What if the federal law guaranteed every child equal educational opportunity, and if they didn’t get it, their parents could sue? That’s one of the more compelling suggestions in a collection of education ideas for the next president, released this week by Bellwether Education Partners. It comes from Ben Austin,[Read More…]
Parent Trigger
Parent trigger, revisited
A so-called parent trigger law is the rare education reform policy that didn’t make it in Florida. It’s still on the books in California, though, and in the years since it was twice defeated here, it’s had more time to mature. So how’s it working? The Hechinger Report looks at some of the[Read More…]
Mr. Gibbons’ Report Card: Parent empowerment, transparent transparency and sad, but happy birthdays
Gloria Romero Gloria Romero, a former Democratic majority leader of the California Senate, helped pass a bill that required parents to be informed if their child attended a school in the bottom 10 percent of all public schools in California. If they did, the parents could stick around at[Read More…]
Gloria Romero gives parent empowerment a new push
California’s parent empowerment law spawned organizing campaigns aimed at transforming individual schools by parent petition, and went on to inspire legislative showdowns over similar “parent trigger” legislation across the country, including in Florida. Yet that was only half of what the law did. Another part of the 2010 statute could affect students[Read More…]
Democratic leaders will follow parents on ed reform, eventually
Editor’s note: This is the sixth post in our series on the Democratic Party’s growing divide over ed reform and ed choice. by Ben Austin One of my first jobs after graduating from college was working on the 1992 Clinton campaign, then working in the Clinton White House. As a[Read More…]
StudentsFirst winding down FL operation
Michelle Rhee’s education reform group is scaling back its Florida operations, saying it wants to focus on policy battles elsewhere. StudentsFirst will maintain a nominal presence in the state, but it’s pulling out most of its policy and outreach resources. Some of its leadership positions in the state, including state[Read More…]

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redefinED roundup: Catholics push for school choice, education races in ME and SC and more news
Alabama: Scott Beaulier, chair of the Economics and Finance Division at Troy University, says there is a large body of evidence supporting vouchers but the U.S. Department of Justice and others keep getting in the way (AL.com). The Alabama Education Association spent $7 million to defeat school choice and education reform[Read More…]

- Bipartisanship
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- Vouchers
redefinED roundup: Charter schools and civil rights, debating the merits of charters, and can parents be trusted?
Alabama: Cameron Smith, vice president of the Alabama Policy Institute, shows readers the students who benefit from the Alabama Accountability Act (AL.com). Arizona: Gil Shapiro, a spokesman for FreeThought Arizona, says parents can’t be trusted to home-school or choose a good school for their child (Arizona Daily Star). Linda Thomas, a[Read More…]