Jersey Jazzman is fast on the draw. Here he dissects Rick Hess’s defense of Ben Austin.
JJ wonders how Hess would feel if the parents of Newark and other cities in New Jersey–which have not had local control for two decades– were given a “parent trigger” to eliminate state control of their districts.
Good question:
Why is parent trigger swell when Parent Revolution organizes a parent petition to kick out the staff but not good at all when parents are denied the power to kick out their district superintendent?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In the interview linked to BELOW, Parent Revolution leader
Ben Austin characterizes the opposition to the Parent
Trigger in Compton(December 2010) thusly:
“The teachers’ union struck back”,
He then proceeds to describe McKinley Elementary
in Compton (the target school) overall as a
child-abusing hell-hole.
(Oh really? Then why did 90% of the parents
choose to remain at McKinley… the child-abusing hell-hole…
instead of at the charter school that Parent Revolution helped
open just a block away?)
Seriously, Dr. Ravitch. You’re not going to believe this—but Austin claims
THAT the the unionized teachers at McKinley retaliated against the the
pro-Parent Trigger parents by physically torturing the children of
those parents (???!!!) while the children of anti-Parent-Trigger,
pro-evil-union parents were spared this Abu Ghraib-like physical
and mental torment.
Austin said this an interview for the far-right-wing, anti-union Choice Matters,
where he is being interviewed by Bob Bowden, who had previously made
an anti-union, pro-charter documentary, “THE CARTEL”.
Check out this link for the video:
(NOTE: the scary, unnerving tinkling piano music underscoring the urination / defecation torture story)
Next, try watching it while reading along to my transcript:
(ALSO NOTE: Dr. Ravitch, I was very precise in my transcription of this part of the interview—including all the pauses, ellipses ( … ), “uhh” ‘s, “uhhmm” ‘s, etc.. .
I did this to illustrate that Ben Austin is clearly lying his head off. Show this video
to any police detective, or anyone else trained in lie detection, and see
what they say. Compare Austin’s delivery and demeanor to that of
the interviewer Bowden, who is not under pressure to knowingly lie.
Austin is bumbling, while Bowden remains smooth.
Lying is hard work. It places intense cognitive demands and pressures
on the person who is lying, and as a result, when you get someone who
is not very effective and/or experienced in lying, you get a ridiculous, stumbling,
bumbling performance like that of Austin’s in the video.
Also, the bolding during the torture story is mine, Jack)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
TRANSCRIPT: (00:41 – 02:06)
AUSTIN: “Instead of being embraced and applauded for getting involve
in the education of their own children, (THE PRO-PARENT-TRIGGER PARENTS) were intimidated uhhh… and abused and harassed… uhhmm… and… uhmmm… we quiclkly found out that there were few… moral boundaries that the other side was unwilling to cross.
“One story in particular that was… uhmmm… jaw-dropping.. was that… uhmm… we found out pretty quickly that parents… whose… who—uhh… children whose parents signed the petitions… uhhm… were not allowed to go to the bathroom, and… when the children peed in their pants, they were sent to the… Nurse’s Office… uhh… and… that is where the parents… uhmm… parents got called in to bring in clean underwear… uhh… and that’s where the parents got hit up to give their … uhhh… to rescind their… signatures.”
BOWDEN: “Let me get this straight? In the same classroom where the parents who didn’t support the Parent Trigger petition… those students were allowed to go to the bathroom, and if your mom or dad supported the Parent Trigger, you were told, ‘Too bad. Stay there.’ ” (and thus, be forced to urinate/defecate on yourself, Jack)
AUSTIN: “That’s right. I mean it’s.. it’s… i-i-i-i-i… the-the… Things got so bad that the parents… uhhmmm… uhh… had to
—-(AUSTIN STARES DOWN AT SOMETHING… another “tell” of lying)
” … uhhmmm… sue the school district… and uhhmm… they … ”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Austin doesn’t even seem to believe the
bullshit that he’s spewing. His mind is jumping
around awkwardly… rambling about kids peeing in
their pants, then about parents forced to
bring clean underwear…
It’s like he’s trying to remember whatever phony story
that he, Gabe Rose, Pat DeTemple, and/or other Parent Rev. folks
vomited up during a secret strategy session.
In this instance at least, Austin’s a pretty unconvincing liar.
the same video is also here:
I have never seen a video where it was
more completely obvious that someone (Austin) is
lying his head off. The “uhh..”‘s,
“uhhmmm”s… pauses etc…. repeatedly’
the staring down, and looking to the side.
Again, note the contrast with cadence
and manner of the interviewer,
who is not lying.
CONCLUSION:
THIS__STORY__IS___TOTAL___AND___UTTER___BULLSHIT.
NOTE: Austin was an uncredited consultant to the
screenwriters of ‘WON’T BACK DOWN’. The urination
scene is in the movie, with the added wrinkle
that the evil unionized teacher first locked the
pro-Parent-Trigger parent’s kid in a dark closet.
When the hero mom shows up, the evil teacher
says that’s what your kid gets for you being
a trouble-maker—i.e. signing the petition,
and gathering signatures.
Sheesh!
If that ever happened in real life, the teacher
would be taken out of the school in handcuffs.
These Parent Rev. people are sociopaths, or
psychopaths who are so steeped in pathological dishonesty—
telling whatever lie they want to tell
whenever they want to tell it, so long as
it advances their agenda—that, in this
instance at least, they’ve lost
touch with reality.
In my next post, I’ll tell you about
1) the bogus “McKINLEY PARENTS FOR CHANGE” flyer
that Robert Skeels wrote about:
2) Parent Revolution’s despicable “Plan B” they tried to put into effect in Compton, and which ultimately failed.
Before I get to the post about the flyer and “Plan B”, check out this near the end of the BEN AUSTIN / BOBBY BOWDEN INTERVIEW video:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
( 02:51 – 03:13 )
BOWDEN: “What happened to the teachers who did that?”
AUSTIN: “Nothing”
—-LONG PAUSE where Ben doesn’t clarify this in the least
BOWDEN: “They’re still working?”
AUSTIN: “Uhhmmm… yeah… and… and… I mean our-our goal is not to teacher-bash… or even union-bash… for some people see this simply as a struggle for power… not an issue of social justice… not an issue of …. ”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Right… Ben says that he and Parent Revolution are “not about teacher-bashing”… Oh, no… not at all… he just tells some horrific (and totally bogus) story about teachers at a school torturing children as a means of winning a “struggle for power.”
As anyone on either side of the issue would, Bowden is genuinely interested in whether or not the perpetrators of this were ever held accountable for this alleged conspiracy of abuse.
But Ben doesn’t want to go there… other than to say “Nothing.” when asked if the anything happened to these teachers.
Somewhat embarrassed and staring down (another “tell” of lying), Ben just quickly moves on from this line of questioning to blather about “struggle for power” and “issue of social justice.”
—I’m going into Sam Kinison voice as I type this (I know that dates me with some folks reading)
Hey Ben!!!!!
Didn’t someone ever think of alerting Compton Unified?!!!
Didn’t you think of calling the police?!!
Have those kids gotten psychological treatment?!
Have the child victims’ parents done anything in response?
Are they suing?
The answer to all these question is,,,
—more Sam Kinison Voice
HELL- NO!!!!
Why?
BECAUSE NONE OF THIS EVER FREAKIN’ HAPPENED!!!!!
OH!! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!!
OH!!! OH!!! OHHHHHH!!!!!
BEN AUSTIN… YOU FREAKIN’ LIAR!!!!
OH!! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!!
OH!!! OH!!! OHHHHHH!!!!!
—back to normal voice
I’m an elementary school teacher who has to take the Child Abuse Awareness Training video and test annually.
Here’s how it works.
If I—or ANY teacher / administrator—became aware that another teacher or an administrator had been torturing a child—forcing the child to urinate / defecate on himself / herself…
Like all teachers, administrators and other “mandated reporters”, I am required BY LAW to report this immediately… if not, I will be immediately removed from the classroom, will be prosecuted, and will be open to be sued for a six-figure sum (at least), and I will lose my job and my credential… and eventually get banned from teaching for life.
Look at how blase Austin is when Bowden asks him if anything happened to these teachers. There’s not the slightest bit of anger or outrage on Austin’s part… he’s a bit annoyed at the question, and instead moves on..
Oh well, la-di-dah… kids got tortured… let’s change the subject…
Austin then abruptly changes the topic to “we’re not here to teacher bash or union bash”…
Ridiculous!
If this HAD actually happened, the Parent Revolution douchebags would have gone to the police, held press conferences, had the “pro-bono legal team” sue everyone and every organization in sight—Compton Unified, the teachers, the union, the administrators… etc.
And then publicize the hell outta ALL OF THE ABOVE from now till Doomsday. They’d milk this for all its worth, AS PROOF OF HOW EVIL TRADITIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND and HOW EVIL TEACHER UNIONS ARE.
Why haven’t they?
—going back into a Sam Kinison Voice
BECAUSE_IT_NEVER_FREAKIN’_HAPPENED!!!!!!
—more Sam Kinison Voice
OH!! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!!
OH!!! OH!!! OHHHHHH!!!!!
BEN AUSTIN… YOU FREAKIN’ LIAR!!!!
OH!! OH!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!!
OH!!! OH!!! OHHHHHH!!!!!
I’ve been pointing out for years what a ridiculous lie that was — albeit not so colorfully. Even if teachers were malicious and cruel enough to do it, it simply wouldn’t work as a tactic, for layers of reasons evident to anyone who had spent even a small amount of time in a classroom, which of course Austin never has. (Plus I kept wondering if McKinley Elementary even had a nurse’s office, the one to which the kids who soiled themselves were allegedly sent.
And the thing is, someone who tells a lie like that doesn’t get to be trusted and respected and treated as if the lie was just a lapse. He is discredited.
Now, here’s the post about the phony flyer & “Plan B”:
Here’s a blast from the past—2 1/2 years ago to be precise—of the infamous events in Compton, California during December 2010:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/45455171/astroturf-parent-revolution-compton-caper-flyer
This is the flyer—claiming to be from the parents running “McKinley Parents for Change”.
This was supposedly group of parents of Compton’s McKinley Elementary who were ostensibly out gathering signatures to turn over McKinley Elementary’s multi-million dollar campus/annual school budgets in perpetuity over to the private Charter company Celerity—i.e. from the public sector where it is controlled by an elected school board accountable to the public…. to the private sector, where the Board meets in secret, and the public is cut out of all decision-making.
At this point, a community activist—with an admittedly anti-charter school point-of-view—named Robert Skeels then called the number at the bottom of the flyer, and here’s what he found out:
http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2010/12/update-on-veracity-of-mckinley-parents.html
– – – – – – –
ROBERT SKEELS (December 2010): “Considering the certainty and conviction of the bullet points on the flyer by this newly formed, pro-Celerity ‘parent’ group, supposedly wholly unrelated to the well-paid professional staffers at the billionaire-financed Parent Revolution, I figured my questions and concerns would be promptly addressed.
“I left a message with my name and number for McKinley Parents for Change last night, and lo and behold Parent Revolution returned my call this morning. Yuri (not sure if I’m spelling that right, my apologies if I’m not) must not be aware of my years of investigative journalism exposing the insatiable greed of the lucrative charter-voucher industry. The poor woman couldn’t answer any of my questions about Celerity’s lack of compliance with the Modified Consent Decree or the State Board of Education’s proposed regulations on their Corporate Charter Trigger Law, so she said she’d have Gabe Rose (an official of Parent Revolution) call me back to clarify.
“She also was very helpful and explained to me that Gabe Rose played a major role in the creation of the flyer (who would have guessed?), so he was the best person to explain it. So much for McKinley Parents for Change’s claim that they are parents at McKinley Elementary School. I somehow doubt I’ll receive that second phone call.”
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Over a hundred McKinley parents demanded that they be allowed to rescind their signatures that Parent Revolution collected, claiming that the signature gatherers were not McKinley parents, and that those paid signature-gatherers lied to them about the full implications of what all the parents were signing (“This is for new computers… sign here…. this is to beautify the campus… sign here… ” and on and on)
Parent Revolution officials disputed this, claiming that 70% of the parents at the school signed with fully knowledge of the petition’s implications, and that all those parents were indeed demanding Celerity take over the school.. and that it was the McKinley parents, not Parent Revolution doing all the signature gathering.
(See BELOW where Parent Revolution eventually comes clean about this lie)
This went to court, and also prompted hearings at the State Board of Ed.
Hmmm… who was telling the truth?
Well, we eventually found out, as there eventually was a metric to
show which side was telling the truth.
Parent Revolution then assisted Celerity in opening a charter school a block away from McKinley in an abandoned Catholic school building (NOTE, this was a charter authorization separate from the contentious Parent Trigger process.)
The new “Plan B” was to depopulate McKinley—with the students leaving to the new Celerity school—and then use Prop. 39 to have Celerity co-locate and invade the school anyway because of all the empty classrooms—Prop 39 allows this. They were even promising free laptops to all the students who defected from McKinley to the Celerity Charter. Given how impoverished the typical family was/is in this community, free laptops must have been tempting.
Check out L.A Weekly’s Simone Wilson’s article about Parent Revolution’s ‘Plan B’ :
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/05/parent_trigger_plan_b_charter_school_to_open_2_blocks_from_mckinley_elementary.php
(the pro-Parent Revolution / pro-charter writer, Simone Wilson, is positively salivating at this prospect of Celerity “U-Hauling its top-notch operations” into McKinley):
– – – – – – – – – –
SIMONE WILSON: “Indeed, Plan B is looking pretty promising. If Celerity opens a first-rate campus — laptops for all ! — two blocks from McKinley, chances are at least 200 of roughly 400 students will leap at the chance for a better education. This would leave the McKinley campus ‘underutilized,’ at which point another controversial California law, Prop. 39, could force the district to let a charter school take over its facilities.
” ‘I’m excited because I know my daughter is going to get the education she needs and deserves,’ parent Shemika Murphy told the Los Angeles Times.
“With this kind of support, Celerity would be ready, willing and perfectly poised to U-Haul its top-notch operations from the church over to the elementary school — virtually the same outcome as a successful Trigger would have allowed.
“… In the end, we’ve got to give props to Revolution for finding the sneaky back-door alternative to a Trigger. Whatever it takes to rescue Compton kids from the poor-get-poorer dis-educational system to which district officials have condemned them.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
How nice. Simone praising the “sneaky back-door” antics of Ben Austin & Co. That speaks volumes for the character of all who were participating in, and backing “Plan B”.
Alas, Simone was salivating over this “sneaky back-door” tactic in vain as it turned out.
In the coming fall, the public finally got definitive proof that the Parent Revolution was not on-the-level. Only 10% (or less, depending on reports) of the parents opted to go to the new Celerity school—far short of the 70% Parent Revolution organizers—and writers like Simone Wilson—had been telling everyone were clamoring for the Celerity takeover.
Also, U-Haul must not have been pleased as Celerity had to cancel any trucks they had booked for invasion and exfiltration of McKinley.
At about the same time, Parent Revolution’s Ben Austin was removed from the State Board of Ed. by California’s newly elected Governor Jerry Brown.
In the face of this public relations fiasco—where it became obvious to all that only a mere 10% (or less) of McKinley parents actually wanted Celerity taking over their school, after all—Ben Austin and Parent Revolution put out this new version:
http://parentrevolution.org/content/mckinley-elementary
– – – – – – – –
PARENT REVOLUTION: “We have also been very public about the fact that the McKinley campaign was not a perfect campaign… the vast majority of the signatures gathered were ultimately gathered by our organizers, not by the parents themselves.”
– – – – – – –
Oh really, Ben?
That’s most certainly NOT what you and your cohorts were saying back December 2010. No, you said it was the parents doing everything, with only minimal Parent Revolution assistance… or again, that’s what Parent Revolution claimed.
Their new story was that Parent Revolution had recently “became very public about” all this… yeah… but this was ONLY AFTER people like Robert Skeels exposed them, and the shenanigans in which they were engaged.
Finally, here’s a post describing how Ben makes a false equivalency between elections and signature gathering for a petition… as a hare-brained way to defend parents not being able to rescind their signatures.
This little tid-bit relates to Parent Revolution’s biggest “success” to date…
the takeover in Adelanto.
A hastily-organized and penniless group of parents
in Adelanto tried to have their signatures rescinded,
claiming that they had been lied to and misled into
signing the petition by Parent Revolution operatives.
They even testified to that in court.
This testimony from Ben Austin responding to their claims says it all:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
BEN AUSTIN: “There are certainly voters who are going to vote
on ballot initiatives this November that do not understand
everything they’re voting on… That doesn’t illegitimize
an election.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Wow!
That is some Classic Ben Austin! You can find it here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/wont-back-down-inspiratio_n_1935876.html
Ben is tacitly admitting that—in the course of Parent Revolution’s
signature gathering—there were and are indeed petition signers
who were misled and confused when signing on
(and presumably would not have signed otherwise)…
with Austin conceding that it was AT LEAST SOME OF
HIS OWN SIGNATURE GATHERERS WERE DELIBERATELY
MISLEADING AND CONFUSING PEOPLE.
There were almost 100 parents who wanted to rescind
their signatures after finding out they had been “duped”.
ANATOMY OF THE “DUPING”:
the Parent Revolution organizers rented a house
across the street from the school, and elicited what
the parents by saying, “This is to make the school better… ”
Well, duh! Who’s not going to sign that?
In an argument that inexplicably prevailed with
an appeals court judge, Ben tries to draw an equivalency…
between petitions and elections…
in that both usually have signers / voters
who may be misled or confused when they
vote for / sign something… and so what if they do?
Once again…
– – – – – – – – – – – –
BEN AUSTIN: “There are certainly voters who are going to vote
on ballot initiatives this November that do not understand
everything they’re voting on… That doesn’t illegitimize
an election.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
WTF???!!!
This idiotic argument—attempting to equate elections
and signature-gathering for a petition—essentially legitimizes
wholesale fraud in signature-gathering.
It essentially gives license to any and
every kind of dishonest tactic:
— lying,
—phony promises
—threats
and on and on…
Because later, you can just claim… “well, they do this in elections,
and you’re not allowed to take your vote back… so you shouldn’t
be allowed to take your signature back.”
Unlike an election, petition-gatherer engages in a one-on-one communication
and relationships with the prospective signer… one in which the prospective signer
is at the mercy of the signature-gatherer as to what he or she is
saying—promises, representations, threats, etc.—are actually
truthful.
If the signer of the petition—once he discovers that has “been had”—
is not then allowed to rescind the signature… then the whole fraud
will then run rampant.
An election is nothing of the kind.
The only reason this was not appealed to the Supreme Court was that the School Board in Adelanto had been financially drained by Parent Revolution’s high-powered lawyers. This cash-poor school district was broke, so they had to basically surrender at this point.
Let’s demystify the duplicity and just always call that law what it really is (or at least define it in parentheses), as Diane so aptly pointed out, it’s a “Parent Tricker.”
Who could have ever guessed that America would one day need an Anti-Cruelty Society for Teachers?
The on-going deceptions, aspersions and injustices, inflicted by so-called “reformers,” who themselves have “few moral boundaries” and will readily lie to parents, trash teachers and have no problem sending minority kids to “no-excuses” military style charter schools, are so enraging that sometimes I just want to escape it all, close my eyes and try to imagine the kinder, gentler world that we hear about so much.
Dirait-On (So They Say)
When profiteers look to intrude and take over, they try to portray it as “grassroots”, community, student centered…When the actual community stands up to resist exploitation it’s described as some trickery that comes from those evil unionized teachers.
Parent Revolution aka Los Angeles Parents Union received $1,600,738 from Gates. Nothing but astro-turf.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=parents%20union
How about prosecuting Parent Revolution and Ben Austin for fraud in signatures. If you read the California Parent Empowerment Act as it is known in California on rule 4, page 2, item (g) you will see the requirements for signatures to be legal for a Parent Trigger. Parent Revolution has broken all the rules concerning legal signatures by promising things and intimidation. This means that every Parent Trigger is in reality capable of being made null and void for lack of legal signatures. Parents from Weigand and Desert Trails have testified that Parent Revolution used techniques which are against the law. Why is such a problem for everyone to realize this? Why do you all go in circles instead of going right for the game? It is because none of you have obviously read and understand the law as is typical now. If you want to stop illegal actions you should know the law or you are just blowing smoke and helping the other side as they laugh at you for false arguments. If that state had the Parent Trigger the parents, students, teachers and community could Pull the Trigger and take that school over and run it themselves without any charter or corporation involved as can be done here in California. Parent Revolution has just morphed the message so that all who do not know the law, which means almost everyone, are merely their tools. There is nothing wrong with the Parent Trigger it is the manner in which it is being used illegally. This is the problem. Stop the problem with the law. How many of you will help us stop Parent Revolution by using the law they got passed against Parent Revolution for breaking the law. I have sent the law and this situation to all LAUSD Board Members and the education writers at the L.A. Times. Now we will see if the conversation on this blog starts to revolve around the law not ideology and if the press will write the “Real Story.” So far only three people nationwide have emailed me for the law. What a joke.
G, I second your motion.
Who would be the proper prosecuter? Is a civil suit possible if criminal prosecutor declines to indict?
It appears that Ben Austin has been well-covered here, so let me turn to another real tool, Rick Hess.
Hess has been writing some serious nonsense about public education for quite some time.
Here’s one of my “favorite” Hessisms, about school vouchers and competition:
“The absence of competition means that public schools, like other government agencies, typically are not subjected to this kind of discipline. No matter how inefficient, employees have little to fear. Subjecting school systems to real competition would indeed produce more effective schools –and other benefits as well. It would provide quality control beyond that afforded by standardized testing, empower entrepreneurial educators to offer alternatives to reigning orthodoxies, and permit good schools to multiply without waiting for permission from resistant district leaders.”
In other words, fear in the workplace is a “good” thing. It leads to “effectiveness.” It causes “quality control.” It fosters the proliferation of “good schools.”
You know, sort of like how it’s created all those big “good” banks.
Oh yeah. those words “entrepreneurial educators” were key, a k a, profiteers –and by educators he meant anyone with a heartbeat. And preferably not someone whose heart bleeds for genuine injustice. And definitely no one who was actually trained in education. –Or in anything for that matter..
For example, the guy who started Green Dot charters schools, Steve Barr, whose new charter in NOLA with the TFAers was portrayed on Oprah’s Own network, I could find nothing indicating he even has a college degree. But hey, this is just EDUCATION and “reformers” want everyone to believe that that no EDUCATION is required to teach in or to run EDUCATION, and especially no training actually IN EDUCATION.
Funny how so many wealthy college dropouts are pushing college for EVERYBODY except EDUCATORS.
These billionaires are such know-nothing dimwits that they don’t even realize what God-awful ignoramuses they sound like. Too bad all their wealth won’t buy them new brains. For the benefit of the rest of us though, they should really fork it over for heart transplants.
From Wiki.
At the AEI, he is funded by Gates, close to Rhee and Kipp’s head. He is a D.C reform evaluator who is silent on the D.C Testing Scandal.
Education policy studies at AEI are directed by Frederick M. Hess. Hess has authored, coauthored, or edited a number of volumes based on major conferences held at AEI on subjects like urban school reform,[111] school choice,[112] No Child Left Behind,[113] teacher qualification,[114] “educational entrepreneurship,”[115] student loans,[116] and education research.[117] Hess also codirects AEI’s Future of American Education Project[dead link], whose working group includes Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and Michael Feinberg, the cofounder of KIPP. Hess is close to Rhee:[118] she has spoken at AEI on several occasions and appointed Hess to be one of two independent reform evaluators for the District of Columbia Public Schools.
“Why is parent trigger swell when Parent Revolution organizes a parent petition to kick out the staff but not good at all when parents are denied the power to kick out their district superintendent?”
The answer:
To keep key people in the corporate reform movement in power.
Adelanto, A poor community in Southern California was the site of the first trigger.
And in another poor town, not far from here…
Parent trigger Fifty years ago::
— The county Board of Supervisors today approved an ordinance prohibiting the use of human targets in marksman exhibitions. Passage of the ordinance came as the result of a tragic incident in Calexico when El Centro pistol expert, Milo Ploof, accidentally shot and killed his daughter during a sharpshooting exhibition.
http://articles.ivpressonline.com/2003-12-03/imperial-valley_24214120
Hello Everyone,
Get ready for this next propaganda movie, a la “waiting for Superman”, supporting parent trigger;
“We The Parents”
“a feature documentary film, follows the people and events surrounding the first-ever school transformation under California’s “Parent Trigger” law and captures the spread of a revolutionary movement across the country. This is a story about courage, empowerment, and parents’ love and dreams for their children and their futures. It’s also about a groundbreaking law that encourages people to organize and change a system, and the efforts of the system, powerful individuals, and communities to resist them.”
“Won’t Back Down” was a box-office bomb. Why will this movie do better?
It probably won’t do any better.
Learning about this new movie shocked me, I must say. I can’t believe some of the rhetoric around this idea of a parent revolt to bring in private groups to run the school. It’s putting the onus on the wrong problems. New operators come in, and razzle dazzle everyone. Then things end up worse than before.
thanks for replying, Diane.
I know this is off topic, but how do I send you a story?
Sounds like it’s time to create a “Parent Tricker” documentary which describes how Gates and charter schools are backing this astro-turf “Parent Revolution/Parent Union” which sends out of towners to trick parents into giving away their neighborhood schools to profiteers: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/PAA_Parent_Trigger-position-final.pdf
There are parents from Adelanto, CA who’ve written about how confused they were by the circulation of two different petitions, one proposing that the principal be replaced and one aimed at converting the school to a charter. Parents have also written about their regrets and how divisive the experience was for their community.
I’m not as knowledgeable as George about the details of the law, but I’ve looked at it and I don’t agree that “There is nothing wrong with the Parent Trigger.” I think there is something wrong when a right is given to people just ONCE in a lifetime. Rights and empowerment are not one shot deals, and that really SHOULD be the red flag that alerts people to the reality that this is not really about helping parents. Since when do parents only get a say ONCE in their children’s education?
Something is very wrong when no one even tells parents that’s how it works, that once they chose it, they lose it: Once they give their school away, there is no provision for parents to do this again and take back their school. Something’s not right when no one tells parents that there will be no more neighborhood school that anyone who lives in the community can send their kids to and that, from that point on, all parents in the area must apply to get their kids into a school. There is so much more the outsiders who talk parents into giving away their school probably don’t tell them.
Do they tell parents that they can forget about having a say in the direction of the new charter school because charters don’t have elected school boards?
Do they tell them that 83% of charters are the same or worse than traditional neighborhood schools?
Do they tell parents they may end up with a military style charter school or a school that charges parents for their children’s behavioral infractions? Do they tell them they could get a school where kids sit in front of computers for hours and are supervised by Teacher Aides. Do they tell them their kids may get mostly inexperienced Teachers who have never studied child development and education and who may not stay more than two years? Do they tell them the likelihood of getting massive drill for skill/test prep from inexperienced teachers, or that there might be no social studies, science, art, music, gym, library, recess, etc. –whatever is not tested?
Do they tell parents that corporate sponsored school “reform” is really a business plan? I doubt they share with parents that this is a neo-liberal capitalist maneuver to let market forces determine the direction of education.
Do they tell them that when parents express to charter schools they are unhappy with how things are going, charters often tell parents they can take their child to another school –because that’s how market forces work? (You don’t like McDonalds? Go to Burger King…)
I would contend that supporters of this law either don’t fully understand it or they know everything about it, the Powell Memo, Milton Friedman and ALEC’s longstanding plans to privatize public education in this country. I highly doubt they are telling parents that corporations, entrepreneurial profiteers, politicians and zealots want to direct the course of education and influence who will become the future low-paid workers, and make a lot of low risk income while doing so –all while claiming “it’s for the kids.”
My guess is that no one is telling parents how corporate “reform” is a con game backed by billionaires who are trying to get their hands on free public funding by running unregulated schools across the country, paid for by tax dollars, starting in low income neighborhoods –but with plans of expanding into higher income communities, too.
No, we don’t need to make a documentary. We need to make an Infomercial for those who are the targets of one shot “Parent Empowerment” and bait and switch education promulgated by the Billionaire Boys Club and their lackeys.
B-O-Y-C-O-T-T.