Parents Clear Hurdle in Converting Failing School to a Charter

First use of parent-trigger law

After nearly two years of fighting the district that's supposed to serve them, parents in Adelanto, Calif., succeeded Tuesday night in turning Desert Trails Elementary into a charter school. It's the first successful implementation of the California law passed in 2010 allowing parents to force a school district's hand and select a charter program to take over a failing school. And Desert Trails was definitively failing, falling among the bottom 10 percent of California schools.