America the Biased

 Allysia Finley recently wrote an opinion piece on California's new "parent trigger" system which allows half of the parents at a low-preforming school to institute changes. While she makes a good arguments and presents factual evidence, she is obviously writing to conservatives, considering her put down of liberals several times in the article. The obvious party preference casts shadow on the otherwise factual article on an under-addressed topic.
Finley presents some encouraging evidence. Three schools in California -- 24th Street Elementary, Weigand Avenue Elementary in Los Angeles, and Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto -- have made changes using the parent trigger system since it's institution in 2010. The 24th Street Elementary and Desert Trails Elementary both converted to charter schools under the parent trigger. "Test scores have soared at the 24th Street school and Desert Trails in the year since they became charters, but scores at Weigand have flat-lined. The percentage of 5th graders rating proficient or advanced in science on the California Standardized Test (CST) at 24th Street rose to 65% from 21% in 2013 and to 47% from 12% at Desert Trails." Anytime a better education is given to the future generation, it is a cause for celebration.
After this, Finley begins her attack on teacher's unions and liberals. "Only this limited data is available because union allies in the legislature canceled the CST in English and math this year... Democrats say they didn’t want students to take two separate sets of exams. Their real goal was to make it harder for researchers to compare student performance on the old state tests with the new Common Core exams." Who knows what Democrats' (quite an encompassing term here) "real goal" was.
However, looking at Allysia Finley's argument separate from her bias, the parent trigger system has caused excellent changes to the schools affected by it. It is also true that the teacher's unions have tried to prevent the parent trigger from having any real power. While I understand the need to defend teachers, especially since they have one of the most important jobs possible, shouldn't the parents and the teacher's unions have the same goal: bettering the public education for American children? Teachers are human. Grace must be given to their mistakes. Teachers can be corrupt. There must be a way to make changes. The perfect balance is hard to find but political biases help no one.
Let's join together, both "evil democrats" and "insensitive republicans," consider what does and doesn't work in the public school system on different levels, and go from there.