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2/2/2011: PTA urges state to strengthen and straighten out "parent trigger" law

A guest column about the "parent-trigger" law by California State PTA President Jo A.S. Loss has been published in The Educated Guess, a high-profile education blog by John Fensterwald, a journalist who has covered education in California for many years. Read the column below.

By Jo A.S. Loss

Recent events at McKinley Elementary School in the Compton Unified School District have brought to light flaws in the state's new parent empowerment or "trigger" law. This law must be fixed immediately so that the actual process for empowering parents is as worthy as the goal.

Using the new "trigger" provision, parents at McKinley were asked to sign a petition to turn their low-performing school into a charter school to be run by an outside organization. Unfortunately, this first real-world application of the new trigger provision has deeply divided the school's community and pitted well-meaning parents against each other.

Read the entire column here.