It is disappointing that Senator-Elect Jamilah Nasheed wants to bring the parent trigger law to Missouri. It is interesting that she did not explain what parent trigger does. Parent trigger laws are the fad du jour of right wing enemies of public education. It is another scheme for expanding the tentacles of charter schools in our community.
On the surface it sounds good. What could be wrong with giving parents more control and another mechanism to fix the problems in their schools? But parent trigger is being used around the country to remove low-performing schools from the governance of school districts and transform them into charter schools.
Have we have forgotten how many charter schools have closed over the last 10 years? Not to mention that six Imagine charters which were the lowest-performing schools in St. Louis that were closed last spring? Many Imagine parents loved those low-performing schools and did not understand why they were being closed. There is no guarantee that parent trigger will provide improved schools.
With the closing of those six schools the school choice advocates, and Nasheed is one, must be desperate to quickly replace their failing schools with more of the same. How can parent trigger work when parents are given inadequate information consisting of relentless marketing and propaganda about which schools are best for their children? Parent trigger is just a distraction, a means to muddy the landscape, rather than a tool to achieve better schools.
The wealthy, powerful people, who control so much of what happens nationally, do not intend for all of our children to get the quality education they need to succeed. So, they will do whatever it takes to make it harder for schools to succeed by limiting resources and using the media outlets they own to alienate parents from their children’s schools and teachers. Charter schools, voucher programs and now parent trigger laws are their creation, pushed by organizations they fund, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, to confuse parents and dilute the constituency for public education.
If people only care about their one little school, they will not have the political power to fight for more resources for their school in our woefully educationally underfunded state. Likewise, as more families are convinced to remove their children from public school districts, the districts’ ability to muster political support for greater resources shrinks. As a result all of our children suffer the consequences of being educated in institutions which are unable to garner enough political support to motivate the legislature to adequately fund public education.
Nasheed touts the idea of parent trigger laws increasing accountability. But what does it mean? It means closing schools. And that is what the school choice advocates want, the closure of low-performing schools. They are happy when charter schools close and ask why low-performing district public schools don’t close as well.
Several charter schools have already closed and been replaced by “new” schools in the same building, with nearly the same students, staff and principals. So we have revolving-door schools which close and reopen under new management without ever addressing the fundamental problems of low academic achievement.
Children living lives marred by poverty have enough challenges without being subjected to continuously closing schools, without their parents plagued by the burden of searching for yet another school. They need stable, well-resourced schools. School choice will not guarantee them.
To a certain extent, highly mobile low-income families victimized by substandard housing and the economic insecurity posed by our low-wage economy, are constantly moving their children from school to school as is. The detrimental effect of mobility on academic achievement has also been well documented. How are children helped by schools which are expected to close?
Ensuring that all children receive the education they need and deserve is the imperative of our time. There are forces galvanized to prevent the children from receiving the excellent education they deserve. Parent trigger laws distract parents from the real battle that must be fought.
