Opposition in Compton by some parents to Parent Trigger & petition

The situation in Compton's McKinley Elementary is continuing to be focused on the Parent Trigger petition that initiates a change of the school's operators. A petition has to have 51% of the parent's signing it to have this become effective. Now, as reported by the L.A. Times, the opposition is claiming that many of the signers were not told the truth and that some are rescinding their signature.

"Effort to convert Compton school to charter draws fire- Some are withdrawing signatures given under the 'parent-trigger' law to make school a charter, saying they were intimidated or misled."
By Howard Blume and Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times, December 11, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1211-compton-school-20101211,0,4177045.story

So the parents are really saying that they did not read the petition, but they signed it anyway. There are some claiming intimidation by the petition signature gatherers and it appears from the story that pressure is being put on many to rescind their signature. The way it looks to me is that, unless there is outright fraud, like having forged or fictitious signatures, the number of those signing the petitions should be left alone.

I doubt that the legal process requires that once the petition initiating the change is presented with the sufficient number of parents signing it, that there has to be any more samplings to see there is no "buyer's remorse," otherwise there is no certainty, something necessary for planning, on the decision represented by the petition.

I am for this change to see what actually can be carried out by the new operators as specified for a couple of basic reasons: 1. Time is up: The school has had a long time with poor performance and recent improvement still did not move it up to the acceptable level; 2. Immediate change will happen in operations once operations are transferred. No assurance of any such move away from "status quo" condition can be made by the school district by leaving it alone to continue with whatever plan is in operation.

The defenders of the school use the big jumps in test scores to show effectiveness but the jumps can be very huge when you start off with a very poor performance. This goes for most conditions in life. Any improvement is a huge one when things have been going wrong. When things go better, the corresponding changes to plans will unlikely to be so dramatic.

Another analogy for this idea, a school analogy: A student can move up his or her grade from a "Fail" to a "D" relatively easily by eliminating some things he is doing, be it truancy or not turning in tests. A move up to a "C" level would be also within reach by a little more action on weak areas. This still leaves the grade at an "average" level, but a tremendous difference from a "Fail."

So, moving the grade in this condition becomes more difficult, though not impossible, when seeking a "B." More effort by the teacher, student and with the studying, that can be helped at home by a parent simply allowing a set amount of time daily for the student to do homework.

In Compton, the gains may be, for sake of example, moving from the "Fail" level to a "D" level, and then later to a "C" level, or close to it, but attributing the continued gains by leaving the situation as it is set just does not assure the continued rise in scores will happen.

If this change does happen, there is nothing to tell you that it will happen with any appropriate speed. Maybe a bit of explicit discussion of timetables and a recitation of actual plans could reassure me on this but we are past that now that the Parent Trigger petition is filed.

I think thae the accusations on both sides will begin to heat up and the district was mentioned in an earlier news story as not allowing any charter schools to operate in Compton so far, nor would the district appear to be changing that condition volutarily.

In this overall situation, I am looking at the impact, positive impact, on the students. I don't say too much for what the future holds for the current faculty roster or others who would be displaced at McKinley by the change. That's another situation connected to this matter but that concern will no doubt be working on stopping the change from happening, and that would just continue to frustrate the situation, doing exactly what the Paent Trigger was created to change.

We will see what develops and whatever happens will be something that I am sure that many other districts are looking at for future changes that may be heading their way. Again, tough as it may be, the parent involvement needs to be cultivated by teachers and anyone else seeking to improve education. In the case of low performing schools, their very existence as they are set up could depend on what the parents perceive is happening in the education of their children. Again, it's the perception important here, not any actual good showings, but that helps, too.

The Compton parents reached a critical point in terms of confidence in the future of education of their children and that's what controls the situation. On the surface, it does not seem to be an unreasonable choice. For children, education delayed is education lost. There are lots of students performing at below-grade-level by the time they enter high school and it's not fun for teachers or for students as extra work has to be done to remedy that deficiency.

Consider that here is where you get that dark shadow of poor performance falling upon many of them, heading them into deeper into the direction of "at-risk" or "high-risk" and then, too often, they don't get out of it, and instead, they encounter more unsuccessful experiences than successful experience in high school, lose interest in school and ultimately they drop out.

Yet another separate factor for problems in education is that these student often becoming involved wtih gangs somewhere along the line. That impact nearly always is a negative one as it relates to schoool performance, be it a distraction in the best case scenario or an obstacle to gaining progress in school performance.

If the Parent Trigger is followed up in Compton, you should take the opportunity. When LAUSD was operating in our days, even while fooling around in school, it left most graduating with a fairly usable level of skills. Not the best conditions for all, of course, but way better than what you see for too large a number of students now. If you recall from that era, we could fill out an employment application well. Now, especially if you have been in a position to see them, too many cannot even do this task without assorted difficulties entering the process.

I will end this here and see what happens next in this situation.

"Parent Trigger" as an alternative to "status quo" in schools

There was a story in the L.A. Times this week about an underperforming elementary school in Compton being the subject of a different manner of operation that's come into law in California. It's known as the parent trigger and in short, it can change the operation of a school by a majority of parents petitioning for the change. In the Compton case, a charter school operation will be in charge of the school.

"Parents present signatures to take over a Compton school-
Using the new 'parent-trigger' law, they take the first step in demanding a charter operation at McKinley Elementary." By Howard Blume and Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-compton-school-20101208,0,5155683,full.story


The L.A. Weekly has it's own story on the situation with updates, "Compton Parents Petition to Take Over Chronically Failing Public School Through 'Parent Trigger' Law, Send Shock Waves Throughout the Nation," By Patrick Range McDonald, Wed., Dec. 8 2010. http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2010/12/parent_trigger_compton_unified.php

This story has reader comments that give assorted views. The main thing here that I see is that the parents using this approach will force the change whereas current methods of complaints on progress have resulted in the snail's pace rate of change in many cases, with little noticeable change to encourage any more patience.

The criticism can be made that you could have a schools educational process equally fumbled after a change but weighing that possibility against continuing "as is" or "status quo," the temptation is strong to make a change, especially if the operators of the school program have been considered and identified in advance. There would be not much point in moving control of a school from a group with no performance improvement methods working to parents without any plan for or idea of what's going to be done next. The goal should be to improve education immediately, not to make a change for just a hunch that it would be better.

My continuing reluctance here is that the special education aspects in education will likely be poorer not better. In working to make for better performance, you can see that the problem areas, the challenges, will be given some attention to reduce that aspect of responsibility. In that regard, you may be allowing for an increasingly disparate impact on students due to a variety of disabilities that a non-conventional school would seek to exclude among their duties.

We see the teachers union against this and that's expected; only the reasons will differ and some may be valid and others obviously weak. Again, this is in Compton and not the LAUSD, so much is still to be seen, and it is at an elementary school level and not a high school.

My observation here is that teachers, supported by their administrators and staff, need to work on linking up with the parents (and that can be one formidable task with some parents) so that there is communication and a better level of response to the needs of the students. At least among parents signing petitions, the perception currently in place demonstrates that this is not happening and a change is called for. Teachers who want to avoid this outcome would be well served to head this off by working to establish contact with parents and develop something of responsiveness to student needs as well as show what's been done and what the student needs to do (especially where classroom management problems involve the student).

LAUSD considers August start for all schools

The LAUSD is considering moving up the starting date for the next school year to August. The change will be about 3 weeks earlier than the regular date so that the fall semester will begin in August instead of September, which was the traditional month for back-to-school that most of us were used to.

Lincoln High was one of about 17 schools that began school in August, a plan that is hoped to move up test scores for the district. Many parents are opposed the plan for a number of reasons that the Daily News story reports on: "Some Valley parents are opposing expansion of LAUSD's 'early start' plan," By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer. http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_16729944

People mention the heat of August but there's air conditioning in nearly all schools and besides, the heat can come as late as October as with this year and a summer can be mild, again, like this year.

My idea on the resistance here is that it interrupts vacation schedules for everyone. The teachers, for example, will have a shorter summer break but there will still be the same number of school days, with a longer winter break.

Parents probably will have to re-arrange schedules but then that’s part of the overall differences in life now compared to even the very recent past. All things considered, I don’t think this will do much for the improvement of test scores or anything else to a significant degree. What might change test scores for the better, along with the rest of school life, is getting better work habits practiced by the students, with some regular cooperation from parents, not to mention having the district and site administration begin dealing with disruptive students in more appropriate ways and consistently so.

The LAUSD is becoming more desperate for getting better results with the tests. I wish they would have been a little more frugal in that building binge that burned up millions of dollars- at least they could have ACTED like they cared about tax dollars instead of going on spending sprees with architects and artists instead of accountants deciding what will be spent on buildings.

It’s nice to have good buildings, but even poorer settings can generate educated students where there’s motivated students and involved parents to cooperate with the classroom teachers, a condition that’s not seen by many schools.