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.