Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Mayors Gone Mad « Diane Ravitch's blog

Mayors Gone Mad « Diane Ravitch's blog:


Mayors Gone Mad

The annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution endorsing the so-called parent trigger idea.
The parent trigger means that any 51% of parents at a school can sign a petition, and as the Reuters article about it, said “seize control” of the school.
Once the parents have seized control, with the endorsement of the mayors, they can fire the staff or hand the school over to a charter corporation. In other words, they can seize public property and privatize it.
This is nuts.
The parent trigger idea was hatched by a group called “Parent Revolution,” which is richly endowed by the billionaire boys’ club: the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation. These are not