"Parent Unions" Organizing To Push Education Reform

The AP (10/10, Hoag) reports that a number of parents' groups are leaving behind "bake-sale fundraisers" and branching into pushing education reform, and profiles a group in Los Angeles which is "one of the newly formed 'parents unions' that are springing up from San Diego to Buffalo, N.Y., with the same goal - to push schools to improve academic achievement. Behind the parent empowerment movement is a feisty Los Angeles-based nonprofit, Parent Revolution, which in 2010 pushed through a landmark law giving parents authority to force turnarounds at failing schools through a petition," the so-called parent trigger law which "was the first of its kind in the nation," and "inspired Texas and Mississippi to adopt similar laws."