Texans for Parental Choice in Education

One reporter asked the question (paraphrased), “Since parents are not professional educators, should they have as much power as the parent trigger gives them.”

My Responses,

1. Although teachers may have credentials, “average” parents have two things that the best teacher doesn’t have

(a) an intimate knowledge of their child because they spend more one-on-one time with their child, and

(b) the instinctive love and care that they have for their child that they will have a relationship with for the rest of their lives.

2. You don’t have to be an auto mechanic to buy a car.  You can rely on the recommendations of others, and the reputation that the car has with the public.  You don’t have to be a professional educator to pick a good school.

Here’s a nice WSJ article about teachers union tactics, or antics? The best tidbits are italicized.

An internal [AFT] document explains how to undermine school reform. Never put on the Internet anything you wouldn’t want to see in the newspaper, right? Tell that to the American Federation of Teachers, which recently posted online an internal document bragging about how it successfully undermines parental power in education.

This document concerns “parent trigger,” an ambitious reform idea we’ve reported on several times. Invented and passed into law in California in early 2010, parent trigger empowers parents to use petition drives to force reform at failing public schools. Under California law, a 51% majority of parents can shake up a failing school’s administration or invite a charter operator to take it over.

California’s innovation caught on quickly—and that’s where the AFT’s PowerPoint presentation comes in. Prepared (off the record) for AFT activists at the union’s annual convention in Washington, D.C. last month, it explains how AFT lobbying undermined an effort to bring parent trigger to Connecticut last year. Called “How Connecticut Diffused [sic] The Parent Trigger,” it’s an illuminating look into union cynicism and power.

Facing the public call for parent trigger—mainly from minority groups like the State of Black CT Alliance—the AFT’s “Plan A” was “Kill Mode.” That failed. So it was on to “Plan B: Engage the Opposition.”

But only some of the opposition, it turns out: “Not at the table,” notes the AFT document, were “parent groups” who supported the reform. Engagement meant pressuring legislators vulnerable to union muscle. That’s most of them—and the AFT’s muscle worked.

The result was a reform in name only. Out were simple parent petition drives, in were complex “school governance councils” of parents, teachers and community leaders. Most significantly, as the AFT’s PowerPoint brags, the councils’ “name is a misnomer: they are advisory and do not have true governing authority.”

Called about the PowerPoint presentation, the spokesman for Connecticut’s AFT said he knew nothing of it so couldn’t comment. Perhaps it was comment enough when the AFT took the file off its website Tuesday night. Good thing blogger RiShawn Biddle, who first discovered it, made a copy.

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Here’s a nice WSJ article about a bold school district that decided to issue vouchers to save money.  The best tidbits are italicized.

County Ups the Ante in Voucher War
By STEPHANIE SIMON

DENVER—In a bold bid to revamp public education, a suburban district south of Denver has begun handing out vouchers that use public money to help its largely affluent residents send their children to private and church-based schools.

The move is being challenged in state court and a judge has held hearings this week to determine if the program can go forward.

The Douglas County School District experiment is noteworthy because nearly all voucher programs nationally aim to help children who are poor, have special needs or are trapped in failing public schools. Douglas County, by contrast, is one of the most affluent in the U.S., with household income nearly double the national median, and has schools ranked among the best in Colorado.

The program is also unique in that the district explicitly promotes the move as a way for it to save money. The district is, in effect, outsourcing some students’ education to the private sector for less than it would spend to teach them in public schools.

If Douglas County persuades the courts to sign off, it could transform the debate about vouchers nationwide, potentially turning them into a perk for families who want more than even high-performing public schools offer.

“This is a radical idea,” said Claire Smrekar, an investigator at the National Center on School Choice, a federal research organization.

Nationally, most voucher programs are run by states. Qualified students receive a voucher that is accepted as full payment at local private schools.

Douglas County does it differently, acting as middleman between state and student—and taking a cut. The state sends the district $6,100 per pupil; the district forwards 75% to each voucher recipient and keeps the rest. Even after administrative costs, the district expects to make what amounts to a profit of $400,000 this year on the 500 students in its pilot program.

That money will be used to “provide services to the students that are left behind in the regular schools,” district spokesman Randy Barber said.

State education officials consulted with the district on the program and haven’t objected to it.

Opponents, however, fear kids in traditional public schools will suffer. If a high school loses 10 freshmen to vouchers, for instance, it loses more than $50,000. In response, the principal may lay off a math teacher and distribute his students among other instructors, raising class size. The district says it will help the hardest-hit schools, but acknowledges some class sizes may increase.

[This] enrages parent Cindy Barnard, who says it isn’t fair that her son’s education in public schools may be diminished so her neighbors can use tax dollars to pay private-school tuition.

But Derrick Doyle, who plans to use vouchers to send his twins to a religious school, says the district is right to help all parents find the best fit for their kids. Parents dissatisfied with class size at their public school, he said, can always pursue other options.

Indeed, the Douglas County system embraces school choice, already offering charter, magnet and online schools. Officials there say the vouchers are a logical next step, helping parents to access different types of education, including faith-based schooling. “It’s about parents being able to decide what’s best for their children,” said Meghann Silverthorn, a school-board member.

About 20 private schools in the area accept vouchers. They’re a diverse lot, though predominantly religious: A tiny secular academy serving a few dozen first- through eighth-graders; a Jesuit high school with nearly 1,600 students; a church-based school that touts its curriculum as “unashamedly creationist” and Bible-based. One school accepting vouchers serves only gifted kids, another focuses on students with disabilities.

Many are highly selective, requiring entrance exams and, in some cases, statements of faith. Tuition ranges roughly from $7,000 to $15,000 a year, and vouchers only cover the first $4,500 or so; parents must find other aid or pay the rest out of pocket. The most popular school among voucher recipients, Valor Christian High School, charges $14,000 tuition plus fees of as much as $6,000 for books, sports and field trips.

Because the vouchers are being used at religious schools, the move has drawn fire from the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a parent coalition. All have sued in state court. A ruling on their request for an injunction is expected soon.

Their lawsuit cites a state constitutional provision forbidding public expenditure to support church-based schools. The state Supreme Court has signaled a flexible interpretation, ruling that college students can use state scholarships to attend religious institutions. But Mark Silverstein, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, says K-12 education is different because young students are more vulnerable to indoctrination.

District officials say they aren’t sending money directly to religious schools. Vouchers go to parents, who decide where to spend them. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a similar arrangement in Cleveland, Ohio.

Critics also say the voucher plan discriminates because most private schools won’t accept disabled or struggling students, and because families can only use the vouchers if they have the resources to pay the rest of the tuition bill. District data show the vouchers have been claimed disproportionately by students in the county’s wealthiest public schools.

Mr. Barber, the district spokesman, says the vouchers were available to all, without regard to ability, faith or wealth. “We really had nothing to do with who chose to take them,” he said.

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Houston Chronicle reports on how the new stricter TAKS standard increased the number of “unacceptable” schools and lowered the number of high performing schools.

The number of academically unacceptable public schools in Texas increased more than fivefold this year after the state raised standards, leaving parents with a confusing picture of districts’ progress.

The ratings plunge is largely due to the state no longer using a statistical measure that gave credit for failing test scores if the students were on track to pass in coming years.

Statewide, the unacceptable list grew from 104 schools to 569.

All the test scores of special-education students were counted for the first time.

Friendswood ISD was the only traditional school district in the greater Houston area to earn the state’s highest rating of “exemplary.” The charter schools YES Prep, Harmony School of Science, Harmony School of Excellence and Houston Heights Learning Academy also earned the top status.

KIPP, one of Houston’s most popular charter school networks, had its first “unacceptable” campus. Mike Feinberg, KIPP’s co-founder, said he was not surprised that KIPP’s Sunnyside High School rated low because it opened in 2010 with 120 ninth-graders. He said it takes time to catch up the students.

A sobering investigation of “correcting” standardized test scores by teachers and other personnel in Atlanta, GA public schools. Click this link.

This WSJ OpEd on July 18, 2011 suggests that school efficiency brought on by online learning will reduce the power of the unions by lowering the need for teachers.  Perhaps, but we already have many unnecessary employees in the public school system.  The unions have defended their jobs and will defend unneeded teachers jobs also.  They know their power base and will defend it aggressively.

Online learning means fewer teachers (and union members) per student.
By TERRY MOE

This has been a horrible year for teachers unions. The latest stunner came in Michigan, where Republicans enacted sweeping reforms last month that require performance-based evaluations of teachers, make it easier to dismiss those who are ineffective, and dramatically limit the scope of collective bargaining. Similar reforms have been adopted in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Tennessee, Idaho and Florida.

But the unions’ hegemony is not going to end soon. All of their big political losses have come at the hands of oversized Republican majorities. Eventually Democrats will regain control, and many of the recent reforms may be undone. The financial crisis will pass, too, taking pressure off states and giving Republicans less political cover.

The unions, meantime, are launching recall campaigns to remove offending Republicans, initiative campaigns to reverse legislation, court cases to have the bills annulled, and other efforts to reinstall the status quo ante—some of which are likely to succeed. As of today, they remain the pre-eminent power in American education.

Over the long haul, however, the unions are in grave trouble—for reasons that have little to do with the tribulations of this year.

The first is that they are losing their grip on the Democratic base. With many urban schools abysmally bad and staying that way, advocates for the disadvantaged are demanding real reform and aren’t afraid to criticize unions for obstructing it. Moderates and liberals in the media and even in Hollywood regularly excoriate unions for putting job interests ahead of children. Then there’s Race to the Top—initiated over union protests by a Democratic president who wants real reform. This ferment within the party will only grow in the future.

Then there’s a crucial dynamic outside of politics: the revolution in information technology. This tsunami is only now beginning to swell, and it will hit the American education system with full force over the next few decades. The teachers unions are trying to stop it, but it is much bigger than they are.

Online learning now allows schools to customize coursework to each child, with all kids working at their own pace, receiving instant remedial help, exploring a vast array of courses, and much more. The advantages are huge. Already some 39 states have set up virtual schools or learning initiatives that enroll students statewide, often providing advanced placement courses, remedial courses, and other offerings that students can’t get in their local schools.

The national model is the Florida Virtual School, which offers a full academic curriculum, has more than 220,000 course enrollments per year, and is a beacon of innovation. Outside of government, tech entrepreneurs like K12 and Connections Academy are swarming all over the education sector. They are the innovative force behind the rise of virtual charters, which now operate in 27 states, enroll some 200,000 full-time students (who typically do their studying at home), and stand at the cutting edge of technology’s advance.

This is just the opening salvo. Most American parents want their kids to actually go to school—to a physical place. So the favored virtual schools of the future will be hybrids of traditional and online learning. There are already impressive examples.

At the high-performing Rocketship schools in San Jose, Calif., for example, students take a portion of their academics online—generating $500,000 in savings per school annually. Schools use that money for higher teacher salaries and one-on-one tutoring.

As the cyber revolution comes to American education, it will bring about a massive and cost-saving substitution of technology for labor. That means far fewer teachers (and union members) per student. It also means teachers will be far less concentrated in geographic districts, as those who work online can be anywhere. It’ll thus be far more difficult for unions to organize. There will also be much more diversity in educational offerings, and money and jobs will flow out of the (unionized) regular schools into new (nonunion) providers of online options.

The confluence of these forces—plus the shifting political tides among Democrats—will inexorably weaken the unions, sapping them of members, money and power. It will render them less and less able to block reform. The political doors will increasingly swing open to reforms that simply make good sense for children and for society.

So the unions can weather the Republican attacks of 2011. But the real threats to their power are more subtle, slowly developing—and potent.

Mr. Moe is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of political science at Stanford University. His latest book is “Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools” (Brookings Institution Press, 2011).

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

With the new ‘parent trigger’ law that passed this last regular session, parents of students attending Eastside Memorial High School have been given a powerful new way to TRULY improve their school.  The new law, SB 738, allows the parents to petition the Texas Commissioner of Education Robert  Scott to act to improve or close the school.

If parents of a majority of the students attending Eastside Memorial sign a written petition to Commissioner Scott, he has the power to order the parents’ choice of one of three changes to the school.  These three changes are closing the school, repurposing the school, and putting the school under alternative management.

The parents can only petition for this change if their school has a long track record of being a failing school, but this school has “achieved” that track record in spades.  Eastside Memorial (aka Johnston) High School has been academically unacceptable for the last 8 years.

Most parents don’t want their local school closed or repurposed.  They want it effectively managed, and that is what the ‘alternative management’ choice does.  ‘Alternative Management’ is a nice way of saying that the school will be managed by a non-governmental school management company, exactly the way that charter schools are managed.

Now, it just so happens that right across the street from Eastside Memorial is East Austin College Preparatory Academy, a charter school started in 2009.  In its first year, the 2009-2010 school year, the school was graded academically acceptable. That is the newest TEA accountability score available at this time.  This charter school is ready, willing, and able to provide ‘alternative management’ to Eastside Memorial.

All that is needed to change the management of Eastside Memorial High School is for the parents of students that attend the school to get enough signed petitions.

And they can start right now!  The petition form can be downloaded at this link. Parents just need to print the petition form, fill it out, sign it, date it and mail it to

Texas Parents Union
3300 Bee Cave Road, Ste. 650-1156
Austin, TX 78746

It is important to note that the parent signing the petition must be the same parent that registered the child at the beginning of the school year.

So will the parents of Eastside Memorial step up, grab this powerful opportunity, get enough petitions signed, and transform their school?

We’ll have to wait and see……

There seems to be some confusion about whether Texas’s new “parent trigger” law, SB 738, includes the option of conversion to a campus charter school.  It is true that the words “charter school” do not appear in the bill.  Instead, the language used is “alternative management”, but it accomplishes the same result.

Let me explain using the language of SB 738 and the current language in the Texas Education Code to which it applies.

If a particular public school is rated unacceptable for two consecutive years, it begins a “reconstitution” period of three years (Section 39.107(a), Texas Education Code).  If the school continues to be rated unacceptable throughout the three year reconstitution period, the Commissioner of Education must act at the end of the reconstitution period in one of three ways (Section 39.107(e)).  The commissioner may act at any time during the reconstitution period, if the school has not made sufficient improvement as determined by the commissioner (Section 39.107(d)).

The essence of SB 738 is that it allows the parents of the majority of students of the school to formally request which of the three alternative actions they want the commissioner to choose.

One of the three ways that the commissioner may act is to order “alternative management” of the campus (Section 39.107(d)(2)).  Whether or not SB 738 is in fact a “parent trigger” bill depends on the definition of the “alternative management” choice.

Section 39.107(h) defines “alternative management”. It says the following.

“If the commissioner orders alternative management …, the commissioner shall solicit proposals from qualified nonprofit entities to assume management of [the] campus … or may appoint … a school district other than the district in which the campus is located…  The commissioner may also solicit proposals from qualified for-profit entities, if [no] qualified nonprofit [has submitted] a proposal.”

It is clear in Section 39.107(h) that when alternative management is chosen by the commissioner, he does not have the option of returning the management of the campus to the district in which the school resides.

The words “nonprofit entities” and “for-profit entities” mean non-governmental (private sector) school management companies!  That is exactly the definition of a campus charter school!

The only difference between SB738 and the California parent trigger bill has to do with timing.  The California bill says that the parent petition can be sent after two years of unacceptable performance by the school.  SB 738 says that the parent petition must be implemented at the end of five unacceptable years (two years before entering the three year reconstitution period).  But the education code (Section 39.107(d)) gives the commissioner the discretion to implement “alternative management” at any time during the reconstitution period.

So under SB 738, it is possible for the “alternative management” (campus charter school) to be initiated very soon after the two unacceptable years that initiate the reconstitution period.  A friendly commissioner could try to implement the parents petition as soon as he determines that it is best for the students.  I think that we currently have a friendly commissioner, Robert Scott.

In summary, SB 738 is a true parent trigger bill that can initiate a campus charter school.  It just takes longer to pull the trigger.

This post from the KVUE website shows an opportunity to use a new law, SB 738, to give Eastside Memorial to a private manager.   Highlights:

After 12 years of failure, parents want the school run by East Austin College Prep Academy according to Susana Almanza, an East Austin native.

Eastside Memorial … saw nearly 30 percent of its seniors from the Green Tech portion of Eastside, fail to graduate this past year.

“… [We're] talking about 12 years,” said Almanza.  “We have lost a whole generation of students there.”

[M]any neighbors [want] a nearby charter school, East Austin College Prep Academy, to take over the Eastside campus.

AISD Superintendent, Meria Carstarphen says the campus isn’t for lease.

The next community meeting is in two weeks, on June 30th.

SB 738 has been signed into law and will take effect September 1st!

This law allows the parents of kids attending a failing school to petition the Commission of Education, currently Robert Scott, to change the management of their school to a private management company, i.e. charter school manager.  If the school has failed for more than two consecutive years, a petition signed by a majority of the parents is sent to the Commissioner’s desk.

The Commissioner still has the final say in making the change, but the petition gives him a strong incentive to grant the parents’ petition.