I am not going to write anything substantive about the movie celebrating the so-called “parent trigger” until I have seen it.
But the stories about it continue to miss the point about why parents and teachers think it is a corporate-conceived and corporate-driven idea, for the benefit of corporate charter chains. Why not mention the Florida parents’ fight to stop this so-called “parent empowerment”? If it really empowered parents, why did parents oppose it?
Here is the latest example. Frank Bruni, usually a thoughtful writer, has an article in today’s New York Times. He sees the movie as part of the ongoing (and at least partially justified) critique of teachers unions. He never mentions that the two states that enthusiastically endorsed parent trigger laws (after California did it first, during the Schwarzenegger years), are right-to-work states, Texas and Mississippi. Nor did he mention the role of the rightwing group ALEC in promoting the trigger idea as a way to hasten the privatization of public education.
Instead he sees it as a righteous plea for better schools (the cloak that reformers always wear as they set out to privatize your schools). That’s exactly what the producers are hoping for, to pull the wool over people’s eyes to their privatization agenda with a soap opera set in a public school.
The tipoff is the ending quote, which is from Joe Williams, the executive director of the falsely named Democrats for Education Reform. DFER is the organization of the Wall Street hedge fund managers. Joe, a nice guy, was formerly a beat reporter for the New York Daily News.
Larry Ferlazzo, a prolific blogger and Sacramento teacher, calls Williams on his line about finding and rewarding the best teachers.
Why did Bruni end up parroting DFER? The hedge fund mangers are not education experts; they are not teachers or principals. They send their children to Andover, Exeter, Lakeside Academy, Trinity, St. Bernard’s, Deerfield Academy and Sidwell Friends. These schools don’t evaluate their teachers by standardized test scores. Why does the parent trigger lead us right back to all the other bad ideas propounded by these out of touch reformers?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Richardson Dilworth said always follow the money or the jobs if you want to know why something happened.
He was right.
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I remember being surprised during the last presidential election that so much attention was being paid to education. I remember being excited that a major network like msnbc was taking air time to discuss education. I remember hearing that there was a motion picture about education and thinking how great it was that others were finally focusing on education and the needs of children who are affected by poverty.
In retrospect, I was naive to think there was a national conversation driven by care, compassion, concern. It just took a while for me to realize the real reasons “they” were paying attention….the same old motivators of too many over time…power, greed, money.
So yesterday on facebook I saw that a teacher friend of mine “liked” some link to the Teachers Rock concert event. Sigh. They are so good at their messaging that they fool us into believing they support teachers, put “students first” and “stand for children” etc.
Where do I begin the lesson I haved learned and now must share with her? I guess I start with referring her to this blog. I remember part of my wake up call was seeing Diane on tv and buying her book.
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Dear Dr. Ravitch,
I was composing my own letter to Frank Bruni early this morning, and didn’t see your post until later. Thanks, as always, for your advocacy. Below is a copy of the letter I emailed to Mr. Bruni this morning.
Sincerely,
Rebecca Poyourow
Dear Mr. Bruni,
While I usually enjoy your opinion articles, I was dismayed by yesterday’s article on parent trigger laws. It seems to me that you do not know much about the issue and are relying for your talking points on the PR campaigns of the groups that support them, ironically not grass-roots parents’ groups but primarily astroturf groups with financial, policy, and personnel links reaching back to groups like ALEC (groups which you are certainly no fan of when it comes to their impact on other policy areas).
You seem to take for granted several ideas I would challenge you on: (1) that American public schools and teachers are failing, (2) that middle-class families should desert urban, public schools, (3) that charter schools are the answer to any problems in the current public educational system, and (4) that parent trigger laws would a helpful tool for remedying problems.
For the record, I am a parent with two children in my neighborhood public school in Philadelphia. Our school manages to hold together and serve well a coalition of low-income, blue-collar, and middle-class families with striking racial as well as socioeconomic diversity in a Philadelphia neighborhood–61% of our students are economically disadvantaged, 45% white, 45% black, 5% Latino, and 5% multiracial and other designations. We are not a rich school and cannot stage fundraisers such as the ones held by the Upper West Side public schools in NYC profiled in the NYT earlier this summer. In fact, we (and all public schools in PA) were hit hard by the education budget cuts enacted when a wave of extremist state legislators came into our state government in 2010. $1 billion has been cut from public education statewide in PA, and it has impacted our school heavily, raising class sizes while stripping the school of necessary teaching and support personnel, contracting the curriculum (music and language teachers were cut last year, and the school had no money previously for an art teacher), and leaving kids behind academically without the tutoring previously provided.
Yet our school remains strong, continuing to make AYP and to attract neighborhood parents, primarily because of the cross-class coalition using the school. Even if we haven’t raised $1 million for our school, many parents volunteer, run after-school clubs, and try to solicit community resources to help the school provide what has been eliminated because of cuts at the state level. The reward is that our children get to attend an integrated, academically sound public school in our city neighborhood that is open to all. We are part of a growing movement in several cities (including NYC) that has parents choosing to invest their time and energy in public schools, not only for their own families’ good but to strengthen the fabric of their neighborhoods and cities.
Which brings me back to your op-ed. I am a public school parent–not a teacher and not a union employee. I find the representations of the state of public education in the U.S. promulgated by films such as “Won’t Back Down” and “Waiting for Superman” to be harmful and inaccurate depictions of the current dilemmas faced by public school students, parents, and teachers.
Private schools have done a good sales job over the last decade or so, feeding the cultural panic among middle-class parents, creating anxieties in them that they cannot use the public schools and must purchase high-priced private schooling, tutoring, etc. at any price if their children are to succeed in life academically and economically. However, it is the class and educational background of parents that is the most critical variable in children’s success. While many currently make the claim (which you echo) that U.S. public schools are way behind other countries, when socioeconomic class is taken into account, American students do as well or better than the countries we say we wish to emulate. It is poverty that is our greatest problem. Middle-class children who attend urban public schools, even those in schools with very low average scores, do fine. If we want to solve the educational crisis that does exist for kids from low-income families, then creating jobs, stable health care, and an economic security net for their families is one key–and finding ways to create schools integrated by race and socioeconomic background is another–and providing appropriate funding, early childhood education, and smaller classes is a third.
The voucher, charter school, and parent trigger movements aim in precisely the opposite direction by draining public schools of funds desperately needed in this climate of scarcity and creating a two-tier system of schools, segregating kids even further by race, class, English language learner status, and disability. Indeed as the CREDO study by Stanford University shows, charter schools do not provide better educational opportunities; many provide worse. The people behind the push for parent trigger laws are not idealistic parents but chain charter operators hoping to expand their profits at the public expense–and their right-wing backers hoping to undermine our understanding of education as a public good. I hope you do some research on this topic and reconsider your opinion.
Sincerely,
Rebecca Poyourow (a usually appreciative reader)
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Bruni states the following:
“All around me I see parents of means going the private route and dipping as far into their bank accounts as necessary to purchase every last advantage a kid can have.”
Where does he he live and with whom does he associate that this is what he sees?
I see plenty of parents sending their kids to public schools. I see plenty of parents who, when they are upset at the direction of the school system, take issue not with teacher quality but with the heavy emphasis on standardized testing, the regimentation of the curriculum, and the cuts to art, music, enrichment, and physical education.
Bruni goes to all the usual suspects to talk about teacher quality – Weingarten, Lasher, Williams, et al. – but you know who he doesn’t quote in his column?
Either a parent or a teacher.
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Another in a long line of Hollywood entertainment masquerading as educational analysis. This is more of a “Rocky” sequel than a new movie, since the same story line rises like a plague of locusts every seven years or so. The only difference is that rather than having the idealistic white messiah turn around one classroom, the sequel ups the ante to a whole school. Next sequel will be the “crusading reformer” who turns around a whole district. Then the whole state. Then the whole world. Then some genius film school student will realize the story line has been exhausted (even Stallone stopped at six sequels) and we’ll get a movie about a idealistic white reformer who fights to save the world from privatization through an “international charter proliferation” treaty. That movie will go straight to DVD.
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” You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time.”
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Thought-provoking articles, Lynn.
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