(originally published @ National Journal’s Education Experts blog)

You want to know a secret? Parents and community leaders have spent decades talking and pressuring and begging for changes to our country’s education system until they are blue in the face. Want to hear another one? The education system, to a great extent, has spent as much time - though far less energy - ignoring them.

Why? Because it’s easier. Easier than admitting there is a problem. Easier than figuring out a solution. Easier than making a change that might be uncomfortable for a few adults.

Parents have always been the true warriors (and disrupters) in education. They’ve gotten charter school laws passed, demanded real options to failing schools, been teacher watchdogs where union bargaining agreements hogtie school leaders, and pushed curriculum changes when their kids were being cheated.

True, this brand of education reform came about through community engagement and participation in forums and meetings, but it also took grassroots organizing and camping out in legislative offices - blood, sweat and tears.

Parents already know what’s working and what’s not, and they’re out in droves every single day. Requiring their input as a condition of ESEA reauthorization is, quite frankly, silly. Requiring districts and states to make changes based on their input or risk the loss of funding, now that would make a difference.