A 'radical' reform goes mainstream, but New York State retreats.

The Wall Street Journal, via a kind Rick Kiley email:

The U.S. is stress-testing Herbert Stein's law like never before, but maybe the economist's famous dictum--trends that can't continue won't--is being vindicated in education. Witness the support of America's mayors for "parent trigger," the public school reform that was denounced as radical only a few years ago but now is spreading across the country.

Over the weekend in Orlando, the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously approved a resolution endorsing new rules that give parents the running room to turn around rotten schools. At "persistently failing" institutions, a majority of parents can sign a petition that turns out the administrators and teachers in favor of more competent hires, or dissolves the school, or converts it to a charter. Teachers unions loathe this form of local accountability.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 21, 2012 9:03 PM
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