The Heartland Institute

A Parent Trigger amendment to a parental responsibility bill was voted down in a Colorado state senate committee, signaling what the amendment s sponsor said was the end of parent empowerment legislation in the Rocky Mountain State for the 2011 session. It s totally dead for the year, said state Sen. Nancy Spence (R-Centennial ...

In an apparent policy reversal, California State Board of Education President Michael Kirst announced plans to accelerate the timetable for approving permanent regulations for the state s landmark Parent Empowerment Act, also known as the Parent Trigger. Kirst says the board s April 21 meeting would be devoted exclusively to discussing ...

Compton, California seems an unlikely place for black and Latino parents to unite for fundamental education reform. But the Los Angeles area city known best for its political corruption, racial division, and gang violence is the first proving ground for California s Parent Empowerment Act, also known as the parent trigger. A ...

California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and his staff say the state s groundbreaking parent empowerment law may be too vague for the state department of education to write clear regulations. Torlakson announced at the state board s February meeting he was forming a working group with Assemblywoman Julia Brownley ...

Without question, Gov. Jerry Brown has the right to make his own appointments and craft his own policies. But his picks for California s powerful state board of education could jeopardize one of the most innovative and empowering if controversial education reforms to come along in years: The parent trigger that gives parents ...

California s parent empowerment law turns one year old in January, but it is already inspiring imitators and improvements across the country. Legislators in Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, and West Virginia have introduced or are planning to introduce bills modeled after California ...

Ohio won $400 million in the second round of the U.S. Department of Education s $4.35 billion Race to the Top grant competition, but at least 50 school districts and independent charter schools have decided to opt out of the program, saying the red tape and compliance costs would exceed any benefit from the one-time federal ...

Parents at a persistently failing elementary school in the Compton Unified School District in Los Angeles on Tuesday became the first to use California s historic parent trigger law. More than 60 percent of parents at McKinley Elementary School in the south-central Los Angeles community signed petitions demanding school district ...

California’s parent empowerment law, known as the “parent trigger,” is less than a year old, but the idea is already spreading across the nation to states such as Connecticut and Georgia. The law was the brainchild of a Los Angeles-based activist group called Parent Revolution. Under California’s law, passed in January 2010 ...

Improve schools in the nation s capital by adopting a Parent Trigger that would empower parents to demand that their schools be transformed. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is ...

New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein on Tuesday announced his plans to step down at the end of the year. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Catherine Black, chairman of Hearst Magazines, would succeed Klein in overseeing the nation s largest public school system serving 1.1 million children. Klein is leaving the ...

Republican victories in the U.S. House of Representatives and statehouses and legislatures in 19 states will have widespread implications for President Obama’s education agenda, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, charter schools, and school choice. But there is little likelihood of radical change, such as abolishing the U ...

Michelle Rhee announced her plans Wednesday to step down after three contentious years as chancellor of Washington DC s embattled public schools. I ve put my blood, sweat and tears into serving the children of DC over the past three and half years, Rhee said at a press conference, where she was flanked by her patron, Mayor ...

Nobody is indispensable, and Superman lives only in comic books. The nation s public education system won t be reformed through more top-down mandates, vain attempts to nationalize the schools, or cheap sloganeering. Lasting school reform requires the education dollar following the child, eliminating the bureaucratic middle man, and ...

California’s new “parent trigger” law is getting its first test from a parent in a Los Angeles suburb. Lydia Grant, a 45-year-old mother of three and member of the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council, says she’s spent 10 years trying to persuade the Los Angeles Unified School District to improve Mt. Gleason Middle School, to ...

Word of California's parent empowerment law also known as the parent trigger is spreading across the country. An Atlanta attorney says Georgia should adopt a version of the law to help combat pervasively failing schools, especially in the wake of a standardized test cheating scandal. What would happen if we changed the current ...

The Wall Street Journal on Monday declared back-to-school week as an encouraging season for education reform. The editors pointed to an unlikely bipartisan political breakout on vouchers in Pennsylvania. According to the Journal editorial: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato came out in support of school vouchers for underprivileged ...

Vermont tops the states when it comes to test scores but ranks at the very bottom in school reforms, while Florida earns a solid B+ for its sweeping and sustained reform efforts, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s report card on American education . ALEC’s report card, now in its 16th year, offers a ...

New Jersey Education Commissioner Bret Schundler has become a high-profile casualty of Race to the Top. Gov. Chris Christie (R) announced Friday that Schundler, the former Jersey City mayor and outspoken proponent of school choice, has been fired because of the poor explanation the state gave for an error on its federal grant ...

The U.S. Education Department on Tuesday announced 10 states in all would receive a share of $3.4 billion remaining from the $4.35 billion Race to the Top grant pool, and reformers struggled to make sense of the winners and losers. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan named New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Washington, DC, Georgia ...