Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the “Parent Trigger”
by Scott Baumgartner
When Michelle Rhee’s organization Students First released its policy agenda last week, it tracked closely with many of the things she tried to do as chancellor of the DC Public Schools. But her agenda contains some surprises that have traditionally been part of the conservative approach to education reform, asnoted by Stephen Sawchuk at Education Week. One such aspect is her support for vouchers, though she takes great pains to avoid calling them by that toxic name. A somewhat newer idea she supports is the “parent trigger.” (Though many of the leaders of the parent trigger effort in California were actually Democrats, similar proposals in other states have been championed by Republicans.) In this radical reform option, dissatisfied parents can initiate a petition in an attempt to restructure a failing community school. California passed the first such law in the nation last year and in December, parents in Compton collected the necessary signatures to restructure McKinley Elementary School.
The parent trigger may sound like a bold idea to improve parent involvement in children’s schools. Rhee and Students First calls it “radical community empowerment” that “shifts power to the parents whose children are fated to attend chronically failing schools.” But the truth is somewhat cloudier. The parents who delivered the petitions to the Compton Unified School district were organized by Parent Revolution, a group whom, according to the L.A. Weekly, Michelle Rhee herself consulted with. It has an operating budget of about a million dollars, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation, among others.
Does a private organization’s involvement in the petition to restructure McKinley invalidate the signatures? To whom has the power been shifted – parents or opportunistic private organizers? On the one hand,