This week has been a big one for education reform. On Monday, former DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee launched her new project, StudentsFirst. On Tuesday, parents in Compton, CA announced that they had organized 61% of parents in their community to support converting their long-struggling elementary school into a high-performing charter. Today, I was fortunate enough to join some of those parents to show my support for their efforts. All week long, I've been talking about the importance of working together and moving forward to improve achievement and demand success in our public schools.
The Parent Trigger is an amazing tool for change because it empowers parents to make decisions on behalf of the single most important stakeholders in education reform: the students. Under a new law passed last year in the California Legislature, when 51% of parents at a failing school sign a petition, it triggers a menu of reform options that allows them to make changes--small or large--to boost achievement and success.
I was proud to stand with eight of California's Big Ten mayors in support of the transformational legislation, and I was proud to stand today with the brave parents who are pulling the trigger for education reform in their community. Education reform isn't just about improving test scores or increasing funding, it's about building a community around our schools that is supportive of and responsive to the needs of teachers and students.
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Mayor, we know Eli Broad's money is critical for your political future, but could you please stop the constant dishonesty? The trigger law was leveraged into the State legislature by the biggest enemies of parental and community control there are -- Ben Austin of LAPU/PR and Gloria Romero of DFER. Please Mayor, tell us how much power parents have over the unelected, secretive, private boards of charter-voucher schools?
We also understand that Ben's wife, Tracy Austin of Austin Egoscue Development (whose office is conveniently a block or two from Eli's headquarters) is your primary Fundraising Consultant.
http://austinegoscue.com/clients
Mayor, your long history of malfeasance and collusion in conjunction with Ben Austin in order to capture market share for your CCSA allies is well documented:
http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_13185224
In other words, you're not fooling anyone.
Instead of constantly serving the interests of the well heeled charter-voucher industry, could you just once listen to the community and what we want? We want public schools run by our communities, not privatized schools run by the CMO/EMO plutocrats.
The schools that Villaraigosa took over under an initiative he formulated actually were WORSE bureaucratically than that of the LAUSD and this initiative was a colossal failure as a result. Villaraigosa has no credibility on this issue.