THEY’RE NOT DONATING MONTHLY!
Posted on 07/11/2011 9:27:56 PM PDT by neverdem
A group of parents in Western New York wants more than a mere “voice” in reforming the city’s failing schools.
Public school administrators often complain about parents’ apathy. If only parents would be more engaged with their children’s education, the lament goes, schools would have a much easier job. School district officials in Buffalo sound a different complaint: if only the parents weren’t so outspoken. A noisy group of 4,000 parent-activists are demanding more than just another “voice” in the listless reform “conversation,” but rather what one local journalist called “a place at the table with some juice to go with it.”
The “juice” in this case is a parent-empowerment law, also known as the parent trigger, which would allow parents at failing schools to petition the school district for certain reforms. About 40 parents and activists from Buffalo’s District Parent Coordinating Council (DPCC) and Buffalo ReformED, an education reform group, piled into a chartered bus just before dawn on June 15 and rode to the capitol in Albany to lobby legislators for the Parent Trigger Bill sponsored by a bipartisan duo from Buffalo—Democratic assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Republican senator Mark Grisanti. The parents’ effort underscores the need for a major transformation of the Buffalo Public School District, which serves nearly 33,000 students in 59 schools. The state lists 13 of those schools on its “Persistently Lowest Achievement” list, with another 13 on the bubble. Truancy is rampant, with over half of students in the district absent more than 20 school days. In a district with a majority black population, only about a quarter of black males graduate high school. Buffalo’s overall high school graduation rate is a pathetic 47 percent. And of those who manage to earn diplomas, just 15 percent are ready for college. The district’s board of education voted earlier this year to turn over seven struggling campuses to outside groups and has asked for $54 million in federal “school turnaround” grants.
Parents would like to ensure that money isn’t squandered, and they think a new law would be one way to do it. New York’s parent-trigger bill, which is confined to Buffalo for the time being, uses California’s landmark trigger law as a template but makes some significant changes. California’s law says half of parents at a failing school may petition a district for certain specified reforms; Buffalo’s parent trigger would require at least 55 percent of parents to sign on. In California, the available remedies include converting a school into an independent charter; firing and replacing half of the teachers; giving principals greater autonomy to extend school hours and offer after-school tutoring; and shutting down a school entirely. In Buffalo, closing a school would not be an option, taking a major bargaining chip off the table.
Unlike California’s law, which may soon be diluted by new regulations and further legislative meddling, however, the Buffalo proposal clearly spells out parents’ rights and officials’ responsibilities. The school district would have just 30 days to verify a petition. If the district determines it cannot implement a certain reform, parents have an ironclad right to appeal the decision to the state’s Board of Regents and supreme court. Significantly, once 30 percent of parents at a specified school have signed a petition, the district and the school targeted for transformation must hand over a directory of parents’ names and contact information to aid the signature-gathering process—essentially an Excelsior List for school reformers. Finally, the bill guards against unscrupulous community organizers as well as official obstruction by prohibiting “harassment or misuse of public funds focused on misinforming or threatening parents to dissuade them from organizing to transform their school.”
Grisanti says the bill is “the first step in allowing parents to come to the table and have a say in this school system that’s failing their students.” He introduced the measure in the waning days of the session just ended, and he’s confident that it will pass the senate next year. The legislation has the support of the Western New York legislative delegation, members of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, and the Buffalo Common Council. But without support from Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan, a Queens Democrat who chairs the education committee and controls which school-related bills come to a vote, the legislation has a slim chance of clearing the lower house. Nolan has sent conflicting signals on whether she’ll back the bill.
Meantime, Buffalo’s education establishment is playing as though the whole scheme smacks of unseemly electioneering. “Allowing a petition by parents would ignore the research, the other stakeholders, and leave the decision open to politics,” a condescending teachers’ union spokesman explained to the Buffalo News. “Would we have an election-style campaign where we have advertising and mailings and money being spent on both sides, lobbying parents?” Lou Petrucci, chairman of the school board’s finance committee, demanded to know how the DPCC parents paid for the lobbying trip, hinting that they might have misused state or federal Title I funds.
But Hannya Boulos, executive director of Buffalo ReformED, noted the underlying irony of parent-trigger opponents’ objections. “The district asks parents to lobby the legislature for more money in the budget all the time,” she said. “So this isn’t unusual.” And unlike the New York State United Teachers, the Buffalo parents don’t have $4.9 million to spend this year on lobbyists. Boulos said her organization, which employs three paid staffers (including herself) and operates out of a basement, paid a few hundred dollars for the bus trip to Albany and for lunch. “Basically peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some bottled water,” she told me.
The point of a parent trigger, Boulos says, isn’t necessarily to let parents usurp the roles of elected school board members or undermine principals and teachers, but rather, to give parents leverage. Teachers’ unions and district bureaucrats speak piously about respecting the “input” of various “stakeholders.” And though voters may technically have a say in electing their local school board, the reality is that fewer than 4 percent of eligible voters turn out for those low-profile, off-year plebiscites. Every stakeholder wields considerable power and influence, except for the parents.
Not until Buffalo parents and students staged a one-day boycott of the schools on May 16 did the district bureaucrats begin to pay more than just lip service to their concerns. Sam Radford, vice president of the District Parent Coordinating Council, justified the boycott in an interview with WIVD News. “We have to have the courage and take the risk to interrupt the way the system is operating,” he explained. “The system is broken.” Of course, rolling boycotts aren’t practical, and skipping school to make a point about a system plagued by truancy sends a mixed message, to say the least. But the parents have no plans to quit, and it’s a testament to their perseverance that they have come this far in such a short time. The parent trigger would place a lawful check on other education establishment interests by empowering the special interest that matters most.
Ben Boychuk is associate editor of City Journal.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
I'm a fan of Salena Zito. That's how I found that link. Good luck Buffalo!
Ping
Don’t kid yourselves. The only parent involvement schools are interested in is fundraising. That’s it.
Seems to me it research that got the public schrul system in to the state it is in. Also where else in the Western World is OK to do research on children with out the knowledge or consent of the parents? That has been going on in the public educational system of this country now for at least half a century.
Also who are these other stakeholders and why do they matter and why should they get a place at the table? I assume that this teacher’s union rep is talking about the teachers and their union. Well to me they don’t count when we are talking stakeholders. They are employees and where in the real world do employees get a say in whether a facility gets shutdown or employees laid off. If they were doing their job the issue would not be in the political arena. By the way when it comes to public funds and what they pay for politics are going to be involved.
Getting back to stake holders; why are only parents permitted to sign petitions? Every individual who pays taxes to support the public schools should be eligible to sign the petition. If they pay for it they should have a say. Many parents may pay nothing to support the schools and they get a say but an individual who pays thousands in taxes to the schools has no say? That is immoral.
Home school.
Public schools are a failed experiment.
Government can not be trusted with the education of children.
That right and responsibility lies solely with parents.
And what of private schools, in your view?
I thought parents, especially Inner City parents, essentially all went on strike when it comes to raising and educating their kids.
...don’t tell me the teachers have been lying to us? Naa, never, not those little angels.
If you ever want to see the most disgusting of pandering power plays, go to watch ‘involved’ parents at elementary/middle schools kiss teachers arses to curry favor for their child.
They do teacher’s grading/work, buy hundreds, in some cases thousands of dollars worth of ‘materials’ for the class that the evil ‘republican budget cuts took away’; They will display the most sycophantic behavior on earth short of the royal suckups in a king’s court. And then that sleep their way to the childs better grades thing...
Some very ‘proper’ and ‘well respected’ people are quite guilty of that.
Yes, it happens in small and big town/city schools alike.
Then they brag to all their friends how great teacher x is in every public social arena available. A group formed to actually get something positive done in a school would be instantly set upon by these ‘involved’ parents.
The actual parent wanting to be involved for real is in for a shock when the ‘politics’ of the modern way of doing things comes to their attention.
I’ve both homeschooled and sent my children to private schools. I think both are viable options.
I live in NC, ranked in the bottom area nationally. Also in one of the larger cities where they say public ed is better than in the rural areas of the state. Everyone I meet or hear speaking about education (like when I sit waiting for my children at a dance class or whatever) say that they know the dismal state of ed. in NC BUT their child’s school is “one of the good ones” or their child’s teacher is “one of the good ones”. I ask them questions like “what makes a good school a good school” or “Can you tell me what sorts of things would distinguish a good teacher from a not-so-good teacher?” I get responses like “my child just loves her teacher” or “she is so good with the kids”. Never anything quantifiable or concrete. I have asked them things such as “do you know where your child’s teacher went to school and what they majored in?” and gotten deer in the headlight stares.
The first step would be to move the election to the regular November general election date. The next step would be to eliminate the "board" in favor of a single, accountable superintendent, elected every 2 to 4 years.
The big step would be to abolish the teachers unions entirely.
Buffalo has TWO things to recommend it. It gave us Jack Kempo, and beef-on-a-wick..
And Buffalo wings! Mmmm!
Absolutely..but they’ve become universal..
I just snicker silently to myself as they complain about the homework, the bus schedule, the teacher workdays, the snow days, the EOG tests, the fundraisers, the social wars, and all the rest.
8^) Me too.
Private schools, of course, generally excel and there are many different interesting educational focus options, i.e., different types of schools, because parents can always switch schools if they are not happy. Many of them stake their “claim to fame” to what their students achieve after graduation, so they work very hard to prepare students for the desired results. If those results are what the parent desires, i.e., entry into a certain music college, entry into certain colleges which provide an excellent gateway into certain professions, etc., then they are the best route to those results.
IMHO...
That being said, Scripturally parents are given the responsibility to teach in a rather direct way. The Bible never says “have your children taught at the best schools” but instead “teach your children”. At the same time, there is no explicit prohibition from having someone else teach your children. So perhaps one could interpret either way if viewed just from that perspective.
Personally, my thoughts are that during any given day, children can pose questions that require very delicate answers, and they can make statements of a very personal nature. They may at different points want to talk about very personal issues. Issues can arise: what constitutes mature Christian behavior, work ethic, topics from subjects other than the one being studied at the moment, what clothes to wear; anything, really. If these issues come up during the day while the child is at school, it’s difficult to expect the child to simply jot these things down and save them for when they get home, allowing the parent to provide their own guidance.
When a child has these conversations at school, they have them with teachers or other students. If they are homeschooled, they may have them with a sibling or their parent, and at least the parent can usually be aware of them if they are supervising the learning. Each such conversation is an opportunity for the parent to gain valuable insight into the child’s thinking and to guide and train them, or perhaps “file away” in their mind for future reference. If the child is away at school, the parent not only loses the opportunity, but turns it over to someone outside their family, and, in the case of non-Christian schools, possibly to someone with vastly different Christian doctrine or even an unbeliever. The parent is left with asking “so what happened in school today”.
Having all these moments while a child is young and very impressionable and in the care of someone else would require an enormous amount of trust in that “someone else”. As they get older, one would think that issue subsides, but of course they simply move on to more mature issues.
So though I personally favor home schooling, private schools, if carefully selected and actively engaged in, can provide a result that is far superior to government schools.
Of course, government schools were originally seen as “educating the masses” and thereby providing for the “General Welfare”, though they now purge Christianity from children so such provision is no longer true if it ever was. However, private schools fit perfectly within the framework of the Constitution: the authority and responsibility are left with parents.
Teachers and principals do what they darned well feel like. The parent is a mere annoyance.
( Yeah! I am shouting.)
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