Trigger Effect - Parent Involvement

This article really made me think about the impact that a community can have in education, both positive and negative.

In this case, the culture of the school community has dissolved to a point where some in the community feel they are better off taking over the school, while others do not agree. They now have two parental factions, politically led (of course) that are fighting against each other over whether to implement a "Trigger Effect" law that was put in place in California in 2010. The law places the power in the hands of the parents, allowing them to do things such as fire the principal to closing the school and reopening it as a charter. The issue that they are fighting over - low standardized test scores.

As you go farther into the article, you can see that the problem that needs solved is NOT standardized test scores, but instead is the climate and culture of the school community.

In Adelanto, the 666 children who attend Desert Trails are mostly black and Latino, and nearly all meet the federal definition of poor. The school lacks a full-time nurse, a guidance counselor and a psychologist. About one in four students was suspended last year, nearly twice the district average. Desert Trails has had three principals in the past five years

One is Larry Lewis, who helped launch the trigger effort out of frustration with teachers who, he said, resisted his efforts to improve classroom instruction.

“Adelanto is known as the armpit of the high desert,” said Lewis, who resigned in October for health reasons. “And Desert Trails is the armpit of Adelanto.”

Adelanto, a working-class community of 31,700, sits 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles. It boasts one shopping center, a federal prison and acres of empty brown desert interrupted only by hulking steel lattice towers tethered together by high-voltage electric lines.

When she moved from Los Angeles County three years ago, Cynthia Ramirez didn’t think twice about the schools. “We just assumed everything is fine,” said Ramirez, who has a 3-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter. “But here, there are no after-school activities. They’re only teaching math and reading. There is no science. I started to feel scared for my daughter.”

In my opinion, instead of these parents fighting against the school, they need to be working with the school, and all involved with the school need to be proactive in the engagement of the community. They should be working together to create the after school activities that are being demanded, to create demand for science classes that are engaging, to eliminate the negative self talk about the district, to create consistency in leadership, to bring in the resources that are needed to be successful, and to create a culture of learning and collaboration in the district.

Sidebar conversations on solutions for these issues would be the lack of financial support occurring in this district, in California, and in the nation and also the need to modify education to fit the needs of students and society today. There are many ways to attack this problem, but to put the solution in the hands of parents, creating community discontent, is only going to lead to more heartache and failure.