On February 15, Arizona’s Senate Committee on Government Reform voted 5–2 in favor of Senate Bill 1204, which creates a “Parent Trigger.” If passed into law, the measure would create a petition process to allow parents and legal guardians of students in a “D” or “F” school to require the school district governing board to make certain changes at the school.
The following statements from Parent Trigger experts from The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact Tammy Nash at [email protected] and 312/377-4000. After regular business hours, contact Jim Lakely at [email protected] and 312/731-9364.
“SB 1204 includes two serious and powerful remedies for children assigned to a poor public school: the option for parents to insist on major structural reforms, and the option for families to leave that school for a personally designed education. From locked into failure to freed for opportunity – what a dramatic, positive change for children and families.
“Parents and families deserve rights that correspond with their great responsibility in raising children to adulthood and citizenship. Giving them power to reorganize their child’s failing school or to direct their child’s state education funds not only reclaims it from the grip of special interests for those whose children are their special interest, it lets them model the self-governance parents hope their children one day achieve.”
Joy Pullmann
Research Fellow, The Heartland Institute
Managing Editor, School Reform News
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“The passage of parental empowerment legislation, SB 1204, out of committee, marks a big step forward for Arizona parents and their students. Instead of having to wait endlessly for school districts to get their act together, parents can now force districts to improve, close, or convert failing schools.
“It is long past time to place power in the hands of parents instead of district bureaucrats.”
Bruno Behrend
Director, Center for Transforming Education
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312/377-4000
The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
Joy Pullmann is a research fellow on education policy for The Heartland Institute and managing editor of The Federalist, a web magazine on politics, policy, and culture.
Bruno Behrend, J.D., is a senior fellow for education policy at The Heartland Institute.
