Photo courtesy of the Connecticut Post

Even as states such as California, Connecticut and Indiana have given parents the ability to force the overhauls of existing traditional public schools or escape them altogether through school choice, education traditionalists haven’t stopped fighting. As seen in Pennsylvania last week with the failure of the state legislature to pass school vouchers and voucher-like tax credits, and efforts around the country to stop the enactment of Parent Trigger laws, the very idea that parents should be lead decision-makers in education is one that is an anathema to those who want things to stay as they are.

In this Voices of the Dropout Nation, Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel explains why families can’t wait for state legislators to pass Parent Trigger laws. (For full disclosure: Dropout Nation Editor RiShawn Biddle serves on the advisory board of the Connecticut Parents Union.) Even as school reformers and status quo defenders battle it out, parents must seize power in education, demand high expectations, and push for the overhauls in teaching, curricula and school cultures needed to help their children — and all kids — succeed in school and in life.

Over the past two years, parents in three states have succeeded in implementing Parent Trigger laws, giving families the power to turn around systemically failing schools that are not meeting the needs of our children. Yet, there are many states in which passage of some form of Parent Trigger law has hit roadblocks from those unwilling to allow parents to have a legal say in how their children are educated.

Education’s status quo argues that parents are not capable of making good educational decisions for our children; therefore we must accept any type of decision that they make on behalf of our children. They expect parents to place our children in dangerous, poorly staffed, extremely low performing school systems in which parents aren’t welcomed, teachers and principals aren’t being held accountable, and our children fail.  They don’t want any form of fiscal accountability for student outcomes. In short, they expect parents to sit quietly on the side lines, while our children, are denied their right to a quality education; the type of education that will give them a fair chance at life.

To each and every parent in states in which Parent Trigger laws are being opposed, I say, you need to protect your children and defend their right to a high-quality education that exposes them to the skill sets needed to graduate high school prepared to enter and graduate from a traditional or technical college. They deserve nurturing schools in which everyone who works within or with them should be meet high expectations and hold them to the same. They should have access to a high quality education that gives them the tools they need to engage in civic life. Anything less is unacceptable!

This means each of us needs to be living and breathing Parent Triggers, no matter what the status quo tries to do.

If we saw a speeding car headed towards a child, parents would run like the wind to get that child out of harm’s way. If we know our children need protection from illness, we take our children to the doctors to get immunization shots. If we get alerts about outbreaks of E-coli and Salmonella bacteria harmful to our children and ourselves, we would teach our children to wash their hands more frequently and take more precautions when preparing food. We teach our children to stay away from strangers because we want them to be safe wherever they are. And we do this because we want to protect our children, our most-precious loved ones, from harm.

The sentiments with which we address physical and medical harm to our kids we must do when it comes to education. We must trigger our instincts to protect our children from schools that are failing to meet the quality of education needed for our children to be productive citizens in life. Because f they graduate high school, unable to read, minimal problem solving and analytical skills, and unable to do grade level math, they will not be successful in life.

Our children need us to become their Parent Triggers. Let’s take up that cause for them.

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On behalf of all of our writers, I thank you for reading, commenting and spreading the word about this magazine’s mission on behalf of all our kids. And we thank God for providing the opportunities to shed light on the nation’s education crisis and rallying all of us to reform American public education.

As the editor, I don’t say this often enough, but I always keep in mind that the work you and I do isn’t for our glory. If not for God, what we do doesn’t shine a light for the world on a crisis that condemns the lives of so many young men and women. Whatever praise is received by each of the writers here — especially your editor — is not our own. As readers, you are responsible for Dropout Nation’s success. And God, along with your concern for all kids, is what brought you to these pages.

Dropout Nation look forward to your thoughts and your energy in the New Year — and our kids need your energy (and ours) too. Let’s keep our commitment to giving all children the opportunity to write their own stories. As Robert Frost would say, we have miles to go and promises to all kids we must keep.

Thank you for reading Dropout Nation. And Happy New Year

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2

The number of states — Massachusetts and South Carolina — whose eighth-grade math standards are equivalent to those of the best-performing nations in math — South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong — according to the American Institutes for Research in its latest report.

C

The rating for the fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math curricula in most states as compared to TIMSS and PIRLS, the international tests of basic math and reading proficiency.

Missouri

Just one of two states (Massachusetts is the other) whose fourth-grade reading standards would be considered world-class.

Whenever someone tries telling you that the nation’s education crisis is only limited to urban dropout factories, think about these numbers and tell them that they may need to rethink their vision of what educational failure is throughout the nation.

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Michael Mulgrew is to NYC parents what Gerald Ford was to Big Apple politicians.

You can’t say you want to improve the quality of education for all children — especially our poorest children — and then deny families and taxpayers the information they need to help make this a reality. You can’t say that parent power and parental engagement is critical to student achievement and then argue that school districts shouldn’t provide critical information for such engagement (and decision-making). And you can’t call your organization a union of professionals and yet be unwilling to submit your members to the kind of performance management to which other professions are subjected.

Let’s be clear: The opposition of the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City to (and lawsuit against) the release of Value-Added-based teacher ratings by the New York City Department of Education makes clear that it believes that parents (and taxpayers) don’t really have the right to know which teachers are highly-effective or not — and therefore, no right to demand that their children receive a high-quality education. It doesn’t support assuring that families are kings (and lead decision-makers) in education. It really doesn’t want to take all the steps needed — and use all the tools available — to improve the teaching profession and the quality of education for our kids.  And it (along with his fellow AFT and NEA locals) cannot make an effective case against using Value-Added in teacher evaluations. It’s really that simple.

Now, don’t think for a moment the release of this information will, in itself, spur the revolutionary reform we need in American public education. The problems are to systemic for just one solution to work. But, as New York  City schools Chancellor Joel Klein argues, why wouldn’t we want to elevate high-quality teachers as models of good-to-great teachers and get poor-performing teachers out the classroom?

By the Way: As for folks such as Alexander Russo who insist that the papers who requested this information, let’s make this clear: It is no more unethical than the release of government employee salary data which, for most of us, is a lot more uncomfortable and personal. The ratings don’t reveal any disciplinary data or other information that actually would be sensitive. It is the rating of teacher effectiveness and performance, which, like salary data, should be available to the public so they can make informed decisions. More importantly, as reporters and editorialists, our job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted — and last I checked, teachers receive benefits and compensation that make them quite comfortable.

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As you see, Dropout Nation is unveiling a new design. Feel free to provide your thoughts and suggest any changes.

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Wherever your talents may lie, just do your part.

What’s happening in the Dropout Nation:

1. There has been plenty of handwringing about the business of covering education — and covering school reformers — from the Brookings Institution, Jay Mathews, Alan Gottlieb of EdNews Colorado and even Big Edreform Andy #1 (as in Rotherham). I’ve already written enough about the matter earlier this year and a few others (Alexander Russo among them) offer something more comprehensive the matter than I care to give justice.
2. Meanwhile Steve Peha took time on Eduwonk offering his fellow teachers a few reasons why they should stop working through unions and actually play a part in school reform. But in the process, he took aim at other reformers — notably those of us on the polemic side of things — by arguing that “blogging never taught a kid to read” and that one can’t be “a champion for kids” without “actually work toward making sure they get educated.” As someone who has actively worked on the message side of school reform (including consulting for school reform groups and speechwriting) I can tell you that there is more to improving the lives of children than just teaching. There is also grassroots activism such as that of Phillip Jackson of the Black Star Project, education research such as that of Michael Holzman (the subject of the inaugural “Three Questions” this week) and Robert Balfanz that sheds light on the dropout crisis, and even the work within policy circles and starting schools. Ultimately it is about using one’s talents to improve the lives of children any way possible that is important, not whether one is in the classroom.
3. Sadly, Mr. Peha’s arrogance is typical within traditional education circles. The tendency to overvalue subjective experience (which can offer little in actual usable information) over objective data (which is often more counter-intuitive than confirming). The best example is exemplified on Wednesday at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Get Schooled blog, where Maureen Downey’s report on a recent study on Florida’s class size caused readers to pillory the study (often without so much as reading it). The anti-intellectualism within a sector that is supposed to value knowledge and inquiry can be quite laughable — until you see the consequences of it in the NAEP reading data for big city districts released yesterday.
4. Speaking of data: Dan Goldhaber (whose studies on teacher quality are must-reads) offers some thoughts on performance pay plans and how they may actually stimulate high performance. Meanwhile the Education Action Group (which is far less dispassionate about teacher issues) offers a report on the high cost of teacher compensation and collective bargaining agreements for Ohio’s school districts.
5. And speaking of experience — this time, the power of parents — Eric Waters writets about his mother and her role in shaping not only his life, but that of his father (and her husband).

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