Certainly one could have expected some response to Thomas B. Fordham Institute research czar Mike Petrilli’s compelling and intelligent argument for expanding charter schools and other forms of school choice in suburban districts (an argument made ad nauseam by Dropout Nation and its editors since its revival three years ago). What one wouldn’t have expected is the piece from Kristen Amundson, Education Sector’s communications boss (and former Virginia legislator). Buying into the traditionalist thinking that middle-class families already have school choice — and conflating the housing gamesmanship that typifies life in D.C., New York, and Boston, with what happens in the rest of the country — Amundson declares that those families “are never going to be the drivers of this innovation” because choice seemingly exists for them.

Unfortunately for middle class families — especially first-generation black, Latino, and Asian households who are entering the middle class for the first time — throughout the rest of the country (including the supposedly tony Virginia and Maryland suburbs outside of D.C.) — school choice doesn’t really exist at all. Certainly, as Amundson notes, some suburban districts offer a limited form of intra-district choice in the form of magnet schools. But those options are often limited. Because magnet schools are often efforts to meet federal desegregation orders — and fulfill the belief of ivory-tower civil rights traditionalists such as Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg that socioeconomic integration is some elixir for what ails American public education  —  those choices are limited by the quotas on the number of students from each race, ethnicity, and economic background who can get in (and more often, depend on the political clout of families, of which black and Latino families regardless of income generally have little). And given that in many districts, teachers and other school personnel get first dibs on those prime spots as part of collective bargaining agreements, there are even fewer choices for the families who pay the school tab.

In any case, magnet schools generally make up a smidgen of schools in suburban districts, and zoned schooling (along with other Zip Code Education policies) remain the norm. Considering that the average middle-class household in America (and not just well-paid folks living in the D.C. suburbs such as your editor) earns an income of $54,442 (that’s with two people working and two kids who don’t), most middle-class families can’t “just move” in order to get a desired school. Even for middle-class households with the wherewithal to relocate, the reality that districts often arbitrarily change their zoning policies — especially based on the clout of the families who live in a particular area — means that simply moving residences doesn’t guarantee that those families will get into one of the few high-quality traditional schools for which you made such a move.

But these aren’t the only restrictions on choice in suburbia for middle-class families. Just the most visible. Because of both Zip Code Education policies that predominate today, and the cultures of low expectations for minority children regardless of race or class, many suburban parents find themselves battling condescending school leaders and teachers who think that black and Latino kids don’t deserve access to high-quality curricula. As University of Michigan Associate Professor Karyn Lacey noted in Blue-Chip Black, her sociological study of middle-class black families in the suburbs surrounding the nation’s capital, black families living in Fairfax County found themselves battling teachers and guidance counselors who wanted to relegate children to academic tracks that keep them from getting high-paying white- and blue-collar jobs. And throughout this country, these families are often not informed about their options for preparing their kids for success in school and in life, including opportunities to take Advanced Placement courses or participate in the growing number of dual-credit programs that allow them to take community college courses that they can use for getting ready for the rigors of higher education.

But it isn’t just about academics. Particularly for black, Latino, and even the few Native middle-class families, they want their kids to both get college preparatory curricula and still be around peers of their own race and ethnicity — especially those who are also doing well in school — in order to build self-pride. While folks such as Amundson may not understand this because, well, they aren’t racial or ethnic minorities, this is an important thing for those who are. (This is why HBCUs and tribal colleges exist in the first place.) As a result, these families — and white counterparts who either have kids labeled as either special ed or placed on the general academic track — seek out private schools at great expense, even when they are paying out $5,000 or more every year to support traditional public schools their kids won’t attend.

But most middle-class families don’t have either the means or the easily-accessible data on schools to make that decision. As a result, they are restricted to warehouses of mediocrity whose shiny new buildings hide laggard instruction and curricula. This is especially true even in the suburbs surrounding D.C.  And it shows in the analysis of the George W. Bush Institute’s Global Report Card, which has revealed how mediocre suburban districts really can be. Just 30 percent of students in Fairfax County would outperform peers in Singapore in mathematics, and only 41 percent of them would perform better than peers in Canada and Switzerland, two other top-performing nations. Meanwhile just 31 percent of Montgomery County, Md. students would outperform peers in Singapore, and only two in five of them would outperform peers in Canada and Switzerland.

This isn’t the only example of mediocrity. Twenty-eight percent of suburban fourth-graders were functionally illiterate in 2011, no better than the levels four years ago; this compares poorly to the one- and two-point declines, respectively, among big-city and rural districts. Given that the one out of every eight white suburban fourth-graders not on free-or-reduced lunch are struggling with reading is equal to the levels in big-city districts — and the rate of black fourth-grade suburban counterparts who are functionally illiterate is only four percentage points lower than that of big-city peers — suburban districts are actually falling down on their jobs. This isn’t shocking. Thanks to the unwillingness of most suburban district leaders to embrace the underlying tenets of the No Child Left Behind Act — and their efforts to perpetuate the myth that traditional districts in the ‘burbs are doing just fine — they have ignored the innovations (including in the area of revamping teacher compensation) embraced by more reform-minded districts in big cities. So middle class kids in suburbia have lost out on the benefits of innovation.

But expanding school choice into suburbia isn’t just about the middle class who populate the well-manicured subdivisions. Suburban districts also serve plenty of poor families, especially Latino emigres and other first-generation Americans toiling for their piece of the streets of gold. Thirty-three percent of suburban kids — and three out of every five black and Latino kids in suburbia — attend schools where more than half their peers are on free and reduced lunch (which essentially means that there is at least a one-in-two chance that they are poor themselves). When it comes to choice, they get none at all, lacking both the clout to get into magnet schools or the income needed to locate into any of the better school zones. Which is problematic given that suburbia districts have proven to be as terrible as many urban districts in providing high-quality education. If they can scrounge up the cash, they may be able to send their kids to one of the few Catholic or parochial schools that are still open in their communities. Otherwise, they are even more out of luck than their middle-class peers.

The reality is that all families need — and deserve — to have a lead role in shaping the education of their children. Not only are they charged with this role through their natural role as mothers and fathers of kids they love, they are effectively required to play their part thanks to state compulsory school laws. Limiting the access of middle class families to wide-ranging school choices (and even more-expansive Parent Power) just because they have the perceived financial means to buy homes and send kids to private schools is just as intellectually and morally indefensible as limiting the choices of the poor. More importantly, it is politically counterproductive to boot. It is the very limitation of vouchers to poor families is one of the reasons why middle class families haven’t always been ready to support expanding school choice. After all, why should they offer kids that aren’t their own an opportunity they cannot get themselves? Neither middle class or poor parents should have fewer or no choices in the array of schools whose teaching and curricula are critical to the futures of their children and communities, than in restaurants to which they should never have to go.

By expanding school choice in suburbia, school reformers can break down opposition to what should be the ultimate goal: Ending Zip Code Education policies by forcing states to fully fund education and voucherize those dollars so they can follow every child to whatever school option they choose. Expanding choice also ends the myth that the more-expensive housing equals better schools, which we know by now isn’t so.

There is no reason why the vibrant choices in schools starting to come in our big cities isn’t also happening in suburbia. All families should be able to choose schools fit for the futures of their children.

As I wrote in my column last week in The American Spectator on Washington, D.C.’s slip slide into corruption, the spate of corruption — including the resignations of two city councilmen and the ongoing federal probe into current Mayor Vincent Gray’s successful campaign to oust predecessor Adrian Fenty — has brought back memories of the days when Marion Barry engaged in the kind of chicanery that nearly sank the District into insolvency. But for the families of the 12,000 children condemned to D.C.’s special ed ghettos (as well as those who suffer real cognitive impairments), the greater outrage lies with the traditional district’s continuing failures in providing them with high-quality education and nurturing cultures of genius.

Fifty-three percent of special ed students aged 16 to 21 left school during the 2009-2010 school year with a high school diploma, while a mere 7.7 percent transferred into traditional classrooms, according to Dropout Nation’s analysis of U.S. Department of Education data. The rest either dropped out, left with some sort of certificate that is useless except to line bird cages, aged out of special ed, or supposedly have “Moved, known to be continuing”. Although those numbers are far better than the 17 percent graduation rate for special ed students back in the 2000-2001 school year — and better than even the national average of 46 percent — it still means that special ed is an economic and social life sentence for kids who get labeled as unable to learn, and for those kids with real developmental disabilities who still deserve something better than the worst.

Little wonder why so many families whose kids are in special ed have become even more outraged after D.C. Public Schools began its effort to move special ed students out of placement in private schools (including those geared for helping special ed kids actually achieve academic success), whose work may be one reason why more kids are actually graduating in the first place. Driven by Mayor Gray’s insistence on slashing the expenses of sending special ed kids to private schools by half within the next two years (it will take on a $110 million tab in 2012-2013) the district is moving half of the 2,204 special ed kids into its traditional schools; the effort is the latest step in a move that began under former D.C. Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee to bring back more special ed kids into the fold and get from under a 15-year-old lawsuit that forced D.C. Public Schools to allow special ed students to attend private schools. But as Lisa Gartner of the Washington Examiner reported earlier this week, the district is still not exactly doing well by special ed kids.

For Bill Emerson, D.C. Public Schools wants him to send his son, Polk, a 19-year-old Polk whose severe disability renders him an 18-month old cognitively, to Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, an environment clearly not fit for his needs. Other families aren’t even being given options to send their kids to other schools within the traditional district that may better fit for their learning needs, being forced to attend zoned schools that may do little for them educationally or otherwise. Given that the special ed students in private placement account for just a smattering of all students attending D.C. Public Schools (and a fifth of special ed students served by the district), along with the reality that the D.C. district, although improving, is still in turnaround stage, one finds themselves agreeing with those parents that staying out is better than being forced back in.

But the plight of D.C.’s families with children stuck in special ed once again sheds light on one of the most-important reasons why expanding school choice and Parent Power policies (including Parent Trigger laws) are critical to transforming America public education: Far too many kids are condemned to schools and programs that do harm to their futures, while their parents are restricted from playing their well-deserved lead roles in education decision-making. And this is especially the case with special ed.

One of the things that has to always be remembered when it comes to special ed is that families, especially those from poor and minority backgrounds, have little recourse in keeping their kids out of special ed in the first place. Although the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires districts to gain permission from parents to place their kids into special ed (and negotiate an individualized learning plan if the parents agree to the label), the reality is that most families are forced into special ed through no choice of their own. Parents who don’t agree to a district’s labeling, or think their child needs a different IEP can find themselves facing charges of abuse and neglect. And while children in special ed are supposed to be re-evaluated every three years, this rarely happens.

For districts, special ed ends up becoming a rather sweet deal financially (despite bemoaning the costs publicly) because end up getting more in state and federal per-pupil dollars (as well as opportunities to milk Medicaid subsidies) than they would get for students in regular classrooms. It is one reason why the average school employed 1 10 percent more teachers and staff for special ed in 2008-2009 than in 2000-2001, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s analysis of special ed activity. More importantly, it allows adults in schools to shuffle off those kids — especially young men whose struggles with reading manifest in behavioral issues — who they deem too difficult or unworthy of educating. As Vanderbilt University Professor Daniel J. Reschly noted in his 2007 testimony to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, adults in schools often have a tendency to confuse the statistical probability that certain ethnic and gender groups may end up being diagnosed with a learning disability with the ethnic composition with ethnic composition within a disability category; essentially they end up labeling certain groups of students as learning disabled because they think they are destined to end up that way.

But for the kids and their families, special ed is a life sentence. A special ed child could easily land in a setting in which barbaric discipline techniques such as placing kids into so-called seclusion rooms (or, as prison inmates, would call them, solitary confinement) and tying children down can be the norm. Special ed students made up 70 percent of kids held in restrains during the 2009-2010 even though they account for just an eighth of all students, according to the U.S. Department of Education.  The results can be devastating. Eight years ago, 13-year-old Jonathan King, a student in forced into a school operated by the 14-district Pioneer Regional Education Services Agency in Georgia committed suicide after being subjected him to such abuse; a lawsuit filed by King’s parents against the agency and state officials was dismissed by a state court judge because there was no way for the state to regulate regional education operations and the use of such discipline. The scandalous practices came under scrutiny this year after revelations that teachers at the Middleton district’s Farm Hills Elementary School in Connecticut., were shuffling kids into so-called “scream rooms”; the school and district are now being subject to a U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights probe, while the practices themselves were the subject of a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing last week. Even when special ed kids aren’t being subjected to those barbaric practices, they are more-likely to be subjected than their peers to more traditional harsh school discipline. The out-of-school suspension rate for special ed students is 13 percent, more than double the already abysmal rate for the nation’s students overall.

Only the few families with either the means or the emotional wherewithal to challenge districts on IEPs — and even which schools their kids should be place, ever succeed. Just one percent of America’s special ed students age 6 to 21 are put into private schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Even fewer are successful in getting their kids out of being placed in special ed ghettos. For every Scott Barry Kaufman, who manages to get out of special ed and become one of the nation’s best-known authorities on gifted and talented education, most of these kids wind up in despair, illiterate, innumerate, and ill-prepared for the adult world. And this includes those very few children who are truly in need of special ed because of low-incidence disabilities that render them cognitively unable to master college preparatory learning still in need of training and deserving of better than abuse.

What happens in special ed isn’t unusual in American public education. Mothers and grandmothers such as Tanya McDowell and Marie Menard either being imprisoned (or merely charged) with the laughable offense of “stealing education”. Poor families are forced to send their kids to dropout factories and failure mills that won’t provide them with the high-quality teaching, and strong, college-preparatory curricula they need. Middle-class families from middle class backgrounds are often denied the information they need to get their kids into Advanced Placement classes and other college preparatory courses. Even when families are given power, education traditionalists — especially affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — work hard to reduce that power; this happened in Connecticut, where the NEA and AFT successfully won the power to determine which parents are allowed to serve on so-called “turnaround committees’ in schools under the state’s new Commissioner’s Network (and in the process, tossing out the parent-controlled governance councils and neutering potential use of the Nutmeg State’s Parent Trigger law). [Dropout Nation will discuss the efforts of Parent Power activists in a special virtual panel session this coming Tuesday, July 24. Register today (Editor’s Note: Link has been updated).]

All this happens despite all the evidence — including a study released this month by a team led by Judith Harackiewicz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the role of families in steering kids into science and math courses — that families who are given power and information can help their kids get the education they need for lifelong success. All this happens despite the facts gleaned from two decades of expanding school choice: The only real way that families can really be engaged in schools is if they actually have the ability to actually shape the education their kids receive. And ultimately, this amoral and immoral denial of power and choice to happens in spite of growing evidence that American public education’s policies and practices are serving all children poorly — and kids in special ed even worse.

What Mayor Gray should be doing in D.C. is expanding school choice and Parent Power for all families, especially for those whose students have been relegated to special ed ghettos. This includes allowing more families to seek out private and charter schools that fit the needs of their kids, as well as allowing more intra-district choices. This should also be happening throughout the nation. Expanding school choice efforts such as Florida’s McKay special ed vouchers (along with stronger accountability and transparency for those private and public schools that accept the vouchers) and charter schools (including those serving autistic children) is also important. Enacting Parent Trigger laws, as well as giving parents real power in shaping individualized education plans (and the underlying curricula provided to their kids), is also key. Not only would such efforts help those special ed kids who truly need such services get better care and support, it would even allow for those kids who really don’t belong in special ed (including those caught in the catch-all “specific learning disability” category) get out of ghettos in which they don’t belong.

When we allow families whose kids are the worst-served by American public education to escape failure and even overhaul failing schools, we are also helping all children get the high-quality education they deserve. It is time for special ed families — and all families — to take real power in education.

Earlier today in the commentary on why good-to-great teachers may not be fans of performance-based evaluations, your editor mentioned economics editorialist Henry Hazlitt’s point that economic changes (along with technological advances) can explain why companies that were once top-performers or dominant players in their markets are no longer in those prime positions. This axiom can be extended into American public education itself, particularly when it comes to the role of traditional districts in providing instruction and curricula.

One way a firm can find itself in a middling position is by the changes that go on when it comes to technology, particularly in the use of different tools to do the same work once done with the products peddled by that firm. One example of this can be found in the area of computing. For more than three decades, Microsoft Corp., held a near-monopoly on computing, thanks to the Windows operating system, which expanded consumer access to the productivity and social benefits of computer technology and also made it less expensive for companies to move away from paper-based filing and delivery. This near-monopoly became especially potent during the early days of the Internet, thanks to Microsoft’s success in controlling what browsers could be used to access the World Wide Web; the fears of that power was so great that the software giant found itself the subject of lawsuits from federal officials (including the anti-trust action led by future New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein) and governments in Europe.

These days, one can say that Microsoft no longer holds a monopoly on computing. Sure, it is still the biggest player on desktops and laptops. But computing is no longer a matter of using a box attached to a physical keyboard. Starting with Research in Motion, which revolutionized the cellphone in 2001 by merging it with the personal digital assistant technology innovated by the now-defunct Palm, cellphones slowly became super-microcomputers, capable of handling e-mail, word processing, and even Web surfing. Microsoft’s longstanding rival in the computer software field, Apple Computer, took it a step further six years later with the launch of the iPhone, bringing the convenience of touchscreen keyboards, the processing power of late 1980s computers, and the ability to access video, to what we now call smartphones. The launch of the Kindle e-reader by Amazon a few years later would portend the advent of the tablet that started with Apple’s iPad, Barnes and continued with Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet.

These days, half of all the computers sold throughout the world are no longer pure computers. We are talking about smartphones, cellphones, tablets, e-readers, portable music players that emerged from Sony’s revolutionary Walkman, and even video game consoles. While Microsoft remains dominant in the desktop and laptop arenas (and is the leading player in video game console sales thanks to the Xbox 360), Apple and Google (through its Android operating system) now dominate the smartphone and tablet markets. This fact (and Microsoft’s failures to either embrace those sectors, or in the case of the smartphone market, in which it was an early leader, innovate upon RIM’s success) explains why it is now rushing to capture share in the tablet market through the new Surface device, and has launched a new version of Windows that can be used on touchscreen devices and traditional computers.

Microsoft’s decline from the predominant player in computing to one of the big three can also be seen in what is happening to the traditional district model. For most of the last 150 years, thanks to the efforts of Horace Mann to impose a Unitarian-tinged civic religion, districts held the near-monopoly on providing education to children and their families. Although Catholic schools were the alternative provider of choice, especially to poor kids of that faith, it has been rare to see a private school or an alternative form of public education within communities.

But these days, the failures of districts to provide high-quality education to children, especially from poor and minority backgrounds, has been crystal clear. With districts such as Detroit graduating far fewer than half of its high school freshmen in four years — especially in an increasingly knowledge-based economic age in which dropouts struggle to gain part-time employment — the model, which is driven more toward scale than toward providing high-quality education, has proven ill-equipped to take on such matters as provide more-personalized forms of learning or even serve ex-dropouts looking to complete their high school diplomas and gain college degrees. The very size of districts (along with the longstanding practices that have plagued American public education) have led to the development of bureaucracies that foster cultures of mediocrity and failure that are difficult to overhaul.

This is where the expansion of school choice, including charter schools, vouchers, Parent Trigger laws, DIY school efforts, and online and blended learning systems, comes in. Such tools can potentially allow for families to seek out school opportunities that can best serve the needs of the children they love (and in the case of Parent Trigger laws, allow them to take over and overhaul schools in their own communities), provide communities with tools to spur renewal of economies and societies, and give talented, entrepreneurial teachers new outlets for using their talents to help children succeed. While education traditionalists and traditional district leaders fight hard to keep the monopoly in place, they struggle to adapt to the new paradigm of school delivery.

Traditional districts in big cities are already losing their monopoly positions in providing education. From New Orleans (where nearly all but a fifth of schools are charters) to Washington, D.C. (where the traditional district educates less than three-fifths of children in its boundaries), families frustrated with systemic failure are moving away from the traditional model. Online and blended learning, which plays off of the disruptive nature of the Internet that Marc Andreessen was prescient about two decades ago after developing the first Web browser, holds even more promise. Some 1 million children took online courses during the 2007-2008 school year, according to Anthony J. Picciano of Hunter College and Jeff Seaman of Babson, a 47 percent increase over the number of kids taking online courses two years earlier; thanks to adults who are taking online college courses, the possibilities of growth are even greater.

Although there are worries that poor and minority kids cannot get their hands on the technologies needed to access blended learning, these worries are countered by the reality that for most households, smartphones are already available for education; as seen in developing countries and in fast-rising countries with rickety infrastructures such as India, mobile technologies can be scaled to an affordable price point that can allow for reformers to work with private firms to offer cheaper tools.

This isn’t to say that the traditional district model’s end is inevitable. As with the rest of the battle over reforming American public education, districts and the education traditionalists whose regard for them borders on the fetishistic, will continue to battle efforts to expand choice, Parent Power, and digital learning. But the very changes that has rendered Microsoft’s traditional operating system near-monopoly not nearly as important in today’s computing world can also help reformers provide all children with the high-quality education they deserve.

This morning’s announcement by President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, and outgoing Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman that the administration will fully fund and operate the revived D.C. Opportunity school choice program is wonderful news. Certainly Obama is moving to get rid of an obstacle to effort to win re-election against Republican presidential nominee presumptive Mitt Romney (who has made expanding vouchers a keystone of his school reform agenda) — and stave off the renewed controversy he has attracted since February, when he proposed earlier to effectively end funding for the program in his 2013-2014 budget plan — while Boehner is scoring points with movement conservatives who generally oppose the federal role in education except when it suits them. But none of that matters because some 1,615 of the district’s poorest children get to escape the nation’s capitol’s failure mills and dropout factories, while D.C.’s district gets the pressure they need to continue its steady overhaul.

Yet for all this and other good news that has come in the past two years about the expansion of voucher programs, charter schools, magnet schools, and digital learning efforts, we are also reminded each day that just a fifth of all families and their children can actually choose high-quality educational opportunities. Far too many families, especially those from poor and minority backgrounds, have no means of helping their kids escape from dropout factories, failure mills, and warehouses of mediocrity that condemn their futures to the economic and social abyss. Middle class families have it no better, with zoned schooling policies within districts and other Zip Code Education policies restricting them from providing their kids with schools that may be better fits for their learning needs. As a result, these families are forced to either accept what American public education offers, bear the burden of paying for private school out of their own coffers even as they pay dearly for public schools that don’t serve their kids (if they have such means), or engage in what is codified as criminal behavior by sending their kids to schools outside of their districts.

The latest examples of the perversity of Zip Code Education policies can be see in Lieberman’s own home state of Connecticut, where it has been a front-page issue for the past year. As Dropout Nation readers know, the Nutmeg State is home to Tanya McDowell — a homeless mother from Bridgeport who was sentenced to five years imprisonment earlier this year after being charged by prosecutors in nearby Norwalk for what can laughingly be called theft of educational services — and Stratford grandmother Marie Menard (who is suing the district after she was arrested for helping her daughter and grandchildren “steal education” too). This year, districts have stepped up their efforts to crack down on families for doing all they can to keep their kids out of schools unfit for them.

In suburban Wethersfield, the district kicked out 33 kids out of its classrooms because their parents sent their kids to the district instead of letting their futures waste away in nearby Hartford, where only 62 percent of eighth-graders in its original Class of 2010 made it senior year of high school. From the perspective of Martin Walsh, one of Wethersfield’s school board members, it is better to toss out a few kids whose families  than to do anything that doesn’t “preserve the schools for Wethersfield kids.”

In Westport, the school district there filed suit against Christopher Kieras and his ex-wife, Maria, for allegedly sending their daughter to one of its schools instead of putting her in the schools in Seymour, where they allegedly live. It will likely cost taxpayers in Westport far more — including payments for private investigators — to collect the $27,000 in tuition that the district says it lost. But keeping Westport’s doors closed to kids seeking what is perceived to be a higher-quality educational option than the zoned school is the more-important priority.

Then there is the effort by the Weston district to track those families who they believe are stealing education — and their efforts are even burdensome to the families who live in the district. This coming school year, families sending their middle schoolers to Weston’s schools will have to submit home deeds, copies of leases, and letters from landlords verifying their residency in order to keep 30 or so kids from outside district from learning about geometry and The Scarlett Pimpernel. Weston isn’t alone: The Greenwich district has also put in an elaborate system that includes tracking expiration of apartment leases in order to keep some 30 kids otherwise stuck with low–quality in their home district from attending its schools.

Don’t think that the districts are merely playing their part in restricting choice for those kids outside of their boundaries. Just six of the 18 schools Greenwich operates are open enrollment, allowing families from throughout the district to exercise a subminimal for of choice. None of the five elementary schools operated by Wethersfield’s district allows for any form of choice (outside of perhaps moving from one zone to another, and even that doesn’t guarantee options because districts change their zones at will). Even as the districts declare that they are looking out for the best interests of families and taxpayers who finance the schools, they do plenty to ensure that those parents also don’t have choice within the districts (or outside them).

What is happening in Connecticut is disgraceful. Families throughout the Nutmeg State, especially poor and minority households, have wider choices in restaurants than they do school options. This is especially shameful when one considers the low quality of teaching and curricula throughout the state. While the nation saw the percentage of functionally illiterate fourth-graders decline by six percentage points (from 39 percent to 33 percent) between 2003 and 2011, according to analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress data, the percentage of Connecticut fourth-graders reading Below Basic proficiency increased from 26 percent to 27 percent. Meanwhile average reading scores for all students in the state have actually declined in the past eight years, even as the average scale score for all students nationwide has increased by nearly a third of a grade level. Connecticut’s districts the array of high-quality educational options for all families is what should be happening in

Now let’s be clear: The districts aren’t exactly the ones to blame. As in other states, the entire perversion that is Zip Code Education is one caused by the unwillingness of state legislators and political leaders to overhaul school funding systems that allow districts to both deny educational options to all students and also oppose any form of choice. Unlike most states, which, on average, provide for 48 percent of all school funding, Connecticut has largely allowed schools to be dependent on local tax dollars; property taxes account for 58 percent of all school funding in the Nutmeg State in 2009, according to a Dropout Nation analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. But Connecticut’s own constitution and related rulings (including 1989’s Sheff v. O’Neill state court judgment) have made clear that education is a state concern with districts only acting as arms of state government for this purpose. By not overhauling its school funding regime, the state has abdicated its responsibility to provide all children with high-quality educational opportunities. It has also allowed for districts within the state to oppose choice for families outside and within their service areas under the guise of local control.

The state had opportunity to put an end to Zip Code Education policies this year. On one end, there was a proposal in the Nutmeg State legislature that would have downgraded stealing education from a felony (and as much as 20 years in prison) to a misdemeanor. It shouldn’t be a crime at all, but at least it would have been a start. Unfortunately, that legislation never made it beyond a hearing. There was also Gov. Dan Malloy’s school reform plan, which would have allowed for the further expansion of charters by increasing funding for charter schools and allowing more operators to come into the state. Malloy did manage to win a 22 percent increase in state per-pupil dollars that will help allow for more charters to open in the state, along with some other changes. But neither Malloy nor state legislators bothered to launch an inter-district school choice program similar to that which Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder unsuccessfully attempted to expand last year, this could have expanded the number of high-quality school opportunities for poor and minority kids. More importantly, the state didn’t bother making the most-substantial reform of all: Taking over full funding of schools and districts, which would have allowed the state to voucherize those dollars and allow for choice throughout the Nutmeg State.

But Connecticut isn’t alone. As seen in districts in states such as Oklahoma, far too many families are paying a high price for practices in American public education that are geared more for keeping failing and mediocre districts in business than in helping families help their kids get the nurturing cultures of genius they need in order to do well in an increasingly global and knowledge-based economy. Although we have seen more than 15 states expand or enact voucher programs within the last two years, and others allow for the expansion of charters, this isn’t enough. It will take states fully taking over funding of schools to allow for choice to be a reality for every child and family in America. It will also involve allowing families to take control of failing and mediocre schools within their own neighborhoods through Parent Trigger laws (which have now been backed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors), and allowing the use of school funding to launch DIY education efforts to make choice even more robust. And providing more-comprehensive data on school and teacher performance — a subject of this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast and something that some reform-minded governors such as Andrew Cuomo in New York are pushing  — will allow families to have the information they need to make the best decisions for the children they love.

What happens each day in Connecticut and in the rest of the nation should no longer be tolerated. No parent should face arrest or litigation just for doing their most-important job: Providing their children (and ours) with the best chances for brighter futures.

Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Daily News

Since last October, Dropout Nation has reported on the efforts of Southern California families led byactivist Alice Callaghan (with backing from the school reform group EdVoice) against the Los Angeles Unified School District, charging that the district had continually violated its obligations under the state’s Stull Act to adequately evaluate teachers and demanding the district to reform its teacher evaluation system. Since then, the Callaghan families have been joined by City of Angels Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (who has filed a friend-of-the-court brief also pushing for the district to fully comply with the Stull Act and revamp its teacher and principal performance management systems) and has gotten covert support from the district’s superintendent, John Deasy (who is engaged in his own battle with the American Federation of Teachers’ Tinseltown local over revamping how the district pays teachers and manages its performance).

By the end of this week, the Callaghan families may get some results. Today, L.A. Superior Court Judge James Chalfant handed down a preliminary ruling requiring the district to begin using student performance data in its teacher evaluations. Agreeing with the plaintiffs that L.A. Unified “does not currently comply” with California’s Stull Act an Chalfant is likely to grant their petition for declaratory relief, allowing the district to use the Golden State’s battery of standardized tests in determining how well its veteran and newly-hired instructors are doing in improving student achievement and providing kids with nurturing-yet-challenging learning environments. Chalfant also agreed with the Callaghan families that principals and other school leaders were subject to the Stull Act, meaning that the district had to evaluate their performance as well.

Chalfant went a step further and rejected the argument made by the California Public Employee Relations Board (and echoed by  the American Federation of Teachers’ City of Angels affiliate in its response to the suit)  that the Callaghan families didn’t have standing to sue over L.A. Unified’s teacher evaluation process because they were neither civil servants or the district that employs them. In the ruling, Chalfant notes that the argument doesn’t hold when the district and a teachers’ union enters into a contract that violates state law. Given that Chalfant finds that the evaluation system L.A. Unified and the district put into place doesn’t abide by the Stull Act, the Callaghan families (and other parents) have more than adequate standing to intervene in the contractual arrangement. Wrote Chalfant: “Whatever the collective bargaining rights of the District and unions… the parties and PERB cannot avoid the District’s mandatory legal duty”.

Again, this is a preliminary hearing, and one should expect the AFT and the PERB to appeal the final ruling. But the Callaghan families suit, also known as Doe v, Deasy, has already spurred other reformers in California to use the courts to take action. Last month, Democrats for Education Reform, Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, and Parent Power activist outfit Parent Revolution teamed up to back a similar teacher quality tort, this time against L.A. Unified, the Alum Rock school district in San Jose, and California’s state government itself; although the Vergara v. California suit is targeted toward the state’s reverse-seniority (or last in-first out) hiring policies, the tort makes similar arguments about how state and district policies protect laggard teachers at the expense of poor and minority children, violating their right to a equal (and high-quality) education. Today’s preliminary ruling will likely encourage even more Parent Power activists and others to take the legal approach to advancing reform.

But school choice activists and others, both in Calicould go even further. As Dropout Nation elaborated last year, reformers can easily use the “free public education” clauses found in most state constitutions to advance choice, particularly by interpreting those clauses to allow for children to attend any public school they want, be it traditional or charter, in any part of the state. Under such interpretations, practices that have led to zip code education, including the concept of zoned schools, are essentially unconstitutional; and thus, inter-district choice of the kind encouraged by otherwise foes of choice such as Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation would be allowable. Through such suits, charter school activists and choice proponents could end restrictions on the expansion of public charter schools, the nation’s most-prominent form of school choice, and in the case of those states without so-called Blaine amendments barring the use of public funding for parochial schools, could either lead to the launch of voucher programs or force states to overhaul school funding in order to allow for those funds to provide kids with any school opportunity.

All of this, in turn, could spur American public education to be transformed into a system in which the families can choose the best educational opportunities for the children they love, and in which high-quality teaching and curricula is the norm and not the exception. And for that, the Callaghan families suit will have done more than a few measures of good.

Certainly there is plenty to admire about Jay Mathews, the dean of education reporters who writes the Washington Post‘s Class Struggle column. But one of his weak spots remains his inability to accept the new paradigm in education of families being lead decision-makers in education. Despite his own pieces that show how traditional districts in suburbia have done plenty to condescend and keep middle-class families who supposedly under their thumb (including the response of school officials in tony Loudoun County, Va., to parents at Leesburg Elementary School demanding that the school provide better accounting of funds raised by families through its parents-teachers organization and offer more details on how the school was helping kids improve their achievement), Mathews still argues that families are too incapable of playing powerful roles in schools and should leave education decisions to teachers and school leaders alone. For him, Parent Trigger laws and other Parent Power efforts do little more than divide families and bring politics into what he thinks should be an apolitical affair.

Such thinking can be seen in Mathews’ latest piece deriding Parent Trigger laws, in which he touts the concept of teacher home visits such as those done by a group called HOME WORKS!, an outfit based out of St. Louis, Mo. Proclaiming that home visits help “children learn more”, Mathews declares that Parent Trigger laws are “terrible wastes of time” and aren’t worth passing because it supposedly creates political division (an argument advanced by others opposed to Parent Trigger laws that I have already Ginzu-knifed into nothing), and more importantly, because families are to incapable to figure out how to overhaul a school.

The first problem with Mathews’ argument lies in the absence of evidence for his declaration that teacher home visits are effective in improving student achievement. As a journalist, Mathews should know better than offer an argument without citing supporting data. For this, I actually went to the organization’s site and reviewed its 2010-2011 evaluation. What it shows is this: Although students involved in the HOME WORKS! program did increase attendance from around 84 percent to over 90 percent, it wasn’t much higher than that for students who didn’t participate in the program (whose attendance increased from 83 percent to 88 percent in the school year); more importantly, the HOME WORKS! students already had higher levels of attendance than their peers when they began participation. (The fact that the program uses traditional district attendance measures that are unreliable in showing levels of chronic truancy is also a problem.) While math grades for HOME WORKS! students did increase, the fact that grades are too subjective an indicator to be used in evaluating student performance means that there is no real data on HOME WORKS! impact on student achievement; the lack of value-added data on student test score growth, either from state tests or formative assessments, also makes it difficult to know how well the program is doing.

In essence, Mathews finds himself touting a program without enough evidence to justify his praise. This isn’t to say teacher home visits aren’t a good idea; Dropout Nation supports home visits as one of many ways to build strong ties between teachers, school leaders, and families; after all, not every family is going to want to be so actively engaged in shaping curricula and school operations. But it’s unlikely that home visits on their own improve student achievement. More importantly, home visits do little to address the real problems of low-quality teaching and shoddy school leadership that are endemic throughout American public education.

The second problem with Mathews’ argument lies with his statement that Parent Trigger laws have “had zero effect on achievement.” Given that the first Parent Trigger law was passed just three years ago, of course there’s no evidence of it. By even making such a statement, Mathews weakens the credibility of his overall argument for supporting home visits. More importantly, in dismissing Parent Trigger laws, Mathews dismisses the evidence that shows the benefits of families playing strong roles in education decision-making. This includes the work of a University of Chicago team led by Anthony Bryk and John Easton (now the director of the Institute of Education Sciences) that shows that family engagement is one of the five key elements of advancing school turnarounds; and the University of Arkansas’ most-recent study on the success of students using Milwaukee’s school voucher program.

What Mathews consistently fails to realize is that Parent Trigger, like other school choice and Parent Power measures, allows families to actually help their kids succeed in school and spurs them to be fully engaged in education and learn more about how their kids can get a high-quality education. As James Guthrie of the George W. Bush Institute has pointed out, the only real way that families can really be engaged in schools is if they actually have the ability to actually shape the education their kids receive. This doesn’t mean all will want to even go so far as to actually manage schools. What it does mean is that families stuck with failing schools can grab their copies of Organizing Schools for Improvement, read Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors, and take advantage of the digital and other tools that can be used to transform failure mills into cultures of genius fit for the kids they love. Given the success of those in the homeschooling movement, it is quite possible for families to figure out how to build schools fit for all kids.

But Mathews’ distrust of parents isn’t surprising. He has far too much faith in those he considers to be education experts, including folks such as former New York City school leader-turned-Diane Ravitch fellow-traveler Deborah Meier and others he calls “imaginative educators”.  But in putting too much trust in expertise, he fails to admit that teachers and other educators aren’t exactly experts in education. If anything, one of the reasons why American public education is in such dire straits is because its operations have been left to “experts” for far too long. After all, it is these so-called experts who have backed practices such as the overuse of suspensions and expulsions, the overdiagnosis of learning disabilities (especially among young black men, whose reading deficiencies are often diagnosed as being special ed problems), and that manifestation of early 20th century racialism (and belief that minorities and immigrant are incapable of learning) that is ability tracking and the comprehensive high school model, all of which are among the underlying reasons for the nation’s education crisis.

In the process, Mathews ignores the fact that many of the most-successful school reform efforts have been mounted not by experts, but by those outside of education, from Steve Barr and his Green Dot charter schools, to Joel Klein’s overhaul of New York City’s schools, to Virginia Walden Ford’s grassroots reform initiatives in Washington, D.C. The reality is that it is going to take smart, dedicated, and reform-minded men and women inside and outside of education to transform failure mills, dropout factories, and warehouses of mediocrity into cultures of genius that serve all children well. This includes families who can become the kind of unabashed school reformers and impromptu leaders we need to make it happen in every neighborhood and school. Families are no longer willing to just trust the experts, especially when they learn about and experience dysfunctional and failing school and district cultures.

Teachers meeting with parents is a good thing. But families need more than just home visits. They need real power, both to transform the schools in their own neighborhoods and to escape Zip Code Education policies that condemn their kids (and even the parents themselves) to prisons of economic and social despair. And this means more states should do what California, Connecticut, Texas, and Mississippi have done (and what Michigan’s state senate has approved yesterday) by passing Parent Trigger laws.

It’s time for Mathews to stop bashing Parent Power and embrace it instead. Being known for giving comfort to failed thinking isn’t the legacy the legendary journalist should want. And we all know that this lion of education reporting and punditry can do better.