Triggering reform
Opinion
by Steve Williams, Opinion Page Editor
Victorville Daily Press
January 22, 2013
The reasons for the fierce teachers union opposition to successful completion of California’s Parent Trigger law by parents of Desert Trails students were obvious, particularly to the unions themselves. They knew that if the Adelanto school was converted to charter status, unhappy parents all over the state would be encouraged to follow suit.
And they also feared that if a reorganized Desert Trails school performed successfully — i.e., if its students improved and performed better on state-mandated tests — even more parents would start pulling the trigger.
Those fears have been, it turns out, justified. During the week the Los Angeles Unified School District accepted Parent Trigger petitions from parents of children who attend 24th Street Elementary School, one of the worst-performing schools in the district. According to the Los Angeles Times (a down-the-line union backer, it should be noted), John Deasy, superintendent of the LAUSD, pledged to work with the parents to enact “fundamental and dramatic change” at the school.
The victory for LAUSD parents came little more than a week after the Adelanto School Board unanimously approved a Parent Trigger plan by parents of students at Desert Trails Elementary after more than a year of delays. Union-supported delays, obviously.
The Parent Trigger, for those whose attention has been occupied elsewhere, is a reform mechanism begun in this state in 2010, in which parents of failing schools may force a school district to undertake specific reforms, including sending their children to a different public school, converting the school into a charter school, or receiving opportunity scholarships to send their children to the private school of their choice.
As we said, teachers unions nationwide have been fighting Parent Trigger and charter schools for years, claiming charters are mostly failures and that they bleed funding from the public school system. To less and less avail, judging by increasing evidence.
Last last week, the Center for Education Reform, a Washington, D.C., organization, released its 14th annual Charter School Laws Across the States Ranking and Scorecard. It showed that more than two million students are now attending in excess of 6,000 public charter schools. Still, the Center noted that only four states improved their laws since the first report card on the movement was issued last year. In other words, union opposition has kept most of the country from improving the system designed to reform and reinvigorate K-12 education. Thankfully, California is one of the four.
What the teachers unions in particular (and unions generally) oppose is individual choice. In education, unions fiercely oppose vouchers, which are designed to allow parents to pick the school they want their children to attend. They also, obviously, fiercely oppose charters, which allow parents who can’t pick the schools they want their children to attend, to at least change the schools their children must attend. What they instead seek is to monopolize education.
We would be remiss if we failed to point out that if the present public education system performed even adequately, let alone excellently, there would be no outcry for reform. Sadly, it doesn’t. And parents are finally demanding change. And choice.
