Like the Democratic Party platform on education, this is no surprise: Democratic tension over school choice and parental empowerment is on display at in Charlotte. But some of the developments and statements are still worth logging in.

StudentsFirst co-sponsored a special screening of the new movie “Won’t Back Down” at the DNC yesterday, just as it did at the RNC in Tampa last week. And in the panel discussion that followed, Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution, told the audience that the parent trigger law – upon which the movie is loosely based – is a progressive idea aimed at giving parents more power to right struggling schools. According to coverage of the panel by Education Week’s Politics K-12 blog:

The laws allow parents to "unionize and collectively bargain, just like teachers' unions," said Austin, who served in the Clinton White House. "Parent trigger fundamentally makes public schools more public. ... We need to be modern 21st-century progressives" who stand for government working.

To be sure, people like Austin and former California state Sen. Gloria Romero have tried, mightily, to dispel the notion that the trigger is a right-wing creation, but the myth persists. In June, the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously endorsed the parent trigger idea, and among the big-city Democrats who led the charge was Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Villaraigosa is chairman of the Democratic National Convention this year, as the Huffington Post notes in this piece over the weekend. He’s also a former teachers union organizer. Wrote the HuffPo: “It is hard to paint the school reform movement as a right-wing conspiracy. Support for taking on teachers’ unions is growing in Democratic and liberal circles.”

More DNC coverage of the growing divide between Dems and teachers unions in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Times.

by Gloria Romero

Diane Ravitch, are you listening?

This is former state Sen. Gloria Romero calling.

I am the author of California’s first Parent Trigger law, the first parent trigger law in the nation. Since I first wrote that law, some 15 other states have seen some version of the law introduced in their states.
I wanted to reach out to you since we have never met, and I look forward to meeting you so we can one day talk directly with each other. Woman to woman.

In one of your recent blog posts on Education Week, you wrote that the parent trigger came from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). On the blogosphere, I now read many claims that ALEC wrote the law. This is completely false, and I ask you to correct this.

Please, stop saying that some organization I had never met until just this year gave me the idea and somehow, miraculously, turned it into law without me not knowing about it. ALEC happens to like the law and encourages other states to write similar laws. That is true. But that does not mean it developed either the idea or the law. That’s preposterous!  Quite frankly, it’s also a bit sexist and ethnocentric to assert my work actually came from someone else - that somehow the Latina senator from East Los Angeles couldn’t think on my own, or figure out how to write a bill and turn it into law.

To be fair, you are not alone in failing to acknowledge my role, or the role of other strong individuals (mostly women of color) in getting the bill passed. I always recognize Ben Austin from Parent Revolution for suggesting the idea. Unfortunately, the materials Parent Revolution distributes make it sound as if parents cascaded on the state Capitol and forced this into law. It seldom concedes in its materials that someone actually had to write a bill and argue and negotiate for its enactment. While it sounds romantic to say parents demanded this and descended on the Capitol to force this into law, that is too much Hollywood.  In fact, we did have parents in Sacramento. But many of them were from organizations that were not affiliated with Parent Revolution, and they are seldom acknowledged.

One day I will write the full story of how the Parent Empowerment Act (its official title) became law. In the meantime, let it suffice to say that both you and Parent Revolution and anyone else who writes about the law should know that once the idea was discussed with me, I chose to expand and develop it in a bill. I developed a strategy. I worked with my legislative staff to write language. I assembled a “rag tag” army of civil rights activists who understood that this was our moment to enact the change in which I so strongly believed. And I never saw an ALEC representative. (more…)

It’s getting harder and harder for critics to torpedo education reform ideas like the “parent trigger” by distorting political affiliations. The evidence just keeps getting in the way.

The latest example is what happened at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Orlando last weekend. With prominent Democrats leading the charge, the mayors in a voice vote unanimously endorsed parent triggers, which aim to help fed-up, low-income parents turn around struggling schools.

“Too many districts,” their resolution said (go to page 169), “continue to turn a blind eye toward some of the worst performing schools … ”

Now, whatever you think of parent triggers as a school-improvement tool – and there’s plenty of room for fair-minded debate here - it’s undeniable that critics have gotten considerable traction by portraying the notion as conservative, corporate, far-right and Republican. This was especially true in Florida. Parent trigger legislation was narrowly defeated in March after weeks of being caricatured as another sinister device for Jeb Bush, the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council to mine billions of dollars from the privatization of public schools. (If you think my description is over the top, please watch this video.)

It’s true a lot of “conservative” ed reformers like the idea of a parent trigger. But it’s true, too, that the idea of giving low-income parents leverage and options, including the possibility of converting their schools into charter schools, has roots in “liberal/progressive” circles. (My apologies for the air quotes; after covering education in Florida for eight years, the labels just no longer make sense to me.) The sponsor of the original parent trigger bill in California, former state Sen. Gloria Romero, is a Democrat. Ben Austin, who heads the Parent Revolution group that is pushing the idea from state to state, is a former staffer in the Clinton White House. Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff to Barack Obama and now mayor of Chicago, is a fan, too.

All that wasn’t enough to scrub the perceived partisan funk off the Florida bill. But all indications are that it will resurface next spring. And maybe last weekend’s vote will help it be judged on its merits rather than its alleged lineage. (more…)

As is routine with school choice proposals, the parent trigger bill in Florida - defeated in March after a dramatic 20-20 vote in the state Senate - was portrayed by critics as another front in a systematic campaign to privatize public schools. So it was fascinating today to hear more detail about the history and motivations behind the bill from Gloria Romero, the former California state senator - and Democrat - who sponsored the original trigger bill in that state.

“This is a law that’s so simple, it’s revolutionary," Romero told participants at the American Federation for Children summit in Newark. "This law has the power to really shift paradigms, to give true power – not just lip service, no longer window dressing – to parents who are sick and tired of failing schools.”

“I wanted to have a law for parents based on the most basic foundations of our democracy," she also said. "Think back. Petitioning our government. We the people. And if we could change that from we the people to we the parents, with the power of our signatures, our Johnny Hancocks, to collectively sign a petition, present it those of us who are supposed to be looking out for our interests, and basically saying, 'If you won’t do it, then basically, get the hell out of the way and we will.' "

We've attached a recording of Romero's remarks below. They followed a passionate speech about vouchers by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, which you can read about here and here and here. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is the keynote speaker tonight. Stay tuned and follow us on Twitter at @redefinEDonline.

Two weeks ago, Gloria Romero, the former California state senator who wrote the original parent trigger law, wrote in this redefinED piece that the "status quo" killed the parent trigger bill in Florida. Today in this op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Romero uses much tougher language - and singles out a specific foe - to describe the parent trigger battle in two California locales. Some excerpts:

In both Adelanto and Compton, parents trying to exercise their rights felt the full onslaught of a "sweep and destroy" mission launched by the California Teachers Assn. and its affiliates. What had taken weeks to build was destroyed in a few days of heavy-handed lobbying. Parents have reported being told outright lies about charter law and about their rights. Some parents reported that they were even threatened with deportation if they didn't rescind their signatures ...

A recent survey by California Common Cause revealed that the top lobbying force in the state in 2011 was the 300,000-plus membership of the California Teachers Assn. In other words, the massive teachers union is the top political force in the eighth-largest economy in the world. The union has made it clear that it wants to take the trigger out of the hands of mothers and fathers. Parents who attempt to lobby for their children now find themselves on a collision course with this powerful organization ...

So what can we do to help parents actually see things clearly without biased interference? We need to direct attention to failing schools, so that parents understand the situation and understand that they are not alone. And when they send out cries for help, we should defend their right to occupy a political arena previously dominated by vested interests.