Last year I was invited to participate in NBC’s Education Nation. I had a head-to-head discussion with Geoffrey Canada. This year, I received an invitation to sit in the audience.
Now as a perk, I have been invited to a special screening of the parent trigger movie and its world premiere. Imagine all those private school parents and Wall Street titans sitting about and feeling sorry for the children trapped in those dreadful public schools.
So, I was doing this thought experiment, now that the elites are so excited by the idea that parents should be able to seize control of a public school and turn it over to a private operator.
What if the people in the New York Public Library decided to sign a petition and seize control? We could give it to some corporation to run. Maybe we could rent it out to a department store or sell it off for condos.
Think Occupy Wall Street. Only this time, the powerful think it is a good idea. Curious that they think it is thrilling to imagine parents seizing control of public schools and turning them over to charter operators. How would they feel if it was a facility that actually mattered to them?
We are pleased to announce an exciting new addition to the Education Nation program at The New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building: on Sunday, September 23rd, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. ET, msnbc’s Alex Wagner, host of “NOW with Alex Wagner,” will convene stars of the new filmWon’t Back Down Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Rosie Perez, along with parents, experts and teachers for Parent Engagement, a panel discussion about engaging communities in improving struggling schools. Portions of the taped panel discussion will be included in a live msnbc special broadcast on Sunday evening, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. ET, from the red carpet of the Won’t Back Downworld premiere.
As an Education Nation Summit guest, you are also invited to attend the World Premiere of Won’t Back Down on Sunday, September 23rd, at 7:00 p.m. ET at Clearview’s Ziegfeld Theatre. Walden Media and Twentieth Century Fox describe the film as a story of two determined mothers, one a teacher, who look to transform their children’s failing inner city school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
The powers that be are attempting to “shun” you! You have not comported yourself within the parameters that they set so now you must be shunned. Out with you!!
I feel queasy…very queasy. Why do I think this is going to be the Norma Rae of the 21st century? Why will tears be flowing and voices quivering? Why will there be some parents who will attempt this, succeed and shortly thereafter; regret it? Why? Oh why?
I wonder what “parents” they will dig up for this. Michelle Rhee? Arne Duncan? Both have presented themselves as such during recent events.
Interesting dichotomy. Opposition to grass roots movements that really ARE driven from the grass-roots level- (FOX’s Bill O’Reilly on his “no-spin” The Factor repeatedly mentioned polling that showed about 1/3 of the “occupiers” favored socialism). Doesn’t that mean 2/3 do not? No substantial discussion of the fundamental issues, facts and goals of the OWS movement, why all those people felt it was necessary to gather and demonstrate in such a public way. Average Americans out in the street, openly trying to point to the many ways the powerful and wealthy have failed to live up to their positions of privilege and respect.
On the other hand, covert and tacit financial support, and an eager and willing effort to lay out all the misinformation and misdirection on the table (when it comes to public school “failures”) The wealthy and privileged mounting a savvy smear campaign against average Americans and the classes below them, left struggling and disrespected already.
Sorry to say but there actually ARE public libraries in several different states that have been turned over to a private equity-backed company called Library Systems and Services. It is done as a municipal cost-saving measure and usually over the protests of the community. For example, http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/anger-as-a-private-company-takes-over-libraries/
My sister was a librarian for a while in a very, very affluent area. She said the community wasn’t as supportive as other communities she’d worked in because their feeling was, if there was a book they wanted to read, they’d just buy it themselves. The library was superfluous.
That’s the problem, when it comes to the 1% of the 1%, I’m not sure if there is anything public that means anything to them. I think the idea of charter school families rising up and taking control of their schools in order to turn them back into public schools might get a rise out of them, but you need an awfully vivid imagination for that.
P.S. If you follow the link, you’ll see lots of familair language about underperforming, overpaid unionized staff that think their jobs should be for life, that libraries have mistakenly been considered “sacred,” and so on. Lots and lots of parrallels to education.
That’s the problem, when it comes to the 1% of the 1%, I’m not sure if there is anything public that means anything to them.
What a profound insight on your part. As a teacher, I feel the school library is the heart of the school, and the public library is the heart of the city. In my own school, our library will only be open every other day this year due to budget cuts. Yet apparently there was enough money to have our students take a reading test next week (the DRP – Degrees of Reading Power). The money used to administer and score this test could be used in so many other more productive ways.
They are detached, they are in the country, but not part of it unless they own it. They do not share our concerns and do in fact live in a different reality. Public good means nothing to them.
Tomorrow, Sept. 8, 2012, is International Literacy Day. How shameful that a school library has to be closed several days out of the week due to budget cuts.
Protest! Picket! Stock up now on pool noodles!
Putting you in the audience is like putting Baby in a corner. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!!!”
Do these parents realize you only get to pull the trigger once, and then you are powerless? It should be called a parent grenade law.
The people in this movie are actors whose children would never go to a public school, further more they have no clue about advocating for their childrens education nor working with their childs teacher and school ! They fail to see that public schools need proper funding , less testing and more learning , that our teachers deserve respect and decent pay! Our schools and teachers do not need parent trigger they need parental involvement not corporate take overs ! I would personally love to be able to discuss the movie and all the above from a parent perspective to illustrate my sons success despite a different ability thanks to our awesome.public school teachers and parental involvement and all of us working together !
Here is some real irony.
The actors, ( and probably the crew, too, depending on where it was shot) on this movie belong to unions! I have a family member involved in the entertainment unions. SAG and the others. These people have protections, contracts and rules favorable to (or at least fair to) the worker (actor) and want to bash teachers who have (had?) the same.
Sorry state of affairs.
Viola Davis has a sister who teaches in Central Falls, R.I. I do not know if she believes in these reforms, but her district was the one that was in the news a few years back. It must Viola’s sister in a difficult situation. But if she disagrees with the premise of this movie, not the actors, I hope she writes about it.
When Viola Davis won an Oscar in 2010, she thanked her teachers at Central Falls.
Same time Ducan saluted Gist for trying to shut it down
Diane Ravitch
The September 6 issue of the Fordham Institute’s “Education Gadfly” arrived in my email box late this afternoon. One of its bloggers salivates over the DNC screening of “Won’t Back Down” last Monday night, pointing to the lack of solidarity evident as delegates “on their way to listening to uber-reformer Michelle Rhee discuss the movie inside” had to pass by parents and teachers picketing outside. “The screening of the Hollywood tribute to the ‘parent trigger’ had the blessing of the White House and party higher ups,” according to the Gadfly.
Imagine that! The sheer audacity of the DNC showing this film and having Rhee there completely dismays and disgusts me. Every union delegate there in Charlotte should have left town immediately, and so should have every parent and grandparent of public school students.
What are we supposed to do come November? Hold our noses and vote for Obama and fellow Democrats who seem to hold precisely the same K-12 education privatization and anti-public school philosophy as their Republican opponents?
It seems that we educators have been almost totally abandoned politically — isolated and sold out to the powerful 1 percent and our elected Washington elites who have no clue about what really goes on schools, how poverty, racial and economic segregation, and chronic underfunding of schools dramatically impact learning, or the true nature of the common school and what educating the whole child means. Secretary Duncan, the Obama Administration, and members of Congress seem to have absolutely no willingness to heed the voices of experienced educators or even to acknowledge the many high-quality research studies that point to the ineffectiveness, student selectivity, and questionable learning environments of most charters, the destructive churn created by school closures and unwarranted teacher firings, the dissimilarities of purpose and process between public schools and capitalist operations, and other such critical evidence of the misguided pathways to “education reform.”
As a lifelong Democrat, I’m totally disillusioned and angry. And clearly the Republican educational agenda offers pretty much the same, though possibly with more intensity and sizeable reductions in federal aid to the schools. So please, Diane, point us in some sane direction? We seem truly to have fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole?
I feel exactly the same way about the Democrats and their empty rhetoric. Obama traded our public schools for political capital.
Here’s a report by The National Education Policy Center that shows the parent trigger is not a mechanism for parent empowerment but a means to stifle parent involvement once the third party takes over the school:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/missing-the-target
This is one movie that I will not see. The thought of it sickens, saddens, angers, and frightens me.
My feeling exactly.
With reference to my above comment, a clarification just received from a friend informs that the DNC was not the sponsor of that showing of the controversial film and Rhee’s appearance on Monday in Charlotte. My careful re-read of the Fordham Gadfly piece tells me she’s probably right.
Nevertheless, I found the wording within the one-paragraph blog entry to be ambiguous and easily misleading, with actual sponsorship of the screening remaining undisclosed. Given the context, I can’t help but think that the intent was for most readers to assume that the DNC sponsored the event, thereby succeeding in furthering the growing schism between the Democratic Party and teachers and their unions, which was presumably the main point of the poorly written passage. But there’s also the disturbing quote that doesn’t absolve the Obama Administration or DNC from at least indirect complicity: “The screening of the Hollywood tribute to the ‘parent trigger’ had the blessing of the White House and party higher ups.” Perhaps this “blessing” consisted of nothing more than a ranking White House security officer’s OK and some low-level party functionary (maybe a TFA veteran?) gleefully welcoming this “coincidental” screening on the eve of the national convention.
The president passed the buck knowing eventually it would be shown. He could have simply said “NO!!”
The fact remains that regardless of who officially sponsored the showing the President and his Secretary support the misconceptions it represents and agree with our opponents as a matter of public policy. We have no friends in this fight. We must endure, teach parents, and persevere. It will be a long haul.
Sooner or later the word “boycott” needs to be addressed in the sense that the AFT, UFT, NYSUT, and other local teacher unions across the nation may need to start exposing and targeting companies that attack public education. Since NBC’s Education Nation invited singer John Legend, as opposed to few if any teachers to their program last year, I try to watch as little of NBC as possible.
There are a lot of teachers out there. If our country is in the throes of plutocracy, some of the fight needs to take place through our wallets.
Credo now offers cell phone service to this who wish to not support ATT and Verizon, both of whom have very conservative agendas.
I no longer shop at WalMart. I closed my Webster bank account in CT due to a senior vice president who disparages teachers on blogs. I no longer watch CNN,
Fox or MSNBC. The list is growing. I have also written letters to CEO’s, presidents explaining why I am no longer a customer, viewer, etc.
ALL teachers should boycott entities that do no support us, our schools and our students.
Create one form letter and revise it for each purpose. They are all about “choice” and teachers have choices, too.
How we react to this movie is paramount. We cannot go picketing and starting demonstrations. It will only put up in a bad light–worse than we already are–and that’s the intent of this movement.
Instead you can hold “Informational strategies. Use the PAA leaflet to get the points across. Find someone who will speak to your local PTAs. Hand out the info in front of movie theaters. Be friendly and helpful, not angry.
Parents want advice on how they can communicate with a teacher they feel powerless against. We have to offer them advice.
Unfortunately we have to see this film in order to understand it. If you can get to a free screening, that would be better. But teachers will find themselves feeling angry when they see how they are portrayed in the film. We cannot be angry when we are giving out the truth.
I woke up this morning and checked the Huffington Post Education page to see the huge lead story: Teachers’ Unions Support Anti-Gay, etc. Candidates….and then below it an article about how Randi Weingarten admits how wrong the union has been, stating teachers used to be evaluated in a “drive-by” way. OMG. The lack of journalistic integrity is just stunning. There is a deliberate, intentional smear campaign of unions – Obama can play “good cop” in his speech but it’s so empty – then in this article about Weingarten I read that Howard Dean is supporting charter schools with no mention of his family ties to charters http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/randi-weingarten-democratic-convention_n_1861841.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education !!!! Every day more crap. This Education Nation stuff is sickening…Back to the classroom, back to the real work that is being eroded with the insane policies brought to us by Arne Duncan…Thank you for standing up and being a person who speaks truth.
I didn’t get a chance to read the article, but Weingarten has said that in the past, and she supports using VAM to evaluate teachers. She made a deal with Joel Klein and Gates. And last year, as a result of the NYC DoE not keeping their promise not to publish, teachers were labeled horrible things in the press.
I thought filmmakers were artists, not propagandists and corporate shills? How do these filmmakers reconcile their artistic ethics with the blatant use of their product (yes, product, not art) to promote NBC’s thinly veiled school privatization agenda? In Louisiana, as in most states, trigger laws leave the schools in the control of the state or private entities, not locally elected parent/teacher groups.
Hi, um, I had the… good fortune of working on this film that, at its heart, is fiction. Notice the careful phrase “based on real events” rather than “a true story.” It is a STORY that is being hijacked by political people to support a cause that many of us, now that we are watching this disgusting spectacle unfold, are conflicted about the film. We are in the business of telling stories, human stories about relationships that have an emotional effect on audiences. We are certainly not told, from the beginning, that our work will be used to support a position we oppose… in the end, honestly, we are just grateful to have a job in a HIGHLY competitive market.
I will ask you to please understand that the actors, crew, and other hard working people that worked to tell this story were not engaging is supporting an agenda. We are just paying bills like everyone else. Once involved, we are also committed to the film’s success (read ticket sales and marketability).
What is needed is more voices rising up and disrupting these carefully staged events – voices which support the position that public education is a cornerstone… a vital foundation upon which democracy is built. To surrender it to corporate greed and financial motivations is to decimate the future of this country, the equality of its citizens, mobility between classes, and our very freedom.
Make noise, be heard, make sure that this debate does not go the way of health care reform that gave us no single payer system but, instead, a gift to insurance companies. Don’t let it be another Iraq War where voices for peace and non-intervention were made inaudible by the media’s drumbeat and ratings whoring. This is a desperate hour – and unless parents rise up everywhere… unless parents GET INVOLVED in their children’s lives and education… our fate as a doomed nation is sealed.
Unfortunately, artists have no control of how their creations are deployed by people with political agendas, but it is heartening to hear the some involved in this project are speaking out. Maggie, the door is open.
Karl,
I agree with you. But the actors playing these teachers had to stop and ask, “What’s going on here???” But I also understand that they have to make a living.
I totally disagree with you that this movie was “hijacked”. This movie was deliberately made by a company and organization that wants this movie to become a movement. This movie was made to advertise the Parent Trigger Law, although they call it Failsafe in the movie. It has to be one of the best marketing of privatization in the history of charters. Every step of this movie was planned including the female union head using Weingarten’s own language. From the writers on down, this was all planned out by the producers. They even went so far to have a Rock Concert hailing public school teachers. That’s because they know most teachers aren’t keeping abreast of these issues. They have no idea they will soon be stabbed in the back. Is it a coincidence that TFA is mentioned in the film???
Now the stars will be doing the talk-show circuit. How will they portray this film. Will they say it’s fiction? Will they say Parent Trigger is a good thing? Will they tell you no parent can take over a public school? Or will they say they were duped?
You and I know they are being taught how to spin the this film to the public. They might not have know the producers are involved in a conspiracy to take down public education and public unions. But they must know it now. Will they give up their union cards???
Will one of these actors say, “This role was a mistake. Had I known it was a political ploy, I never would have been part of it.”???
“This year, I received an invitation to sit in the audience” You were invited to participate in a conference about education? Well that makes two of you… http://goo.gl/aCj93 #satire