If you ever dreamed of firing your kid's teachers and principal...

... move to California, because you can!

In general, I am of the belief that we elect people to make decisions for us, and that is democracy enough. So I find California’s reliance on referenda pretty maddening (Hey! Which class of citizens do we feel like discriminating against this year?!), and the new parent-trigger law that basically allows a community to overthrow its school strikes me as odd, even if there are appealing aspects of the spirit behind it.

But it is fascinating, I will give you that! Howard Blume and Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times have the most thorough account I have seen about how Compton parents—nudged, or more, by organizers—decided their elementary school should be dismantled and chartered, despite steady test-score increases. (Yes, they get to choose the remedy.) Precedent set, this is going to be really interesting.