If you ever dreamed of firing your kid's teachers and principal...
... move to California, because you can!
In general, I am of the belief that we elect people to make decisions for us, and that is democracy enough. So I find California’s reliance on referenda pretty maddening (Hey! Which class of citizens do we feel like discriminating against this year?!), and the new parent-trigger law that basically allows a community to overthrow its school strikes me as odd, even if there are appealing aspects of the spirit behind it.
But it is fascinating, I will give you that! Howard Blume and Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times have the most thorough account I have seen about how Compton parents—nudged, or more, by organizers—decided their elementary school should be dismantled and chartered, despite steady test-score increases. (Yes, they get to choose the remedy.) Precedent set, this is going to be really interesting.
In general, I am of the belief that we elect people to make decisions for us, and that is democracy enough. So I find California’s reliance on referenda pretty maddening (Hey! Which class of citizens do we feel like discriminating against this year?!), and the new parent-trigger law that basically allows a community to overthrow its school strikes me as odd, even if there are appealing aspects of the spirit behind it.
But it is fascinating, I will give you that! Howard Blume and Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times have the most thorough account I have seen about how Compton parents—nudged, or more, by organizers—decided their elementary school should be dismantled and chartered, despite steady test-score increases. (Yes, they get to choose the remedy.) Precedent set, this is going to be really interesting.
posted by Linda Perlstein at
1:40 PM
4 Comments:
The move to take over McKinley Elementary in Compton was spearheaded not by parents but by a squadron of paid organizers working for Parent Revolution. Parent Revolution is not a parent group but an “astroturf” (fake grassroots) organization run by a group of charter school operators, led by Green Dot. Parent Revolution has funding from the array of billionaires who regularly fund charter/privatization causes around the nation.
The Los Angeles Weekly – an alternative newspaper with a conservative advocacy viewpoint – did a long feature on the process of collecting the parents' signature. That article makes it very clear that the move was spearheaded by Parent Revolution, not by parents:
"Parent Revolution decided to focus on McKinley Elementary School and approach parents there after researching the worst school districts in California. Compton Unified, which serves 28,101 students at 40 schools, fit the bill."
http://www.laweekly.com/2010-12-09/news/Californias-Parent-Trigger/
It seems a little unclear on the concept to portray this move as a revolution of the “little people,” as blogger Alexander Russo put it, when it was funded by the nation's most powerful billionaires.
A charter operator named Celerity is poised to take over McKinley. Celerity made news in 2007 by firing two teachers in an interesting censorship brouhaha:
L.A. Times
Not the lesson they intended
Two L.A. charter school teachers lose their jobs over a planned Black
History Month presentation.
By Carla Rivera
Times Staff Writer
March 19, 2007
Administrators at a Los Angeles charter school forbade students from reciting a poem about civil rights icon Emmett Till during a Black History Month program recently, saying his story was unsuitable for an assembly of young children.
Teachers and students said the administration suggested that the Till case in which the teenager was beaten to death in Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a white woman ˜ was not fitting for a program intended to be celebratory, and that Till’s actions could be viewed as sexual harassment.
The decision by Celerity Nascent Charter School leaders roiled the southwest Los Angeles campus and led to the firing of seventh-grade teacher Marisol Alba and math teacher Sean Strauss, who had signed one of several letters of protest written by the students.
(This link is to a blog that reposted the Times story)
http://jstheater.blogspot.com/2007/03/celerity-nascent-charter-school.html
The author of the poem at the heart of the brouhaha called the firing “unconscionable.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/22/local/me-charter22
That LA Weekly story is really interesting.
Thank you, but I still blame Green Dot.
CarolineSF,
Given that you are all over nearly every Parent Trigger story and blog post in the nation, do you mind telling your growing readership of YOUR financial interest in attacking the Parent Trigger and the Parent Revolution organization in every post across the nation?
Just askin'
Me? I'm the director for the Center for School Reform at the Heartland Institute, and we're big fans of the Parent Trigger, though we'd make it much more robust in terms of really empowering parents.
Of course, you might attempt to paint Heartland with the same broad brush you use to attack Austin and his group. With that in mind, let me ask this question. Just what is wrong with philanthropists funding organizations whose goal it is to improve education in failing schools? It isn't as if the “Government Education Complex” has done a good job with the trillions they've extracted from taxpayers over the last few decades.
These organizations have every right to agitate and organize for dramatic education reform. It isn't as if the army of public employees don't use their ample resources to purchase legislators and legislation. One look at bankrupt states like CA and IL shows how powerful these engines of greed have become.
On to the data point that you brought up...
True "Neighborhood Schools" (a concept that is simultaneously a good concept AND a shopworn union talking point) should be run by folks in the neighborhood, not by a “Government Education Complex” calling itself a neighborhood school. If the folks tasked with running school want to fire employees, and the process for doing so is transparent and fair, they ought be allowed to.
Frankly, if we had the kind of education system that fit this nation's personality, parents angry at some firing ought to be able to find 10s, if not 100s of alternative education providers. It isn't as if decent teachers across the nation haven't been fired or hazed if they step out of the union's graces.
That leads me to this overarching point.
The current education system is an industry, no different from oil or tobacco save for the fact that it has purchased the class that regulates it. It is NOT a perfected priesthood of angelic public employees dedicated to making every child in the US a well educated citizen. If it were, we'd have the best educated people in the world.
The philanthropists who are trying to break this monopoly have every right to do so, and any tactic that they use (community organizing, for example) is perfectly moral and legal. If you want to see real thuggery in action, look to the tactics of the Government Education Complex as they fight to defend their grip on $550+ billions of public money.
In closing, Caroline, can I persuade you into co-sponsoring a debate in some decent sized forum somewhere in CA. I would gladly help promote it aggressively.
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