Parents: before you pull the Trigger…  …know where you’re
pointing the gun!  Larry Ferlazzo’s piece on the Parent Trigger
yesterday is a great read on the subject, and my friend Mark
Friedman wrote about it last year, as well (be sure to read the
comments, too).  My own takeaways are in 140-character bites at
right. As presently conceived, these laws are a means of co-
opting the language of empowerment to use parents to inflict the
same failed policies that virtually everyone agrees have been
the undoing of No Child Left Behind.  I have to say, what was
already an destructive use of public policy becomes especially
distasteful when parents are set up to inflict it upon their own
children. (It also makes the “trigger” metaphor that much more
unfortunate…)  If the people who currently spend money on these
trigger campaigns truly want to empower parents, why not invest
in creating conditions that support true empowerment:
educational programs and training that help parents to be
involved in their schools and in