Emails, Lonnie Hollingsworth, director of legal services/governmental relations, Texas Classroom Teachers Association, Aug. 5-6, 2015

From: Selby, Gardner

Sent: Monday, August 03, 2015 11:01 AM

To: Lonnie Hollingsworth

Subject: Following up on April email

Lonnie:

I am slowly catching up on some of those promises. I see SB 14 did not pass into law. Nor did its companion. HB 1727.

So, did the petition idea make into law in any way?

Feel free to say if the other proposals you walked through ended up in law as well.

g.

4:10 p.m.

Aug. 5, 2015

I don’t think so. Some changes were made for options and sanctions for academically unacceptable campuses in HB 1842, but I don’t think it shortened the current parent trigger.

3:16 p.m.

Aug. 6, 2015

The successful opposition of the parent trigger proposal was a victory for TCTA and other public education advocates. The entire education community, with the exception of Texas PTA, opposed parent trigger. The Florida PTA successfully opposed a similar proposal pushed by Jeb Bush and received an award from the national PTA for its work. http://bit.ly/1MQjm4t  The Washington Post explains why the Florida PTA opposed parent trigger, which is why the education advocates in Texas oppose it.  http://wapo.st/1Dxk6s8

SB 14 was left pending in House Public Education Committee. It failed either because it was too late in the session or because it did not have support in the Texas House . It could have been included in HB 1842, but Chairman Aycock instead agreed to put innovation districts, another proposal by Chairman Taylor, in the bill. Although TCTA and other teacher groups opposed innovation districts, they were actively supported by administrator and management groups including Raise Your Hand Texas.

The reason it failed is that it is a bad idea. Parent trigger is ultimately based upon the idea that privatizing and deregulating will turn around failing schools. There is no evidence that a charter school operator can take over an existing school and turn it around. Charter schools are basically schools of choice. The parents choose whether they send their students to the school and the school can reject  students and expel students pursuant to the code of student conduct adopted by the school. This is a very different model than a neighborhood public school that is required to take every student in its attendance zone. Charter schools as a whole underperform traditional public schools according to TEA data, so why would there be any reason to think that a charter school operator is going to turn around an academically unacceptable school?  What these schools need is additional resources and incentives for the most experienced and effective educators to work at these schools.