Today, the Desert Trails Preparatory Academy in Southern California will open, making it the first school in the nation where parents were able to fire the principal and teachers to remake the school. According to Politico, California passed a law in 2010 known as the "parent trigger," which allowed parents to organize and take over underperforming schools and bring in private management.
Six other states - Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas - have followed California in passing a "parent trigger" law. Observers expect more states to pass "parent trigger" legislation, as well:
Parent Revolution, a nonprofit dedicated to organizing trigger campaigns, anticipates a surge of interest in other state legislatures as Desert Trails and three other California schools transformed by parent activism reopen over the next month. Parent empowerment has strong bipartisan support in many states — a sign of the diminished clout of teachers unions, which oppose trigger laws but have not been able to stop their traditional allies in the Democratic Party from endorsing the concept.
