Andy Rotherham today gives us a look at a few examples where progressive-minded teachers are acting as change-agents within their unions. And, surely, the news is promising. But these "insurgents," as Rotherham calls them, are still mostly acting as engineers tinkering with the machinery that drives a top-down model of public education. Nowhere in Rotherham's examples do we find evidence that teachers want to disestablish the duopoly among boards and unions and introduce parents at the bargaining table.

This takes us to an overlooked passage in the now-famous strategy document prepared by a Connecticut affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. The AFT, to be sure, understood that simply saying, "No," was no longer a solution, that it had to propose ideas to reform troubled schools if it wanted to kill legislation that would have established a parent trigger. The AFT believed that it stopped the parent trigger and, according to the document, "turned it into a vehicle for collaborative success." The union's ideas included the creation of school governance councils that gave parents a voice, but it acknowledged that the word "governance" was a misnomer. The councils would have no real authority.

To be fair, Rotherham does argue that these insurgents still have a lot to prove and they have yet to wrestle with the decision to protect their members while agitating for real reform. But our debate still mostly looks at reform within a corporate structure and falls short of finding solutions that create a truly professional relationship between teachers and families. The change-agents profiled by Rotherham say they want to be more accountable, but we don't know to whom.  Giving parents authority through the trigger or through choice establishes professionalism between families and teachers simply because the parent can sever the relationship at any time. NewTLA, Educators for Excellence and Teach Plus are to be commended for their ambitions, but they should strive to be more responsive to the needs of parents. By doing so, they will empower themselves.

Parent trigger advocates are applying more presure on AFT president Randi Weingarten to pay more penance after an AFT document surfaced in Connecticut that detailed a textbook plan on killing "trigger" legislation. Notably, prominent California Democrats and parent-trigger backers Gloria Romero and Ben Austin have written Weingarten suggesting that simply distancing herself from the Connecticut document is insufficient.

As Romero, a sponsor of California's trigger law, writes in her letter to the union chief:

I am requesting that you make public all other Power Points that were developed to train AFT members on how to disable and kill parent empowerment legislation that were used in subsequent states where Parent Trigger legislation was introduced. To my count, there have been at least thirteen other states ...

... This type of “lesson plan” and strategies are offensive and dismissive to the very individuals who should be fully respected for their goals to further the educational opportunities of their very own children: the parents. I believe you need to go one step further and offer an immediate apology and a commitment to never let something like this happen again.

The Connecticut strategy, emblazoned with AFT's logo and titled, "How Connecticut Diffused The Parent Trigger," outlined how AFT leaders in that state worked to "kill the bill" that would have established a parent trigger similar to California's (The document was originally on AFT's Web site but has since been removed; Dropout Nation editor RiShawn Biddle copied the presentation and made it available to his readers). Romero also says she was singled out in that strategy and wants that "lesson plan" public as well.

Austin, the executive director of California's Parent Revolution, wrote to Weingarten saying that:

Over the last year, we have requested on multiple occasions to meet with you and discuss our common agenda. Each time, you have refused to meet. Now, after reading your memo, it has become clear why. You seem to view parent empowerment as a zero-sum game: if parents win, teachers must lose ...

... the substance of your plan includes ensuring that parents are “not at the table” when real decisions are made, and creating fake "governance" committees that trick parents into thinking they have power when they actually do not. The fact that this memo has surfaced in the wake of the president of your California affiliate calling the Parent Trigger a “lynch mob” law – and then also refusing to apologize even after civil rights groups demanded it – makes your reaction to this incident all the more troubling.

As much as we have in the past viewed you as a progressive leader and potential partner in kids-first transformation, we cannot have a respectful dialogue with someone who cannot disavow those positions and tactics. If you view parental power as a threat to be "killed," then we unfortunately don't have much to talk about.

Andy Rotherham spent his weekly real estate on Time.com describing his method of choosing a school for his children. Of particular note to redefinED are his comments on choice, equity and empowerment:

... the amount of choice is still limited by administrators (who alone get to decide, for instance, whether to open a second Montessori-style school in a district even if the first one has an insanely long waitlist) and legislators (who can do things like refuse to let charter schools into districts like the one I live in). Our school district does offer some choice, but it's called "controlled choice" — we were able to pick only from a subset of the schools ...

... It's amazing how routine it has become in public education to deny people choice and power. Giving more Americans this kind of empowerment matters to my wife and me out of basic fairness, but also because in ways large and small, our fate is bound up with those of millions of parents around the country who are growing frustrated with our public system ...

... In other words, so far it's worked out for us, but I'm struck — as both an analyst and parent — by how much public education, an institution that is predicated on a common understanding of the collective good, does things to undermine the very support it's dependent on to thrive.

To those who argue that voucher and tax credit policies create dual school systems where one half cherry-picks students who are less difficult to teach, look to the Catholic Diocese of Evansville, Ind., which is embracing the state's new voucher law and starting the school year with a new theme: "All Are Welcome."

The Wall Street Journal hits the ground in Douglas County, Colo., with a report on the school district's pilot voucher program, highlighting that more affluent families will benefit from a policy that's largely targeted to more disadvantaged children in other states and municipalities. Also, The Denver Post gives readers a look at the last day of testimony in a court hearing that may decide whether the pilot program proceeds as the ACLU challenges its legality. Education News Colorado reports that Denver District Judge Michael A. Martinez will issue a ruling next week. Eddie has more at Ed is Watching.

Now that a document highlighting lobbying machinations at an AFT affliate in Connecticut has stoked another conversation about teacher unionism and parent empowerment, redefinED wanted to reach into its archives and pull out a memo from the public policy director at the Florida Education Association that also reflects on a singular concern among teachers unions: lost membership.

RedefinED host Doug Tuthill reported on the memo last fall after FEA policy director Jeff Wright urged members to head to the polls and keep Rick Scott out of Florida's governor's mansion. Why? Wright said that Scott would enhance merit-pay practices and expand school choice, specifically pointing to enhanced voucher, charter and virtual school policies along with "merit pay in its worst form" that would "obliterate FEA’s and our local unions’ influence."

"If we are no longer strong due to reduction in the number of people served by public schools," Wright continued, "then they can do what they want with the education budgets of today."

The authors of the latest Education Next-PEPG Survey highlight the growing disconnect between the general public, the affluent and teachers when it comes to sweeping public policies in education. But, just as notably, the results show a wide range of attitudes between the affluent, Hispanics and African Americans when it comes to school choice.

Vouchers have gained more support nationally since the 2010 survey, but support slips when the results are broken down by the affluent and by teachers. In some cases, the difference is stark among minority groups and the affluent, but those differences disappear when the policies (and the questions) change.

Depending on how the question was asked, as much as 60 percent of Hispanic respondents and 53 percent of African Americans supported vouchers compared to 47 percent of affluent respondents.

However, when it comes to individual or corporate tax credit scholarships, support among the affluent increases to 57 percent, which is the same result among African Americans and closer to that of Hispanics, a group that showed no difference in support among tax credits or vouchers.

Adam Schaeffer at the Cato Institute has more on the differences in support of vouchers and tax credits here.

Reasonable people can disagree over whether government should be paying for children to attend religious schools, but Florida’s latest ballot initiative reminds us how little reason plays a role in Blaine amendment debates.

The Florida Education Association already has sued to remove Amendment 7 from the 2012 ballot, and it makes a reasonable point when it argues that the ballot title, “Religious Freedom,” tends to obscure the actual goal of the provision. The amendment is aimed at allowing the state to financially support programs that may have a faith-based component. It specifically deletes this constitutional prohibition: “No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”

Of course, these debates are seldom about just the language. They are first and foremost political wars that follow traditional partisan fault lines, so FEA president Andy Ford was also eager to tell reporters: “This is a shady way of opening the door for school vouchers for all.” A progressive political consultant and a history professor then took to the pages of the state’s largest newspaper to brand Amendment 7 as the “Pony Up for Religion and Pave the Way for Vouchers Act.”

The column was a feast of hyperbole, but most notable for its comparisons to: 1) the Charley Johns Committee, Florida’s own legislative version of McCarthyism in the 1950s and 60s that spread well beyond Communism and invaded the private lives of professors, blacks and homosexuals; and 2) Anita Bryant’s ugly attack on gay rights in the 1970s. It’s not entirely clear whether the authors intended to suggest that passage of Amendment 7 would promote rampant discrimination against blacks or gays, but missing from their historical condemnation were the authors of the Blaine amendments. For that equally well-documented historical bigotry they offer only that: “Sponsors of Amendment 7 allege the no-aid provision has roots in anti-Catholic sentiment.”

Suffice it to say that these debates do not bring out the best in either side. What is also confounding is how these showdowns seem determined to ignore the degree to which church and state mix in everyday life. Florida indeed has its own no-aid clause, which is deemed to go further than the Establishment Clause to the U.S. Constitution. Yet  people on both sides of this divide acknowledge that such aid exists in multiple ways that neither is prepared to challenge: charitable deductions, property tax exemptions, scholarships at religious universities, vouchers for 4-year-olds at faith-based centers and churches, scholarships for poor and disabled students at faith-based schools to name just a few.

I’m not trying to be dismissive of constitutional clarity, and I don’t blame FEA for challenging the amendment. It’s what the union is conditioned and financed to do. But in the arena of education reform, which increasingly includes finding different ways to reach children with different learning needs, it just feels mostly like a distraction.