country. Left wingers hate private/charter schools because they are not union.
Sucks to be a left winger.
JamVet is an idiot
February 2nd, 2013
3:17 pm
@Mary Elizabeth
You do a lot of copy and pasting other articles. Could you please post your own opinion and actually tell us all what the “solution” is please?
More Furloughs
February 2nd, 2013
3:31 pm
JamVet, Ga has no teacher unions, sorry to bring you out of your Faux News fantasy world.
Truth in Moderation
February 2nd, 2013
4:02 pm
Here is my proposed Parent Trigger:
Parents pull their children from the system and home school. Join the growing ranks of home school tutoring centers providing a la carte classes for home school students, in all subjects. Take advantage of the growing dissatisfaction of GOOD PS teachers and hire them as tutors. THEY CAN EARN AS MUCH OR MORE THAN THEY MAKE NOW….without all the BS and HIGH PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT! Teacher/tutors can also home school their own children. Think about it…..
Burroughston Broch
February 2nd, 2013
4:46 pm
@ Theresa
You wrote, “Sure, I am totally for parent takeover…………if the parents can identify each of the acronyms from this partial list:”
What an idiotic comment – as if no one can bring any improvement unless they know every acronym with which the “educational business” establishment has wrapped itself. It reminds me of what Thomas Cranmer wrote in the Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer – that the multiple, stifling rules of the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic Church made determining what was to be done more difficult than actually doing it.
Your ed-biz is stifled by bureaucracy – just like the ed-biz professionals want it. Maximum deniability with minimum responsibility.
The Dixie Diarist
February 2nd, 2013
5:28 pm
Sure, parents can take over schools. They do it … one at a time … all the time.
This would be a great place if it weren’t for the fascinating crazy people. In another school there was a lunatic mother who roamed around the building during the school day, sometimes carrying around her little dog. Sometimes she wore her pajama pants. She never paid attention to her hair, but she did her son’s homework perfectly. Nobody could do their jobs because she’d demand a parent-teacher conversation right then and there.
We’d often find her aimlessly rifling through her son’s locker. Sometimes she’d complain in detail about her husband to you. She repeated all of her stories. I got the husband story one time, two days in a row, word for word. She never knew when to stop talking. You literally had to walk away from her. It was finally time for action. We agreed that the first teacher to see her walking around the building would e-mail all the other teachers that she was in the building.
I learned at lunch one day where everybody hid or what they’d say to her if they got caught out in the open. If you were a fly on the wall when that woman moped into the building you would have thought all the teachers had horrific urinary or bowel afflictions.
http://www.actionjacksonart.com
JamVet is an idiot
February 2nd, 2013
6:37 pm
“Ga has no teacher unions, sorry to bring you out of your Faux News fantasy world.
Guess reading ain’t yer thang, huh? I never said GA had teachers unions.
10:10 am
February 2nd, 2013
7:07 pm
The real question here should be: If parents don’t take over failing schools … what hope is there that Maureen’s friends in the education establishment will EVER succeed in turning those schools around?
Zero, is my guess.
Pride and Joy
February 2nd, 2013
7:45 pm
Jamvet, I am a left-winger and I love charter schools. I’m also white, middle-class and college educated.
Pride and Joy
February 2nd, 2013
7:47 pm
Dixie Diarist,
It seems obvious to me that the parent you described very likely has a mental illness. It isn’t funny to make fun of the mentally ill. Your actions and the actions of your fellow “teachers” is deplorable. Makes me very concerned about how you treat the children who have disabilities in your school.
More Furloughs
February 2nd, 2013
7:53 pm
Jam Vet, I don’t get why you and others harp about unions at all when they are not part of the educational system in Ga. Teaching is the only profession where everyone is an expert. It is heartening to know that so many people have so much knowledge about what I do.
Pride and Joy
February 2nd, 2013
7:58 pm
Dunmoody made a great comment “We didn’t get stupid just because we gave birth or adopted.”
You see, teachers often just say “PARENTS are bad/lazy/stupid and so on…
Yet, (and this just kills me)
TEACHERS ARE PARENTS TOO!
That’s right. ALMOST ALL teachers are PARENTS.
There are hundreds of thousandds of teachers in the US blaming “PARENTS” for all of their own shortcomings…
yet teachers are parents.
The irony would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
linda
February 2nd, 2013
8:15 pm
Why no teacher trigger law? That would make sense.
Taxpayer and Teacher
February 2nd, 2013
9:47 pm
Yeah right, Southside parents are going to use the parent trigger, yet their students (children) are out of control. Please!!!That is too funny! February, March, April, May!!!
Oh and by the way, with the rumored 4% pay cut for DCSS, that should bring us all low enough to qualify for government assistance for a family of four…around $40K average salary…with a Masters.
mommamonster
February 2nd, 2013
10:01 pm
Maureen et al:
Last week we were told by our principal that, contrary to what we have been told, this year the CRCT will be testing the new Common Core standards. Also, the word is that each sub-test will have a different passing score…this is going to wreak havoc on our scores in GA. We have 2 months to prepare the kids for the MUCH higher level inferential questions that they will have to answer…I shudder and cringe for my special ed kids who struggle with the lower level knowledge based questions. It’s gonna be ugly in Cobb this year, y’all
mommamonster
February 2nd, 2013
10:02 pm
so…this changes the “failing” label, n’est pas? Our scores are really high in my East Cobb school but I am worried about this year’s crop of kids
DLink
February 2nd, 2013
10:29 pm
I should leave now. It’s obvious nobody needs to learn anything here. Good night.
WillinRoswell
February 2nd, 2013
11:09 pm
I can name all of the acronyms listed above. Can I get a job?
Truth in Moderation
February 2nd, 2013
11:18 pm
“Oh and by the way, with the rumored 4% pay cut for DCSS, that should bring us all low enough to qualify for government assistance for a family of four…around $40K average salary…with a Masters.”
It’s going to get worse for ALL of us….
“IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family”
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-cheapest-obamacare-plan-will-be-20000-family
Truth in Moderation
February 2nd, 2013
11:56 pm
The headline SHOULD have read:
“Harvard gives “A’s” to 60 cheaters in “Introduction to Congress” class”
Sadly, the Ivy League loafers received a much harsher punishment: THEY ACTUALLY HAVE TO GO OUT AND GET A FULL-TIME MCDONALD’S TYPE JOB FOR SIX MONTHS, WITHOUT MOMMY’S AND DADDY’S HELP!
With punishment like this, how will they ever get a cushy Congressional seat?
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/02/harvard_cheating_punishment_seen_fair
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
8:37 am
Dewey Cheatem and Howe makes a fantastic point about parents being able to run a school better than our so-called democratically elected officials.
I COULD DO MUCH BETTER JOB IMMEDIATELY:
Way back in my day schools started to track which student had which text book so that they could keep track.
They wrote a unique number in permanent marker on the side of the book on the pages and then in her gradebook the teacher wrote the text book number in the grade book beside the name of the student who had the book.
oila! Everyone knew which student, which teacher and which school had a particular book.
Now fast forward thirty years later.
Dekalb county cannot find the text books they spent TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS TO BUY!
With computers and bar codes and pricey and expensive employees and administrators THEY cannot find the books.
See?
Incompetence.
Or is it out and out lying and stealing.
Every adminstrator and every board member in Dekalb county should lose their job over this outrageous debacle!
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
8:45 am
More Furloughs says she would like to get actually get paid for a full year…
That just kills me.
Teachers DON’T WORK A FULL YEAR.
There are 365 days in a year and teachers work LESS THAN HALF the year at 180 to 190 a year.
There are TEN FULL WEEKs you don’t work in the Summer.
THere are TWO FULL WEEKS you don’t work at Christmas.
There is ONE FULL WEEK you don’t work at Thanksgivng.
There is ONE FULL WEEK you don’t work at Spring Break.
There are TWO FULL WEEKS you don’t work on holidays.
If you want to ACTUALLY get paid for a full year THEN WORK A FULL YEAR YOU WHINING BRAT!
d
February 3rd, 2013
9:32 am
Pride- We are not idiots. When we say we want to be paid for a full year, we know it is for a 190-day contract. We also know that those weeks that you tell us are off are UNPAID. We’re fine with that. We just want to work our contracts so that we can be prepared to teach your darling children so that they can be the best citizens that they can be.
I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...
February 3rd, 2013
9:38 am
@Truth in Moderation “It’s going to get worse for ALL of us….
“IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family”
According to some recent studies, we are already AT this point for a family of 4, even without the ACA…
living in an outdated ed system
February 3rd, 2013
10:34 am
I have to acknowledge comment on here that, while has no relation to the parent trigger topic of this blog, is worth discussing.
From @Pride & Joy: ” Private Citizen, I am a tax paying parent. I DO NOT want my child to be decked out stem to stern with techno-ggadgets. I work everyday with techno-gadgets and I sure don’t need them to learn.
I want my child to use a pencil, paper and a text book.
I want the teachers to have a white board and marker and TEACH.
If I could, I would throw away the copy machine and burn the teacher’s computer and her Promethean board.
All those gadgets break, malfunction, cost ridiculous amounts of money and do no better than teaching with chalk, pencils and books.”
I would like to frame this comment and send it to my friends at the Innosight Institute. I for one, do not want my children to continue carrying around 50 lbs of textbooks that cause physical injury. I also don’t want my children using physical textbooks that not only destroy our environment, but are outdated.
Technology is an ENABLER, not the silver bullet that will reform our education system. But it is time we train our educators how to integrate digital learning into the learning environment, as well as ensure that EVERY school is wired with a suitable technological infrastructure to support such technology. If children are taught using stimuli they use in their daily lives, then perhaps it can foster greater learning and intrinsic motivation.
Sadly, this comment had to be addressed because it felt like an anachronism to me. Sorry if I’m being so direct here.
catlady
February 3rd, 2013
12:43 pm
If folks want to hire an outside school company, let them pay for it.
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
12:45 pm
d-
Baloney.
teachers on this blog are constantly complaining that they only make 40K or 50K and compare their “annual” salaries to other professions who WORK 250 days a year, not 180 days a year.
d, you might be able to do the math and see the difference but most teacher posters on this blog don’t see the difference or want to pull the wool over our eyes.
When anyone only works 180 days a year, 40 to 50 is a DANG GOOD salary.
living in an outdated ed system
February 3rd, 2013
12:45 pm
@Catlady, I suggest you re-read Dr. Henson’s comment. I do not understand the relevance of your comment and why you feel that hiring an outside school company is a bad thing. I think all of us would welcome the empirical evidence that supports your point of view, and possibly learn from it.
Pride and Joy
February 3rd, 2013
12:47 pm
catlady’s comment is “If folks want to hire an outside school company, let them pay for it.”
Catlday, we already pay for it — and have paid for it for eyars and years and years. I realize you live in the sticks and only pay about 500 dollars a year in property taxes but I pay 10K a year in property taxes every year, not just the years my kids are in school. I also pay a boat load of federal and state taxes that go to pay YOU and your system.
The fact that you think we don’t pay is absolutley infuriating.
The Dixie Diarist
February 3rd, 2013
1:10 pm
Pride and Joy … sweetie … sounds like you keep your helicopter blades sharp, too.
More Furloughs
February 3rd, 2013
2:23 pm
You can’t talk to people like Pride and Joy, they have been conditioned to know all the answers and so they are unable to comprehend information that does not fit their belief system. Of course I meant the 190 I am supposed to be paid for. We of course do not get paid for weekends, holidays, or summer.
Home-tutoring parent
February 4th, 2013
12:11 am
We covered most of the gamut. We ran the gamut, Monetessri po-school and K, good. Transferred to pulbic in an aflluent district, horrible. Back to Monessori, then Episcopal. Really good humanities, sad in math and science. We switched to this weird thing called home-schooling. But pre-made purchasible stuff was crap. So we did homw-tutoring with help from paid specialist tutors. We made mistakes. But it worked pretty well. It could have been better. But our take-kids-home kids liked it. They always had the option to return to regular schooling.
We didn’t do tests, except for bike-riding, hi-mountain backpacking, small and large-game fishing, wilderness skiing, bodysurfing, small-boat sailing, rubber-boat running with dolphins and fin whales… sometimes I screwed up and we (I) were over our heads.
I developed a brain tumor, and they took over cooking and cleaning chores.
Academically, they did fine and went to a member-university of the Ivy League. The Ivy League is an athletic conference, centered in the Northeast.
Home-tutoring parent
February 4th, 2013
12:26 am
The Ivy League members are (north to south) Dartmouth. Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columibia, Penn, and Princeton. It’s an athletic conference.
Home-tutoring parent
February 4th, 2013
1:06 am
One of my kids is having a blast, teaching kids in a private school, all of them stand up when he enters the class, it goes against my grain, but their school ad parents require students to show respect for their teachers. Wow! In the past few years, his “shining star” students have’t gotten into Harvard, Stanford or Yale, but they are going to Cambridge (England), Duke, Rice, Columbia and Northwestern.
I kind of think he is doing a good job. I have planted “a bug in his ear” that a Stanford dual educztion-business degree would be a great credential if he decides he wants to move into administration, and he’s thinking about it.
People can make fun of me for being a “homeschooling” mom, but life offers opportunities, and they are fantastic. I really enjoyed “homeschooling”. It was one of those opportunities, “Could you have done better?”
Totally.We had to downscale from Mercedes to Toyotas but in the end we have lots of counter space and four ovens, when the kids come home for the holidays, with their spouses and significant others arrive, they can do their best.
Last Christmas, my future DIL (AfAm) worked so hard to make some croissants. Meh. This Christmas I told her to let them have more rising time. She turned dow m warming-drawer suggestion, and let them rise in front of the fireplace. Next morning, croissants were off the charts.
Okay, I want to teach her all that I know, and if she takes it beyond me, which she will, Wow1
Home-tutoring parent
February 4th, 2013
1:38 am
This thread is about eduction. Te Finns only let the top12% of uni6versity students become teachers. It’s pretty much the same in East Asia. We let people in the 30th-60th percentile of college students become teachers, We have 2.5-2.75 GPA graduation requirements. Wow! how cum our kids don’t learn? We only run schools for 175-180 days per ear.
Suggestions:
Only take top 10/% of high shool students as teacher candidates
Bump up teaching days to 240 days
“Slow students”, channel them at age 13-15 to vocational classes. Find something they like.
Get older people from teaching. and STEM fields to teac 1-6 students what they know.
Jerry Eads
February 4th, 2013
8:52 am
It does seem that school leaders are not always receptive to parents’ concerns; the state and federal pressures to have kids do little else but pass minimum competency tests – and my oft repeated concern that we desperately need to address school leadership quality – tend to limit schools’ receptiveness to parental wishes.
Might a “parent trigger” law encourage schools to be more responsive? Perhaps. I do not expect that the bill’s authors will be sensitive to potential unintended consequences of such a bill, but IF done well it might be a positive influence. That said, it would appear so far that “parent trigger” laws have had little if any positive impact.
Opening another door to for-profit takeover of schools – as does the state-control charter amendment – does not bode well for public education. Look at all the fun news on for-profit post-secondary diploma mills. How well has that worked out for us?
By the way, today’s (2/4) guest piece by Stan Belner was excellent, Maureen. Thanks for that one.
Maureen Downey
February 4th, 2013
9:23 am
@Jerry, That piece should be up on the blog now. Posted it last night but did not show up.
Speaking of postings, Get Schooled will be moving to a new platform that will involve email registration. That will occur in the next few weeks. The AJC is migrating all its blogs to new format. Sports blogs already moved. I will keep you posted.
Maureen
Heika
February 4th, 2013
2:16 pm
Comments from a blog had an impact on state education policy? Almighty God help us all.