Education’s Status Quo to Parents: How Dare You Use Parent Trigger and Make Decisions!
Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.
When it comes to the role of parents at the education decision-making table, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, school districts and folks such as Diane Ravitch think parents should be like kids: Barely seen and definitely not heard. If you don’t believe it, consider the reaction by the Compton Unified School District, the AFT’s local affiliate and such commentators as Valerie Strauss and Larry Ferlazzo to the move by parents at McKinley Elementary School to make use of California’s Parent Trigger law and oust the district from management of the school. From where the status quo folks stand, the McKinley parents exercising Parent Trigger are either dupes for nefarious charter school operators and evil, money-hungry foes of public education such as Ben Austin; or the parents are evil for daring to toss out decades of abysmal school management and classroom instruction. In their minds, it’s simply not possible for parents to actually be able to make their own choices.
Yet evidence abounds that when parents are highly-informed about the quality of education in their schools, driven to kick mediocrity and abysmal education to the curb, and given the tools to help their kids, they will certainly do so. Minorities and parents in high-poverty districts, for example, were more likely than middle-class parents to request a teacher for their child based on how teachers improved student achievement, according to a 2005 study by University of Michigan researcher Brian Jacob and Lars Lefgren of Brigham Young University. The growth of the charter school movement, the continuing presence of Catholic schools, the growth of online and alternative education options such as Sylvan and Kaplan, and the work of such organizations as the State of Black CT Alliance in rallying support for school reform, are also signs that parents should be given their rightful places as kings and lead decision-makers in education.
Despite the evidence, the Ravitches and Ferlazzos maintain an attitude that parents should stay at the kid’s table when it comes to actually making school decisions. And it isn’t limited to Parent Trigger. Whether one is in a middle class suburb or in a big city, the attitude is generally the same: Parents should stick to field trips, homework and taking blame when test scores and graduation rates are revealed to be abysmal or mediocre.
This is especially so in urban districts, where poor and minority parents — many of whom have suffered in the same dropout factories and failure mills their kids are now educationally imprisoned — are shunted aside as so much garbage. More often than not, many teachers look down at these parents as being their inferiors instead of treating parents as equals. The experience of Virginia Walden Ford, who launched the school reform movement in Washington, D.C., is echoed in a study by Sage Colleges professors Peter McDermott and Julia Johnson Rothenberg, who noted that urban and low-income parents often perceive schools to be unwelcoming and interactions with teachers to be “painful encounters.”
Certainly this attitude among the status quo is manifested in other ways: The opposition to charter schools among the Gary Orfield-Richard Kahlenberg crowd (most recently expressed in a Miller-McCune interview with Erica Frankenburg and Gary Miron) on the ground that they foster resegregation; Miron in particular, ignores the reality that parents seek charter schools as high-quality options by declaring that “parents choose based on race and social class”. Then there is the embrace of the Ruby Payne-promulgated poverty myth — that poor parents are simply incapable of playing strong roles in education — among teachers and administrators. The low regard for even middle class parents among teachers, who label these families as “Burger King Parents” and “The Grass is Always Greener” for daring to demand more on behalf of their kids.
Certainly the reality that the players within the status quo — teachers union bosses, ed school professors, school administrators and even many teachers — don’t want to give up their power and autonomy is one reason for this opposition to parent power. The other reason lies with their conceit (one they share with some school reformers) that experts should actually make education decisions. After all, an ed school professor and a teacher with an array of grad degrees should have more knowledge about what kids should learn (and how it should happen) than some parent. Yet, as we have seen over the past 150 years — from the comprehensive high school model (created because of the misguided belief that immigrants and African Americans were incapable of mastering college prep work) to the array of new math theories that have fallen flat and even the traditional system of teacher compensation — the experts aren’t so good at this thing called education. Combined with other problems among status quo circles — including the rampant anti-intellectualism, willful ignorance of economics and unwillingness to consider the developments in sectors outside of K-12 — and this conceited view of parents turns from mere condescension to outright hostility.
Yet the rise of the modern school reform movement — and the emergence of charter schools, school choice and Parent Trigger — has all but assured that parents will be playing a stronger role in education. The underlying infrastructure for exercising decision-making — easy access to useful information through guides, organizations or Web sites; actual mechanisms for exercising choice that exist outside of home purchases — is just coming into existence. Many parents are just beginning to realize that the old concept of education — that the school can educate every child without active engagement of families that goes beyond homework and field trips — has gone by the wayside. But as I wrote at this same time last year, the school reform movement (like the development of cellphones and other consumer goods) is fostering choice. And choice begets choice; once parents are exposed to having real power and engagement in school decisionmaking, they will not want the so-called experts — including NEA and AFT bosses and the Ravitches of the world — in their way.
What McKinley represents is a response to the status quo: How dare you argue that families can’t think for themselves! How dare you limit our kids only to the proverbial sky! And by the way: Work with us or get out of the way! You’re either part of a better future or just boulders to be pushed aside.
The hostility against parents among education’s status quo is essentially anti-children. What these experts are tacitly arguing is that the educational, economic and social destinies of kids — especially our poorest children — don’t matter a wit. It’s time for parents to shunt these folks aside and take the power that is rightfully theirs.
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[...] You can read the whole thing here. [...]
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Homework Master, LarsonCommunications and Parent Trigger. Parent Trigger said: Exactly! RT @SchoolChoiceNow: Predictably, those out to maintain the status quo oppose CA's parent trigger http://ow.ly/3sENF #schoolchoice [...]
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by RiShawn Biddle. RiShawn Biddle said: At Dropout Nation: Education’s Status Quo to Parents: How Dare You Use Parent Trigger and Make Decisions! http://bit.ly/dZAESW #ParentPower [...]
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Larry Ferlazzo. Larry Ferlazzo said: Great comment on parent trigger by @mbteach http://bit.ly/gv7joU [...]
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[...] — have proven to be a promising solution for systemic academic failure. Yet as Dropout Nation noted last week (and comments from some in education have proven) many teachers, along with NEA and AFT bosses and [...]
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[...] recently read an article entitled, “Education’s Status Quo to Parents: How Dare You Use the Parent Trigger and Make Decisio… on the blog Dropout Nation. I won’t get into the details of the article, which was about [...]
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[...] like Dropout Nation’s RiShawn Biddle, see the parent trigger as a powerful challenge to education’s status quo. He sums up the McKinley trigger: “What McKinley represents is a response to the status quo: [...]
Mary Beth Hertz
879 days ago
What you have conveniently left out of this argument is the fact that many, if not all, of the options you list are versions of privatized education. The uproar was not about the parents, it is about a private company coming in to take over a public school. Many of these schools are run like military schools, they focus on nothing but test prep and while they show gains, they often squash creativity and critical thinking. In addition, many charter curricula are no different than the school district in which they are located. The only difference? Longer hours, younger staff and different management. Nothing truly new in the learning department.
That is not to say that charters are not a great option for some families, but I fail to see how they are breaking the status quo aside from the easy, superficial changes being made. As for my colleague, Larry, he is more dedicated than anyone I know to including parents in school (http://engagingparentsinschool.edublogs.org). Empowering parents is important. I wish my parents had spoken out about the travesty that was the school I worked in. I witnessed the process as my former school was shut down and re-opened as a charter and it was sickening to see the games that these companies played to win the parents over. Some even went so far as to break the law to get parent information from our databases.
The real questions to me are: do we want our schools run by private companies? How do we make the harder changes in instruction to foster the critical thinking skills that our students need? How do we empower parents to make informed choices, not choices based on desperation or well-crafted ‘hype?’
David B. Cohen
879 days ago
Here we go again – you pick up a name and a post in your reading, assume much more than you know, and distort people’s positions. You did it with Robert Pondiscio (regarding common core standards), then you did it to me (regarding teacher evaluations), and now Larry Ferlazzo (regarding parent engagement). If you limited your comments or arguments to a single post, that would be one thing, but with Larry, and with me a month or two ago, you used our names to represent ideas that we don’t espouse. If you’re going to pull our names into your arguments, you could at least present our positions accurately. We all have websites or blogs you could check before you finalize a post.
RiShawn Biddle
879 days ago
Mary Beth:
For one, nothing was left out. Dropout Nation readers have a pretty good sense of the underlying reporting on what is happening at McKinley. In any case, the problem with your logic about “privatized education” is this assumption that somehow that what schools are supposed to provide — high-quality instruction and curricula — can only be done well by governments. For one, the success of KIPP and Catholic schools have shown that this is a false assumption. The second problem goes back to the reality that the current system of district-based education doesn’t work, either for our poorest and minority students or (given the recent PISA results) for even our middle class students.
From where I sit, I don’t care if high-quality education is delivered by a CMO or a traditional school operation. The important thing is that every child gets a high-quality education. If it means tearing up a system that isn’t working and replacing it with a different model, then that’s fine. If it means providing alternatives for parents to seek out, that’s fine too. Again, this whole idea that education has to be “democratic” (which really means government-controlled, with established players at the table and parents away from it), is sort of useless when one looks at what kids are getting as a result.
The real issue isn’t about the presence of a charter operator or even the Parent Trigger process, but the fact that parents had the nerve to think for themselves, align themselves with allies who can help them gain traction on the ground and achieving measurable success. It wouldn’t matter if it was a charter operator or a PTA unit, it really wouldn’t. This may not be the issue for you, but it is for many of your colleagues.
Ultimately, I would suggest that you actually pick up some books on economics and business theory, which would give a well-rounded view on what can or can’t be done by the private sector. Certainly, businesses aren’t perfect (and governments handle some activities, such as military service, better than private entities can). But this notion that only districts are fit for providing education fails any sniff test by anyone who has spent time outside of ed circles.
Meanwhile your argument that every charter school operator is a test prep outfit is rather baseless. You offer no evidence. More importantly, as folks more learned than I (notably Jay P. Greene) point out, there is nothing wrong with rote memorization. If you don’t first memorize, you can’t then master more-complex concepts. It’s just that simple.
As for you, David: Larry wrote the piece. He’s against parent trigger laws and he’s said so himself. As usual, you don’t like it when words are held up to the light of day; afer all, that means those with whom you or your colleagues disagree get held up for examination. That’s the reality of being in the arena of rhetoric, debate and advocacy. Don’t like what I’ve written? Then stay out of the arena of rhetoric and debate.
David B. Cohen
879 days ago
It seems like you’re missing the point…
How can you accuse Larry of being against parent engagment when he wrote a book called “BUILDING PARENT ENGAGEMENT IN SCHOOLS” and also writes a blog on the topic? He has written quite a bit in recent years about what schools should do in particular to engage the hardest-to-reach parents, and his school has an organized home visit program. If you were a fair-minded individual, you would at least apologize to him for that misunderstanding on your part. Being against one piece of legislation (Parent trigger) and against a concept are not the same thing, but you are not distinguishing between the specific and the general. And by the way, Larry’s critique, from the time the law was proposed, was that the parent trigger will lead to disengagement – increased separation, polarization – and that’s what we’re seeing so far.
In my case, I don’t mind if you critique my position, but just to refresh your memory, you used my name as shorthand for people who oppose teacher evaluation reform, apparently unaware that I help lead an organization that published a report (co-authored by me) promoting teacher evaluation reform. I don’t mind intelligent criticism of my positions at all – just make SOME effort to understand them first. It’s just inaccurate on your part to claim people are against the things they’re for, and I’m calling you out on three very specific instances (Pondiscio, Ferlazzo, and me). Replying with personal insults towards me (as you’ve done here and on Twitter) does not improve the veracity of your statements. You say I don’t want “words are held up to the light of day” but I’m the one who’s actually citing the relevant words on both sides of the argument. Did you even read the first paragraph of Larry’s bio (“He is the author of Building Parent Engagement In Schools and writes two blogs, including one on Engaging Parents In School”), or the first paragraph of his column?
“Building genuine parent engagement is a critical element of improving our schools. Two-way ‘conversation’ and not the all too common one-way ‘communication’ between schools and parents needs to be developed through strategies such as teacher home visits to build relationships and working together to address the two-thirds of outside school factors that affect student achievement (health care, affordable housing, neighborhood safety).”
Somehow, you saw, “hostility against parents among education’s status quo is essentially anti-children.”
Larry Ferlazzo
879 days ago
I am a long-time supporter of parent engagement in schools — both during my nineteen year career as a community organizer and during my seven years as a teacher. I have literally visited hundreds of parents in their homes, helped connect them with other parents who share similar concerns, and helped connect them to schools to move forward on their ideas. I have written extensively about the importance of shared decision-making power and partnership between schools and families, and have met with many parent and school groups to encourage parent engagement.
As I have made clear in my writings, I believe that the parent trigger is not designed to develop parent leadership or to develop any kind of real partnership. The “under the radar” campaign created by Parent Revolution is the antithesis of genuine community organizing. It is designed to create conflict and parachute in a charter operator — clear and simple.
The rhetoric you employ in this blog post is unfortunately indicative of the attitude of so many “school reformers” — if one has a different vision for schools from you, then they must be for the status quo, against what is good for children, and against parents.
That kind of rhetoric does not lead to useful public debate (though, I have to say, I do feel honored to be listed in the same sentence as Diane Ravitch).
Larry Ferlazzo
It is clearly true that I oppose the idea of a parent trigger
RiShawn Biddle
878 days ago
Now Larry, the problem you have with my rhetoric isn’t tone, but with my essential point: That is you don’t think that parent More importantly, based on your statement, you view other forms of engagement and parent power as being less valid because it doesn’t arise from your view of what things should be. That alone doesn’t make the argument valid.
In the real world, leadership is often develop in ways outside of some academy set-up. In fact, one would dare say the best leaders gained experience by actually doing the work and leading. This is just as true for parent leaders and activists (think Virginia Walden Ford, Gwen Samuel, among many) as it is for leaders in other fields.
But let’s get to the heart of the matter. Sure you may want parent engagement in the sense that you want it on your terms. This means parents aren’t essentially at the head of the decision-making table. From where I sit, that’s not how it is going to work. Your approach to family engagement hasn’t actually worked largely because it hasn’t involved any actual change in how schools operate. Your version still has the current players still at the head of the table.
As far as your complaints about my rhetoric: Let’s be clear. There is a conflict of visions here between reformers and those who defend the status quo (even if they have some issues with same quo). This means that there is going to be harsh, strong, fierce discussion. I know that education folks tend not to be used to this thrust-and-parry; but in the rest of the world, this is called life. Again, if you don’t like the arena of debate and advocacy, then leave.
And David: Anybody can write a book on anything and call themselves an expert; that doesn’t mean that their perspective is always correct (or incorrect), nor does it fully lend authority. There are a lot of people with “authority” who also get matters and ideas wrong. Larry wouldn’t be the first; neither would you and, hey (to be humble), I as well. Additionally, there are plenty of people who have outdated ideas of what family engagement should look like. Their concepts may have been good ideas for the time, but if their underlying perspective is essentially condescending to parents and/or doesn’t fully advance the role of parents as lead decisionmakers in education, one can then argue that they are against family engagement. Again, this is a matter of conflict of visions.
Mary Beth Hertz
878 days ago
RiShawn, I can see that the only thing that we will probably agree on is that we care about educating children and providing the best for them and their families (which, I would hope is the most important thing!)
I just wanted to provide the evidence you are looking for. My former school, as I stated, was a turnaround school last year and was taken over by Universal Charter Company this year. They lost 9 teachers in the first 3 weeks of school and from friends I still have there it sounds like it is already struggling with many of the same things we struggled with.
Mastery Charter, which runs many schools in Philadelphia is a test-prep factory (see: http://autodizactic.com/blog/?p=549). We will have to agree to disagree on the rote memorization thing. I agree that things like times tables should be memorized, but I watch too many of my students come to my class unable to think for themselves or think for the sake of thinking because they’ve been trained that it might be on the test. They’ve been trained to read nothing but ‘passages’ and participate in scripted programs. (I won’t begin to describe what this does to teachers on the delivering end.)
I understand that there is a big trend these days to run schools like corporations, but I wonder if you would send your child to a school like KIPP or Mastery (I find your allusion to Catholic schools as high-performing interesting as they are not held accountable by AYP and do not take the same state tests as their public school peers).
I am also sure that you saw this Philadelphia Charter School that used its facilities as a night club: http://www.cnsnews.com/node/63588
In addition, Edison was hired years ago to run some district schools and was forced out by the district because of poor performance and scandal.
In addition, many of these schools use merits and demerits to control student behavior, use scripted programs (against the status quo?) and ask students to leave when their families are not involved enough. (Each of these statements are based on my conversations with parents and students here in Philadelphia.)
Privatized charter schools are not scalable. What IS scalable is giving ALL schools the freedom they need to educate students. Give ALL parents the power to make changes in their schools not because they are privately run charters, but because their school has the freedom to meet the needs of the community rather than bow down to district mandates.
I am currently teaching at a charter school, and I also know that there are many wonderful, innovative charters (mostly run by non-profits), so please don’t think I’m anti-charter, just realistic about the facts.
Thank you for the dialogue and I hope that our efforts are not in vain and that we always remember in our discussions who is at the receiving end of whatever changes or initiatives we put in place.
RiShawn Biddle
878 days ago
Well, Mary Beth, let’s start by saying that yes, I would send my kid to a KIPP school if one was available — and especially if the options available were failure mills and centers of academic mediocrity. The results KIPP gets is amazing and as they have shown throughout the country, scalable. This doesn’t mean every school should follow all of the KIPP model; some kids aren’t going to respond well to it. What it does mean that if schools offer rigorous curricula and high-quality teachers, they are going to do the job and improve the educational and economic prospects of the kids in their care.
As far as low-quality charters? They exist. I’ve made that point ad nauseum here. And those charters deserve to be shut down. Same for charters that are poorly operated in terms of finance and operations. And, ultimately, it will happen, either because the families walk with their feet or because a state authority forces them to shut down. And that’s the important thing about charters: Unlike traditional public schools, which exist as zombies for decades allowing for generations of kids to be subjected to educational malpractice, charters can be shut down. It is the job of the school reform movement to hold the feet of charters to the fire (and if you pay attention to Fordham, Education Sector and even the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, they definitely do).
Here’s the thing: I am not exactly interested in scale, that is, whether particular charter school models in terms of specific (and often, culturally particular) operations and practices can be replicated everywhere. Some have models that can be replicated in such a way, as in the case of KIPP and Green Dot, but this isn’t going to be so. The Harlem Link charter school in New York City has an approach that is unique to its roots and environs. This is also true for every successful traditional public, private and parochial school or system. (The Catholic diocesan school systems in many states, by the way, are subjected to the same NCLB rules.)
Scalability in the sense understood by ed folks is unrealistic and not worth the effort.We already have a successful model of such traditional versions of scale: The public school district. It is successful (in the sense of existing), but also a failure in its ultimate purpose: Providing high quality education for all kids. This is the kind of scale we don’t need.
More importantly, while accountability and high standards should apply to all, the way schools meet their obligations to provide high-quality education to their kids doesn’t have to be so long as they also understand the basics: high-quality teachers and principals who are entrepreneurial, have strong subject competency and care for kids; rigorous and challenging curricula; and cultures of genius and high expectations in which the capabilities of kids to handle high levels of learning is not only recognized, but cherished.
The obsession with scale, both among traditionalists and school reformers, from where I sit, fails to consider what actually happens in the real world. Which leads to another point: Your concept of a “corporate” approach is rather false. In the corporate world, there is rarely full standardization; companies will approach their operations, markets and array of products and services differently. Proctor & Gamble is different from Colgate-Palmolive and from Unilever. All are successful in the space in which they compete and satisfy the needs of their customers. Same is true for Apple and Microsoft. What these companies do have in common is what all successful companies share (including strong talent development, and clear focus on product, service and customers). What each company does that is particular to its corporate culture and historical development will not work for others.
From where I sit, a private-sector and nonprofit role in running schools is neither good nor bad, neither virtue nor vice. It is a means to an end. The best private-sector organizations (and at its best, free markets, as an extension) do more than provide services. They help those they serve (customers, clients, even pupils), succeed beyond their wildest dreams, help keep people employed and able to fulfill their ambitions, and contribute greatly to the world. From where I sit, it’s about expanding opportunities for high-quality education to every child and I don’t really care about the vehicles through which it is done so long as we stem a dropout crisis in which 1.3 million kids drop out every year into prison and poverty. For me and for parents out there, the distinction between public and private is of little use when it comes to fulfilling this most-important goal.
Finally, as for rote memorization: I’m not saying that the focus on rote memorization alone is enough; schools that only do rote memorization and only test prep are engaging in lazy instruction. At the same time, rote memorization is often denigrated among many teachers and ed school types without consideration of how we all actually learn. We start with memorization and then begin mastery. You can’t really think for yourself if you don’t have the background knowledge needed to do so. While I don’t fully question your experience, I also don’t put as much credence into them because, at the end of the day, they are limited to your particular place, time and prejudices. What we do know is that learning can’t happen until you first memorize and learn the basics.
Thanks, Mary Beth, for your thoughts.
Brian @iteach4change
874 days ago
It’s this simple: parent involvement, good; parent triggers, an awful idea. If you can’t see that, I’m sorry. Parent input/engagement/involvement is essential, Policies vulnerable to astroturf and/or the whims of parents with nefarious agendas are ludicrous. Holding us accountable to engage in real reform is great – but at some point, education, and that reform, needs to be run by the educators. I don’t want my local surgeons subject to petition signatures, why ask my teachers to be? It’s a pretty simple case. I respect the desire to do right by constituencies whom we both consider underserved, but this nonsense is not the answer, and Oprah and Bill Gates continue to divide us with these type of asinine ideas they dare to call “reform.”