By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

LANSING, Mich. – Help might soon be on the way for the 66,000 students who are stuck in Michigan’s 92 low-performing school districts.

State Sen. Dave Robertson has proposed a “parent trigger” law, which would empower a majority of parents and/or teachers of a failing public school to “leapfrog their local school boards” and convert it to a charter school, reports the Detroit News.

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Similar laws have already been adopted in Texas, Mississippi and California, though legal challenges have kept the Golden State’s trigger law holstered thus far.

Robertson’s law would apply to Michigan’s “lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools,” as determined by math, reading, and graduation rates, the News reports.

“I believe the fundamental question that needs to be asked is: Whose child is it and whose tax dollars is it?” Robertson, a Republican, told the News. “My goal is to empower parents to make better educational choices for their children and have their education dollars flow to that school.”

Too often in failing school districts, teacher unions are allowed to determine school policies and spending priorities by running rough-shod over weak-willed school board members and “collaborative” administrators. This allows the unions to veto any policies they don’t approve of.

Parent trigger laws check union excess by allowing families to have a seat at the decision-making table. Better yet, trigger laws actually allow parents to sit at the head of the table.

That explains why the teacher unions hate – HATE – parent trigger laws, and stop at nothing to defeat them. The heads of Michigan’s two largest teacher unions have already come out swinging against the proposed law.

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They offer the usual (and tired) argument that some charter schools perform no better than government-run schools. In other words, because charter schools don’t have a perfect track record, they shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, rejects that logic.

“Change needs to happen. We need better quality schools. Parents and students ought to be the focus,” Quisenberry told the News. “Trying some of these different methods to make this happen is worth doing.”

Robertson’s bill was recently voted out of the Senate Education Committee, and is working its way through the legislative process.