Where Parent Revolution Lost Me
by Frederick M. Hess • Oct 22, 2012 at 6:23 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
Hidy all, I'm back. Want to thank Heather, Bill, and Sarah for some terrific posts. We're about to head into heavy pre-election mode, but there was one particular development while I was gone that I feel compelled to address.
I've been skeptical but sympathetic on the parent trigger. But the parent trigger crowd pretty much lost me when Parent Revolution's National Communications Director David Phelps sent out a craven e-mail blast that needlessly attacked for-profit charter providers in a cheap effort to score political points. Phelps wrote, "Those who oppose Parent Trigger laws [argue] that passing and implementing a Parent Trigger law does nothing more than open the door to allow for-profit operators to privatize failing public schools. Nothing is further from the truth. Parent Revolution opposes any attempt by for-profit charter school operators to "takeover" public schools[emphasis in original]."
Phelps pointed to a Detroit Free Press op-ed by my friend Ben Austin, executive director of California-based Parent Revolution, in which Austin charged, "We have always stood for a simple and fundamental proposition: Parents must have power over the education of their own children. Profit has no place in that education...
