Heard about the new "parent trigger" allowing parents to
petition to reconstitute a failing school? Promising idea.
Did you hear that supporters of the
trigger organized to make the first use of the "parent trigger" in Compton?
A very bad idea.
I spent three years reporting in
and around Compton for the LA Times. In many ways, the town is better than its
reputation – it’s more prosperous and less violent than you know. The city’s
real problem is a political and civic culture is as nasty and brutish as you’ll
ever find.
I spent many hours listening to
Compton citizens spin out long, involved and just plain conspiracy theories
about politics, government and, yes, schools. And those conspiracy-minded
Compton citizens were the officials in charge!
The school district was a
particularly tough place. More than a decade ago, the fiscal mismanagement and
the academic performance got so bad that the state had to take over the
district. A state-appointed administrator was given the powers that once had
resided with the elected school board. Compton was the only district in the
history of California that had been taken over both for financial AND academic
performance.
And yes, the school district got a
little bit better, but it wasn’t easy. The state-appointed administrator,
Randolph E. Ward, faced so many threats that the state assigned him protection
from the California Highway Patrol (just like the governor gets). Ward and his
aides recounted to me all kinds of efforts by district employees and others to
sabotage their reform efforts. There were employees who had been paid for years
without showing up to work.
The state eventually returned the
district to local control. Since then, the management of the district has
declined, though there have been some important academic gains. Some of the
Compton residents who ruined the school district moved over to the community
college district, which eventually also had to be taken over by the state.
Intellectually, I can understand
why "parent trigger" advocates wanted to have McKinley Elementary in Compton be
a test case. Despite some recent gains, the school is a long-term poor
performer that needs reform. But debuting a high-stakes initiative in Compton
is plain foolish. It’s planting a tree in bad soil.
Predictably, a story about parent
empowerment has quickly devolved into a bitter dispute, with parents and school
staff accusing each other of using threats and intimidation. Given Compton’s
civic culture, it’s safe bet that there have been threats on both sides. The
parent trigger folks might be wise to abandon their Compton experiment before
it harms their cause even further, and try a school someplace, anyplace, else.