Summary: 1st hour Parent Trigger Law-The idea is simple but powerful: Give us, the parents, the chance to turn around failing schools. The parent trigger, as it's known, allow the parents of students at a chronically underperforming school the ability to determine, via a majority vote, when and how school reform can come about. In other words, the parent trigger takes educational decision-making away from politicians and bureaucrats and empowers those who have the most at stake.Often, the parent trigger means converting a traditional public school into a charter school. But it can also mean less drastic measures like ousting the principal and other leadership, hiring new teachers or taking any one of the number of other steps that can improve a school – but too often aren't undertaken in our hidebound, change-resistant school bureaucracy.There is already a parent trigger on the books in California, where an elementary school in Compton became the first in the entire country to be taken over by the parent trigger last year. "We need to create change [at McKinley], not only because my kids go there, but for everybody. We, as parents, need to do what's best for our kids," one parent said during the petition drive. There is also a similar (and somewhat weaker) version of the same legislation in Conn. And it could be headed to New York; a bill has already been introduced in the state Assembly. 2nd hour Terrible Tuesday..OPEN TOPIC
