I just read about an interesting new type of education reform legislation. It is called a trigger law. Trigger laws, implemented in several states, including California, allow parents to force schools to reform. In California, they can even be used to take over the school entirely, turning it into a charter school. Typically, it requires a petition signed by more than half of the parents with children in a specific school to activate trigger laws. The goal of these laws is to provide parents with a tool to improve poor schools, even when the government or school board refuses to. In California, there have been several instances where trigger laws were activated, in one case turning the school into a charter school, and in other cases making significant changes to school leadership. There have also been a few cases where trigger laws were not actually activated, but the thread of activation caused the school board to take badly needed action. Of course, not everyone believes these laws to be a good thing. In one case, trigger laws were used to fire a principal, but some critics have claimed that the principal was not at fault for the problems. I want to respond to some of the critical remarks targeted at trigger laws, and I also want to look at some of the implications of trigger laws.
In one of the California cases, a mother involved in intimidating the school district into action said that her child was subject to regular bullying, and school officials ignored her requests for action. In another California case, a school with very poor academic performance was taken over and turned into a charter school. The idea behind these trigger laws is that parents should have some control over the quality of education received by their children. Much of the action taken based on trigger laws has taken places in low income neighborhoods, where parents are often accused of having little involvement with the education of their children. Ironically many critics are attacking these people for their sudden interest in the education of their children (now that they actually have some control over it). A great deal of good has been done with trigger laws, but not everyone agrees that all of the results have been good.
Critics believe that trigger laws will hurt innocent educators who get caught in the crossfire. Some say that the principal who was fired as part of the activation of trigger laws was not responsible for the problem, and was harmed entirely unjustly by trigger laws. Several critics are bothered by how one school district responded to threats of takeover, by funneling funding from other schools in the district to appease the parents. None of these cases are so clear cut that the claims of the critics can be verified, but they certainly do raise concerns about the potential for abuse. Of course, the biggest critic of trigger laws is teacher's unions, and because they have a strong monetary interest in the outcome, it is hard to imagine that they have a stronger interest in the education of the children than parents do.
Here is my take on the problem: The U.S. education system is currently pretty awful. Even our highest performing public schools cannot compete with schools in many other countries. We are so poor at effective teaching that many U.S. high school students would rather drop out than suffer through courses even half as rigorous as found in countries with decent education systems. This is a huge problem, and it is leading the U.S. to being one of the least competitive developed nations in cutting edge technology and science. Something needs to be done. Trigger laws allow parents to have more control over how their children are educated. Clearly, without practically any parental control, our education system is failing. At least trigger laws are allowing us to try something new. Given how bad our education system currently is, it is not likely to make it much worse. Now, I admit that there are concerns with trigger laws, and they may turn out to be a disaster. If they do, then I am all for removing them and trying something else. I am certainly not for removing them as a reaction to one or two situations where their propriety is a little ambiguous. I say let them run their course, then evaluate them and make revisions based on the results.
Perhaps the biggest argument teacher's unions have against trigger laws is that they can be used to fire union members without proving just cause. In the case where the principal was fired, some critics claimed that this person's life was ruined, when there was no evidence she was responsible for the problems the school had. This has led to some less than civil condemnations of trigger laws and parent oversight organizations that may activate them. This is certainly a concern, but is it really justification for cutting parents out of the education of their children? In my opinion, it is not. While educators have a contractual obligation to care about the education of their students, and many do care beyond this obligation, parents have the biggest interest in the education of their children. It is true that parents do not typically know as much about education as trained educators, but most parents can tell if their child's school is doing a poor job. It is a valid concern that parents may use trigger laws to do things that may not help, and this may result in harm to innocent educators. This is certainly a shame, but the cost of not reforming the education system will be far higher than just the occasional unlucky teacher loosing a job unfairly. Teacher's unions have managed to keep even some of the worst teachers in teaching positions, doing untold amounts of harm to innocent students; there needs to be some way of combating this, even if it does occasionally backfire. Every law has its costs. Giving control of education back to parents is worth the cost of occasional harm to a teacher. I see this as a check to the power of school districts and teacher's unions in deciding how to educate children.
One of the cases resulted in what could turn out to be a complete misappropriation of funds. The parents did not actually activate trigger laws, but they threatened to do so. The school in question was failing academically, but it was also allowing bullying to go unchecked. One mother said the school administration was consistently ignoring her complaints about the bullying of her daughter. Along with many other parents, she threatened the school district to activate trigger laws to take over the school and convert it into a charter school. The threat got the attention of the school district, who forced the school to communicate with the parents and address the bullying problem. The district also allocated $300,000 to hire new staff, in an effort to raise the academic performance of the school. Many critics saw the money as a bribe, and even some of the officials involved in creating the trigger laws were disconcerted with the results. The problem with the money is that it has to come from somewhere, and this means that some other schools in the district are being forced to run on lower funding to appease some parents of students at one particular school. This is certainly a concern, and it could even ultimately lead to competition between parent groups for different schools. This may lead to a need for legislation limiting the power of school districts to redistribute finances, but I do not think we need to jump the gun on this. The worst case scenario is that parents from all schools in a district demand additional funding for their schools, with threats to activate trigger laws. This would leave a school district in an impossible situation, where almost no one can be satisfied. I see two solutions to this problem. This first is, let the parents activate trigger laws, turn the schools into charters, and deal with the funding issues directly. Putting the funding issues into the hands of the parents would be an effective teaching opportunity. The second is, the state could provide more funding for the school district. The first is the natural consequence of the problem, and I suspect it would be very rare. Also, I suspect that after the first few instances, it would never happen again, because parents would quickly learn that the funding problem cannot be solved by wresting control of the schools. The second deals with the root of the problem. If all of the schools in a district are performing poorly due to lack of funding, then maybe the district is just not getting enough funding to provide a good education. Yes, it will probably require a tax increase, but if the state cannot provide a sufficient education at the current tax levels, it is probably time to raise taxes (consider this an investment; better educated graduates will generate more tax revenue, potentially allowing tax reductions in the future). While poor financial practices as a response to threats of trigger law activation is a valid concern, it is also likely a problem that will eventually go away as parents involved see the consequences of it.
The last concern I want to discuss is the fear that "parent unions" will pass around petitions for the activation of trigger laws without and discussion of the issues involved. Parent unions are groups of parents that organize, typically without involvement of school officials (in contrast with PTAs), with the goal of encouraging or enforcing reform by leveraging trigger laws. Without the involvement of school officials, it is feared that parents will make and enforce decisions for schools without understanding the issues well. This is also a very valid concern. People have become very complacent about political issues over the last few decades, and will often join movements or sign petitions based on uninformed emotional responses. This is not a problem exclusive to trigger laws. This is a general problem of self obsession in the U.S. Getting rid of good, useful laws that could be accidentally misused is not going to fix the problem. The problem is the people, not the laws. Now, that aside, I suspect that this problem will resolve itself with respect to trigger laws. Right now, trigger laws are very young, and good use of them is not well understood. It is highly likely that over the next few years, we will see some misuses as well as their consequences. As people become more familiar with appropriate and inappropriate uses of trigger laws, instances of misuse will become less and less common. It is very likely that this will evolve into deep dialog on the propriety of any activation of trigger laws long before anyone even starts passing around the petitions. It is also very likely that parent unions will learn to involve school officials in these discussions, to avoid making uninformed decisions that could cause harm.
There are many valid concerns with trigger laws, but none of them seem to be critical. Some may turn out to be too problematic or costly to tolerate. Others will probably go away as we learn from experience. Overall, the goals of trigger law are very good, and trigger laws have the potential to increase freedom and save our failing education system. I believe we need to keep them and deal with the consequences. As we begin to understand them better, we can refine them to reduce potential for abuses and increase the potential for good. While the initial uses of trigger laws will probably involve some poor choices, I think giving parents more control over how their children are educated will ultimately result in more cooperation between educators and parents in the long term. It will probably take some time for this new power balance to stabilize, but I believe it eventually will, for the good of the students and the U.S. education system.
