Education Week - March 27, 2013 - 23

EDUCATION WEEK

MARCH 27, 2013

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

By Andrew Ujifusa
The push for the “parent trigger” option for
turning around struggling schools continues,
with new laws under consideration in about a
dozen states’ legislative sessions, even as such
laws already on the books remain unused in
all but one of the seven states that have them.
Many education advocates opposed to
what they view as efforts to privatize and

corporatize public schools are watching with
trepidation as lawmakers in Florida ,, Oklahoma, and elsewhere review parent-trigger
bills. Opponents argue that the mechanism ultimately hurts schools and ruptures
communities. w
In some cases, however, detractors have succeeded in stopping parent-trigger bills dead
in their tracks. A measure that had appeared
headed for approval in the Georgia state legislature faltered late last week when gop lawmakers raised concerns that it could pit teachers—who would be able to petition a school
board for a takeover by a charter operator or
initiate another turnaround intervention—

Extra Time Weighed
For 12 RTT Winners

against their own principals. The legislation
had the backing of top state lawmakers, but
was opposed by a variety of public education
groups, including the state teachers’ union.
Meanwhile, at least three other states—California, Indiana, and Texas—were also considering revisions to their existing parent-trigger
laws.
Those in favor of the laws reject the critics’
assertions but also caution supporters not to
expect a flood of trigger petitions in the near
future.
Many parents may have to get used to the
idea that, through laws that let them initiate a
PAGE 27 >

School Angles Seen in Same-Sex-Marriage Cases
By Mark Walsh
For Kristin M. Perry and Sandra
B. Stier, the schools their children
have attended have been one more
place to be involved parents and a
visible same-sex couple.
“I have been a pta president and I
volunteered in the classroom all the
time,” said Ms. Perry, who noted that
the family of two lesbian mothers
and four boys—ages 18 to 24—has
had mostly positive experiences in
the liberal enclave of Berkeley, Calif.
“On a couple of occasions, I can
remember a child would say a homophobic thing to one of our kids,
and the teacher would use that as a
teachable moment,” she added. “We
are in a part of the world, on purpose, where we get a pretty positive
response as a family.”

The U.S. Department of
Education will consider, on a
case-by-case basis, granting
the original 12 Race to the Top
winners an extra year to finish
their work.
Next school year was set to be
the fourth and last year for the
Race to the Top program, the
$4 billion education redesign
competition for states financed
under the economic-stimulus
package passed by Congress in
2009. But delays have plagued
many winning states as they
seek to make good on their
promises, and states have been
slow to spend their money.
More than three years into the
grants, the dozen winners—
11 states and the District of
Columbia—have used less than
half their money, Education
Department records show.
The department will consider
“no-cost extensions”—meaning
states won’t get any additional
money to finish their plans, just
extra time—between now and
January.

Liz Hafalia/San Francisco Chronicle-File

California Challenge
Still, Ms. Perry, 50, and Ms. Stier,
48, would like to be married. They
are one of two couples who sued to
challenge California’s Proposition 8,
the ballot initiative narrowly passed
in 2008 that withdrew the right to
same-sex marriage in that state.
“When we go to a high school football game, the [straight] couples
around us are talking about an upcoming anniversary or a mother-inlaw visiting,” Ms. Stier said. “Because
we’re not married, we’re excluded
from some of the most common social constructs and from one of the
core institutions of our society.”
This week, the U.S. Supreme
Court takes up their case, Hollingsworth v. Perry (No. 12-144),
which asks whether California’s
limitation of marriage to a man
and a woman violates the equalprotection clause of the U.S. Constitution. In a second case, United
States v. Windsor (No. 12-307) the
justices will weigh the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, or doma, which
defines marriage for purposes of
federal law and benefits as “only a
legal union between one man and
one woman as husband and wife.”
Among the scores of briefs filed by

www.edweek.org

POLICY
BRIEF

‘Parent Trigger’ Laws Catching Fresh Wave
New state-level bills
prove no less divisive

Plaintiff Sandra Stier,
center, listens to her
partner, Kristin Perry
after a court hearing
in June 2011 that
challenged California’s
Proposition 8, which
limits marriage to a
man and a woman. The
U.S. Supreme Court is
hearing a pair of cases
on the same-sexmarriage issue.

parties and “friends of the court” on
different sides of those cases are
several that address same-sex marriage and the schools. The issues include schools’ treatment of same-sex
parents and their children, the impact of the debate on gay students
and on those who object to same-sex
marriage on religious grounds, and
the influence of the trend on the
curriculum.
In short, as with many other
divisive social issues, the nation’s
schools are part of the battleground over same-sex marriage.
“Marriage rights for same-sex
couples is one of the great American debates right now,” said Suzanne B. Goldberg, a law professor
and the director of the Center for
Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University. “As such, it has
important consequences for American education.”

legal status), according to a
friend-of-the-court brief filed by
Gary J. Gates, a scholar at the
Williams Institute on Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity
Law and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles,
law school.
Almost one-fifth of same-sex
couples are raising children—
more than 125,000 households,
with a total of 220,000 children
under age 18, according to U.S.
Census Bureau data analyzed by
Mr. Gates, a supporter of samesex marriage.
Ms. Stier, who works in technology for a government agency
in the San Francisco Bay Area,
grew up on a farm in Iowa and
had what she has described as a
difficult marriage to a man for 12
years. She brought the two oldest
boys into the relationship with
Ms. Perry.
Ms. Stier first met Ms. Perry in
View of Households
1996, when both worked for the
Nearly 1.3 million Americans same agency and were in a comare members of same-sex couples puter-training class together. Ms.
PAGE 28 >
(regardless of marriage or other

Federal officials will consider
the one-year extensions on a
project-by-project basis and
won’t give states blanket
approval to take more time on
all parts of their plans. States
would have until July 1, 2015,
to spend their money (versus
summer 2014).
No-cost extensions are
customary with federal grants,
and the Education Department
had said that it would consider
them at a later date—which has
now arrived.
Department officials say they
will not grant significant deadline
extensions—such as delaying
implementation of a state’s new
teacher-evaluation system—
without a strong rationale.
“We are still trying to hold
them accountable to their
commitments,” Ann Whalen, who
oversees Race to the Top for the
department, said of the grant
winners. “But we don’t want them
sitting on the money either.”
Recent reports by the
department show states are
struggling, in particular, with
upgrading and building new
data systems and implementing
teacher-evaluation systems.
But the most pronounced
reason states need more
time, Ms. Whalen said, is that
“comprehensive reform is
difficult work.” The extension
policy, she said, “gives them
more time.”
Even with a fifth possible year
for states to finish their work,
one firm deadline remains: Any
unspent money reverts to the
Treasury on Oct. 1, 2015.
—MICHELE McNEIL

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - March 27, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - March 27, 2013