Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch

  The demands of NCLB provided grist for advocates of the parent trigger. In communities with high numbers of students who had limited English skills or were impoverished, many schools were not on track to meet NCLB’s impossible target of 100 percent proficiency by 2014. Because of No Child Left Behind, thousands of schools across the state had been labeled low performing. Thus, large numbers of schools were ripe for a parent revolution.

  But even though the law was passed early in 2010, no groups of parents stepped up to pull the parent trigger. In the fall of 2010, Parent Revolution sent organizers to McKinley Elementary, a low-performing school in Compton, California, to solicit parent signatures. According to the Web site, “Parent Revolution organizers spent three months talking to McKinley parents, educating them about the academic situation at their school, training them in community organizing and leadership techniques, and gathering signatures.” The Parent Revolution organizers, not the parents, gathered the signatures of 61 percent of the parents in the school, demanding that their public school be handed over to the Celerity charter chain (Parent Revolution chose the charter operator). The petition was presented to the local school board in December 2010. The school board questioned the legitimacy of the signatures, each side accused the other of intimidation, and the battle ended up in court. Celerity opened a charter school nearby, but only about one-third of the 61 percent who signed the petition, sent their children there. The Los Angeles Times noted that the results of the “parent trigger” legislation were modest: “A dozen or so parent groups have formed throughout the state to consider reforms, and only a couple of those are interested in abandoning their traditional public schools for charters. Some merely want a new principal; others seek to make it easier to get rid of teachers who consistently let their students down. Some yearn for basic, common-sense services such as regular communication from teachers.”3

  The next candidate for the parent trigger was Desert Trails Elementary School in the Adelanto School District, about eighty miles from Los Angeles. Parent Revolution worked with dissatisfied parents, and in January 2012 parent leaders presented a petition with the signatures of nearly 70 percent of the parents. The Parent Revolution community organizers had circulated two petitions, one demanding changes in the school, the other calling for a charter school takeover. But only the latter petition was presented to the school board. Some parents sought to withdraw their names from the petition, and the school board invalidated their signatures, dropping support to 37 percent. The matter went to court, and a county judge ruled that parents were not allowed to rescind their names once they signed the petition. Victorious, the parent leaders—with Parent Revolution’s help—invited charter operators to apply to run the school. When it came time to choose between two charters that stepped forward, parents who did not sign the original petition were not allowed to vote. Only fifty-three parents in a school with more than six hundred students chose the new charter operator. Ironically, only a year earlier, the district had closed down a charter school in Adelanto, because the charter operator had formed a for-profit company to sell goods and services to the school, apparently at inflated prices.4

  Although Parent Revolution described itself as a progressive organization, its ideas found immediate resonance on the right end of the political spectrum. Inspired by the California law, two deeply conservative states—Mississippi and Texas—promptly passed similar laws. Another deeply conservative state, Louisiana, passed a parent trigger law in 2012, and others soon followed.

  The conservative Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank in Chicago, wrote its own version of the parent trigger law, which would allow parents in the bottom 20 percent of schools (that is, the schools where the proportion of students who pass state tests is lowest) to take control and included the option that they could demand a voucher for private and religious schools. Heartland took its ideas to ALEC, the secretive national group of corporations and state legislators who favor free-market ideology. ALEC was so impressed by the parent trigger concept that it created its own model legislation and sent it out to states across the nation. Legislators in nearly twenty states introduced parent trigger laws. Gloria Romero, the state senator who championed the parent trigger legislation in California, ran for state superintendent and came in third; after her defeat, she went to work for Democrats for Education Reform, the organization created by Wall Street hedge fund managers to promote charters and other corporate-style reforms. DFER embraced the parent trigger idea, which enlisted parents as the agents of charter school expansion.5

  Not all parents warmed to the idea of a parent trigger. Parents Across America (PAA) condemned the parent trigger and said that it “creates potential for abuse, turmoil, and massive divisiveness within school communities. It undermines the democratic process by privatizing public space and strips control from School Boards whom we’ve elected to represent us.” PAA saw no value in pitting parents against teachers, parents against principals, and parents against parents. It warned that the underlying goal of the trigger was to hand public schools over to private charter operators and corporations.6

  The next battleground for the parent trigger was Florida. There, the idea was strongly supported by the former governor Jeb Bush and the gadfly Michelle Rhee. The adoption of a parent trigger law seemed to be a foregone conclusion since the state was controlled by conservative Republicans, who paid close heed to Jeb Bush’s advice. But when the legislature took up the issue in 2012 and again in 2013, something surprising happened. Parent groups from across the state opposed it. Here was a seeming paradox. The act was called the Parent Empowerment Act (as it was in California), yet no Florida parent organizations endorsed it. On the contrary, they descended on Tallahassee and told their legislators they didn’t want it. Such groups as the Florida PTA, Save Duval Schools, 50th No More, Fund Education Now, and Testing Is Not Teaching objected to the bill. Parent leaders saw the parent trigger as an “underhanded ploy” by well-funded groups to hand public schools over to private charter operators. Parent Revolution flew parents in from California to testify on behalf of the legislation. Five Republican senators joined Democrats to oppose the bill. When the senators deadlocked 20–20 on the bill, it died. Only the week before, they had joined forces to defeat a proposal to privatize state prisons. They were, according to The Miami Herald, “a band of renegade senators” who “argued that public education, like public safety, is a core mission of government that shouldn’t be outsourced to private vendors.”7

  The Orlando Sentinel, which supports charter schools, was glad to see the parent trigger bill die: “Touted as a way to give parents at failing schools a stronger voice in picking turnaround plans, this bad bill would have cued the stampede of for-profit charter school companies looking to sweet talk frustrated parents and turn a fast buck.” The newspaper noted that the legislature was busily creating double standards for charter schools and public schools. Another bill promised $55 million for charter school construction but nothing for public schools. And the “accountability-preaching lawmakers” wanted to exempt charters from the tough teacher evaluation measures they imposed on public schools in 2011. The editorial insightfully recognized that the legislature was creating an “uneven playing field,” showing favoritism toward charter schools and setting up public schools to fail. The point of the uneven playing field, the editorial noted, was to open the door “for charter schools—which play by different rules—to play savior.”8

  Undeterred, the conservative mayors Kevin Johnson of Sacramento (Michelle Rhee’s husband) and Cory Booker of Newark (a member of the board of the hedge fund managers’ DFER) brought the parent trigger idea to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in June 2012. The conference passed the proposal unanimously as part of a long laundry list of resolutions covering various issues connected to economic development, the arts, transportation, infrastructure needs, tourism, energy, consumer affairs, crime, federal relations, and others. Like all reform proposals, the parent trigger idea was couche
d in uplifting rhetoric about improving the prospects of minority students trapped in “dropout factories” and giving their parents the power “to ensure that no child is trapped in a failing school.”9

  It was impossible to know whether the mayors gave a moment’s thought to what they were endorsing. Another prime sponsor, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, whose constituents already had access to the parent trigger, told a reporter from Reuters, “Mayors understand at a local level that most parents lack the tools they need to turn their schools around.” According to the news report, “Hundreds of mayors from across the United States this weekend called for new laws letting parents seize control of low-performing public schools and fire the teachers, oust the administrators or turn the schools over to private management.”10

  Did the mayors really want parents to “seize control” of the lowest-performing schools in their cities? Did they really think through whether this made any sense? Were they truly convinced that the best way to improve schools was through a process of parent takeovers? Did they believe that parents in the nation’s poorest communities were best suited to fire the staffs and run the schools themselves? And did they really approve of the idea that parents should take charge of public property and hand it over to a private operator of their choosing?

  Would they feel equally enthusiastic about encouraging the tenants in public housing projects to seize control and privatize their buildings? How would they react if riders on a public bus decided to seize control and give the bus to a private company? What about the patrons who use a public park and are organized by a private park-concession corporation to demand control so they can turn it over to the concessionaire? Or the patrons of a public library? Would the mayors support them too?

  A public school belongs to the public whose taxes built it and maintain it. It does not belong to the parents whose children are enrolled this year. Parents whose children are enrolled this year should not be given ownership of a school that belongs to the entire community and to future students and parents. Those who sign a petition this year may not even be parents in the school next year. Giving them the power to privatize public property is irresponsible. If the students in a public school have low test scores, it is the responsibility of those in charge of the district to evaluate the school and bring whatever changes are necessary to improve student performance. The district leadership is responsible for guaranteeing that every school has the resources and personnel it needs to provide a sound education.

  The theory of parent empowerment makes no sense. If the cure rate in a hospital were low, one would not expect the patients to seize control and fire the staff. The very idea of the parent trigger is an insult to the education profession and a pretense that turning the schools over to parents will solve problems that are not only educational but social and economic as well. There is a sort of Occupy Wall Street tone to the parent trigger idea, but we know how the mayors responded to the protesters who filled public parks in the summer of 2011. Occupy Wall Street was a ragtag group of demonstrators who demanded the kinds of redistributive policies that the parent trigger pretends to offer. The mayors closed down their tent cities with as much force as they thought necessary. Yet less than a year later, the mayors encouraged parents to “occupy” the public schools, an action likely to result in a transfer of public property to private charter chains.

  The Los Angeles Times opined that the parent trigger idea was a disappointment. More than two years after it passed, it noted, there had not exactly been a race by parents to take control of their schools. The editorial noted that Parent Revolution had been started and funded by charter school supporters, but now even they had doubts about taking over low-performing schools. Charter schools, it said, prefer to start a new school with a lottery that attracts motivated parents. “But under the parent trigger, charter schools have to accept all students within the low-performing school’s attendance boundaries, just as regular public schools do. Few charter operators have been willing to work under that scenario, which tends to result in less dramatic test results for them. Furthermore, the current woeful state of school funding makes it difficult if not impossible for charter schools to provide needed resources—just as it’s difficult for traditional public schools. And turning around a deeply troubled school is harder than starting a new school with its own campus culture.” The newspaper concluded that other states should “look for evidence that it is making schools better” before enacting a similar law.11

  In their eagerness to build public support for the parent trigger, corporate reformers trumpeted the release of a Hollywood movie dramatizing the idea called Won’t Back Down, with big-name stars and a national opening in twenty-five hundred theaters. Michelle Rhee held screenings of the film at both the Democratic and the Republican National Conventions in 2012. It was featured on NBC’s annual “Education Nation” broadcast. Its stars appeared on national television programs. In the background was its producer, Walden Media, which was also a producer of the documentary Waiting for “Superman.” The owner of Walden Media is Philip Anschutz, a billionaire libertarian who funds conservative think tanks and conservative causes, such as the anti-gay Proposition 8 in California, hydrofracking, and the Discovery Institute, which promotes “intelligent design.”12 He also owns the nation’s largest chain of theaters.

  But none of the publicity was enough to sell the movie. It received bad reviews, and ticket sales were abysmal. Within a month of its opening in September 2012, it had almost completely disappeared from the nation’s theaters. The public was not interested in paying to see another movie bashing public schools, teachers, and unions.

  Somehow the public got it, even if the politicians did not. There is no evidence that schools will improve if parents seize control, fire the staff, and turn the school over to privately managed charter corporations. It seems odd to legislate a remedy that not only has no evidence behind it but that has never actually been put into practice anywhere before the legislation was passed. Florida parents were justified in concluding that the parent trigger was a ruse intended to trick parents into privatizing their schools and losing any say in how they are run.

  As Parents Across America warned, the parent trigger mirrors the federal government’s punitive approach of firing staff and closing a school or privatizing it. PAA thought that parents should have positive choices about improving their school. It advised that parents should be involved in developing school improvement strategies in conjunction with professional educators. It urged the implementation of research-based approaches to improvement, tailored to the needs of the students, the school, and the community.13

  Seen within the context of the larger corporate reform movement, the parent trigger was initially advanced by charter supporters and then quickly embraced by the most conservative legislators and states. Whatever its original intention, the parent trigger became a tool to advance privatization and promote the interests not of parents but of charter organizations.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Failure of Vouchers

  CLAIM Students who receive vouchers for private and religious schools will experience dramatic success.

  REALITY There is no evidence for this claim.

  The idea of vouchers has been on the fringes of education debates since 1955. That was when the University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman proposed vouchers as a way to end the squabbling over Catholic schools. Catholics had long complained that they paid taxes for schools but were barred from receiving any public funding. Friedman maintained that if every family got a voucher, then every family could send their children to the school of their choice, whether it was public, private, or religious. That was a solution, he thought, that would satisfy everyone. His essay appeared as the country was reacting to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, which overturned laws permitting racially segregated schools. States that wanted to preserve racial segregation immediately turned to school choice as their first line of
defense, and for many years school choice was widely understood by the courts and the public as a strategy to preserve school segregation.1

  Those events occurred long ago, and the nation seems now to have accepted that a high degree of actual segregation is tolerable so long as it is not mandated explicitly by law. When big-city districts have schools with few, if any, white students, it is not newsworthy. When school districts open schools intended only for black students, it is not newsworthy. When charter schools appeal to one racial or ethnic or cultural group, it is not newsworthy. Long forgotten is the Supreme Court’s 1954 finding that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Because students and families are not compelled by law to attend racially separate schools, the new form of segregation is now ignored, accepted, and treated as unremarkable.

  Also forgotten is that public schools were created by communities and states for a civic purpose. In the nineteenth century, they were often called “common schools.” They were a project of the public commons, the community. They were created to build and sustain democracy, to teach young people how to live and work together with others, and to teach the skills and knowledge needed to participate fully in society. Inherent in the idea of public education was a clear understanding that educating the younger generation was a public responsibility, shared by all, whether or not they had children in the public schools, whether or not they even had children.

  For many years, the voucher idea didn’t go far, because most Americans were unwilling to see their tax dollars fund religious or private schools. Whenever a voucher proposal was put to a vote, it was rejected by the public at the polls. However, the advocates for vouchers never gave up the hope of prevailing. In 1990, John Chubb and Terry Moe described school choice as “a panacea” that “has the capacity all by itself to bring about the kind of transformation that, for years, reformers have been seeking to engineer in myriad other ways.” The federal courts had once been vigilant in opposition to school choice, which might be used to evade school desegregation. However, as the Supreme Court became more conservative, it abandoned its close scrutiny of school segregation and its demand for racial integration. Additionally, the idea of choice lost whatever negative connotation it had as many urban districts created magnet schools to hold or attract white families.2