TO: Interested Parties
From: AFT President Randi Weingarten Date: August 28, 2012 RE: “Won’t Back Down” |
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One can’t help but be moved by the characters and story portrayed in Walden Media’s film “Won’t Back Down.” The film is successful in driving home the sense of urgency parents and educators feel to do everything they can to provide the best possible education for their children. That is abundantly evident in this film—it’s what I hear as I visit schools across the country, and it’s what I heard when I sat down with parent and community groups from across the country last week.
We share that pain and frustration. And we firmly believe that every public school should be a school where every parent would want to send his or her child and where every teacher would want to teach. Unfortunately, using the most blatant stereotypes and caricatures I have ever seen—even worse than those in “Waiting for ‘Superman’”—the film affixes blame on the wrong culprit: America’s teachers unions.
As a former public school teacher and president of the American Federation of Teachers, I have spent my entire adult life working on behalf of children and teachers. After viewing this film, I can tell you that if I had taught at that school, and if I were a member of that union, I would have joined the characters played by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis. I would have led the effort to mobilize parents and teachers to turn around that school myself.
I don’t recognize the teachers portrayed in this movie, and I don’t recognize that union. The teachers I know are women and men who have devoted their lives to helping children learn and grow and reach their full potential. These women and men come in early, stay late to mentor and tutor students, coach sports teams, advise the student council, work through lunch breaks, purchase school supplies using money from their own pockets, and spend their evenings planning lessons, grading papers and talking to parents. Yet their efforts, and the care with which they approach their work, are nowhere to be seen in this film.
This movie could have been a great opportunity to bring parents and teachers together to launch a national movement focused on real teacher and parent collaboration to help all children. Instead, this fictional portrayal, which makes the unions the culprit for all of the problems facing our schools, is divisive and demoralizes millions of great teachers. America’s teachers are already being asked to do more with less—budgets have been slashed, 300,000 teachers have been laid off since the start of the recession, class sizes have spiked, and more and more children are falling into poverty. And teachers are being demonized, marginalized and shamed by politicians and elites who want to undermine and dismiss their reform efforts.
Parent engagement is essential to ensuring children thrive in the classroom. The power of partnerships between parents, teachers and the community is at the heart of school change.
But instead of focusing on real parent empowerment and how communities can come together to help all children succeed, “Won’t Back Down” offers parents a false choice—you’re either for students or for teachers, you can either live with a low-performing school or take dramatic, disruptive action to shut a school down.
Real parent engagement means establishing meaningful ways for parents to be real partners in their children’s public education from the beginning—not just when a school is failing. The goal should be to never let a school get to that point. Parents are actually calling for real investments in their neighborhood public schools and that should be our collective focus.
Across the country, AFT teachers and leaders are partnering with parents and community groups to create real parent engagement that strengthens schools and neighborhoods:
- In the South Bronx, the Community Collaborative to Improve District 9 Schools (CC9) partnered with the United Federation of Teachers on a school reform agenda focused on teacher quality, school leadership and family-school partnerships. Through the partnership, teachers participated in neighborhood walks to visit with the families of their students. And they established the lead teacher program, which allowed experienced teachers to provide mentoring and guidance to newer and struggling teachers. CC9 members were involved in hiring the lead teachers.
- In Minnesota, AFT affiliates negotiated the Parent-Teacher Home Visit Project into their contract, training teachers to visit their students’ families to establish bonds with parents outside of the school environment and help parents support their children’s learning. And the AFT’s affiliate in St. Paul surveyed parents to get their concerns and thoughts about their schools, and then incorporated the results into their contract negotiations.
- In Connecticut, the AFT helped create a law that provided an avenue for parents to become involved in their children’s schools. The 2011 law requires that certain low-performing schools create School Governance Councils to develop parental involvement policies and make recommendations on administrator hiring and, ultimately, on the school improvement plan. School councils are composed of parents, teachers and community members, with parents having a majority. This year, Connecticut’s new education reform law requires the creation of such councils in every low-performing school in the state.
- In Cincinnati and elsewhere, AFT locals are working to mitigate the impact that poverty and other out-of-school factors have on students by offering wraparound services, including health and mental health services, meal programs, tutoring, counseling and after-school programs. Many of the services offered in Cincinnati schools were based on survey responses from neighborhood parents on what was needed for children and the neighborhood.
- The AFT is leading a coalition of businesses, community groups, parents and educators to completely transform the educational and economic opportunities available to children and families in McDowell County, W.Va.
- The AFT worked with a British corporation to develop a digital filing cabinet of lesson plans and resources for teachers called Share My Lesson. It’s an online community for teachers to share their best ideas and collaborate with one another.
Sadly, this film chooses to ignore these success stories and the many others happening across the county. Instead, it promotes the deceptively named “parent trigger” laws, which are marketed as parent-empowerment laws. Actually, these laws deny both parents and teachers a voice in improving schools and helping children, by using parents to give control of our schools over to for-profit corporations. Parent trigger laws are being pushed by organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which Walden Media owner and oil billionaire Philip Anschutz helps fund.
The film advances a policy that in reality limits teacher and parent voices, the very voices that are celebrated and empowered in the movie.
In real life, there have been only two attempts to pull the parent trigger. One never made it to the approval process. In Adelanto, Calif., where the trigger petition is still in progress, many parents report feeling deceived by the for-profit charter-backed organizers who came in to gather petitions. They actually sued to take their signatures back when they found out they were being used to give their school away to a charter company.
Confusing the matter even further, those supporting the parent trigger asked the court to rule that once a signature was on a petition, it could not be rescinded. The court ruled in their favor, stating that the parent trigger law did not allow for rescinded signatures. But just this month, the Adelanto school board rejected the parent trigger proponents’ call for a charter operator and instead instituted numerous reforms including the formation of a community advisory council, an extended school day and improved technology, among other reforms. In both situations, the use of the parent trigger law has been disruptive and divided the school community.
That’s one reason why a Florida parent coalition representing half a million parents joined with the Florida PTA and others to oppose parent trigger legislation when the bill was proposed there last year. They knew from the California parents’ experience that it would put all the power in the hands of for-profit companies, not public school parents.
It must be pointed out that the film contains several egregiously misleading scenes with the sole purpose of undermining people’s confidence in public education, public school teachers and teachers unions.
The film advances the “bad teacher” narrative through the character of Deborah. This teacher barks at students from her desk, uses her cell phone in class, refuses to let students use the restroom, puts children in a closet as a disciplinary measure and resists all reform efforts, yet miraculously remains employed at the school. She tells parents that she refuses to stay after school hours to help her students, and Davis’ character in the film asserts that union rules prohibit teachers from working past 3 p.m., an egregious lie. I know of no contract or local union that would ever prevent a teacher from remaining after school to help a student or do the work necessary to help children.
Let’s be clear—this teacher, or any teacher who engages in such deplorable actions against children, should be fired for this outrageous behavior.
The film features the union leader sharing a quote that anti-public education ideologues and right-wing politicians often attribute to former AFT president Albert Shanker: “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” Despite the frequency with which corporate interests claim Shanker said this, a review of news reports, speeches, and interviews with Shanker’s aides and biographers, and even an analysis by the Washington Post, failed to find any person or report that could corroborate the statement.
This is not the only time the movie resorts to falsehoods and anti-union stereotypes. Viola Davis’ character tells other teachers that the new school they create cannot be unionized because the union would restrict their ability to implement reforms that help kids. This is a false—unions are democratic organizations made up of individual educators, and collective bargaining is the process by which individuals come together to make things better. Many examples demonstrate that far from blocking reform efforts, unions fight for the things children need to thrive in school, like safe classrooms and smaller class sizes. And unions empower educators to win the tools and voice they need to help children.
Half of all teachers in the United States do not have collective bargaining contracts. The reality is that the states with the highest union density—states such as Maryland, Massachusetts and Minnesota—are the states that lead the nation in student achievement. And a recent Education Sector survey of teachers made clear that America’s teachers—both union and nonunion—recognize the importance of unions in strengthening the teaching profession and our public schools.
Though deeply unfortunate, it is also unsurprising that “Won’t Back Down” is such a false and misleading depiction of teachers and unions. Anschutz’s business partner is on record saying that he intends to use Walden Media (which also produced the equally misleading “Waiting for ‘Superman’”), as way for him to promote their values.
A look at the organizations in which Anschutz invests makes those values crystal clear. He has funded 20 organizations, including ALEC, Americans for Prosperity and the National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation. All of these groups operate against the public interest in favor of corporate interests, and all of them actively oppose collective bargaining rights and other benefits for workers. Anschutz has also invested millions in anti-gay and extreme religious-right organizations such as the Promise Keepers, whose founder declared that “homosexuality is an abomination against almighty God,” and organizations affiliated with Focus on the Family.
The last thing that the country and the debate over public education reform needs is another movie that maligns teachers, caricatures teachers unions and misleads the American public about what is happening in public education today. Children deserve great schools. That’s how we build great communities. And real public education reform comes from teachers, parents and communities working together to help all kids thrive.
I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues further. To learn more about what AFT members are doing to help all children succeed, contact Marcus Mrowka at 202-531-0689 or mmrowka@aft.org.
Why be so reluctant to call out what “Won’t Back Down” obviously is? It’s a propaganda film.
One definition: “A propaganda film is a film that involves some form of propaganda. Propaganda films may be packaged in numerous ways, but are most often documentary-style productions or fictional screenplays, that are produced to convince the viewer on a specific political point or influence the opinions or behavior of the viewer, often by providing subjective content that may be deliberately misleading… ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_film
I agree. It’s a pretty good analysis, but why didn’t the words “false” and “lie” show up more frequently, and in the first paragraph? Another big flaw: Ms. Winegarten keeps equating standardized test scores with “achievement.” This plays into the hands of the so-called reformers. If she actually believes that math and reading scores indicate school quality, she should be ousted from her position. Every time I see her on TV, she cedes ground to the attackers. She agrees with them to a point, then tells how the union is doing the reformers one better. (In her last appearance on MSNBC, she referred to “the countries that out-compete us,” a concept that has been thoroughly debunked–even if you’re just talking PISA scores, let alone the value of a comprehensive program at a well-funded American school.) This equation of test scores and “achievement” undercuts the position of teachers who know that school quality (or learning, for that matter) is more than scores on a bad test. Until she has that realization, she won’t fully be on the teachers’ side, or on the side of the kids.
So sad. Sounds like the movie should be called “Corporations Won’t Back Down”.
I don’t teach at a school that is unionized, so I know very well what it’s like to have no union protections. I stand shoulder to shoulder with my fellow educators who belong to unions.
It’s about time she wrote something although it does mirror Rita Solnet’s review. This is a anti-union film, but the real issue for me is how many of the teachers and principal are portrayed. Too bad Ms. Davis’ character didn’t do her homework. She would have found most charters have a high teacher-turnover rate, and many are starting to unionize.
Now that Texas has finally named their new commissioner, Texas students can expect more of this unproven reforms and teachers once again becoming the enemy. Maybe Chicago will pave the way for more cities and states teachers to say, “Enough!!”. Because that’s what I am waiting for Weingarten to say.
If Randi Weingarten is so concerned about the right-wing forces trying to privatize public schools, she should also be against the Common Core. Ms. Ravitch has had many articles recently about the Common Core, a curriculum developed and funded by business interests, not educators. https://dianeravitch.net/category/common-core/
Yet in the current issue of American Teacher, the AFT is promoting the Common Core and collaborating with management and the privatizers to implement it.
Collaborating for the Common Core
Working with all stakeholders to secure buy-in and success
from the American Teacher September/October 2012
“Sometimes you have to overcome labor-management differences for the sake of your students.
That is why, even under the most challenging circumstances, union members and administrators are working together to implement a new set of teaching standards that could revolutionize learning.
The AFT believes in the Common Core State Standards, but also recognizes that they will only succeed if teachers are trained in implementation, and if there is buy-in beyond the union rank and file. So even in Chicago, where contract negotiations led to a strike vote in June, labor and management are collaborating to help faculty understand and begin to implement the standards…”
“I’m a zealot about the Common Core, but I’m even more of a zealot about having to do the advocacy all together as a community,” AFT President Rani Weingarten told conference participants.
Click to access at_septoct12.pdf
This article is on Page 5 of American Teacher at this pdf.
A ‘zealot’??? Really. I read that in the aft paper, and threw it straight in the trash, along with the nea paper, which I discarded in the same manner.
Sigh…
I’m generally just a frustrated lurker, but I just want to thank you, Dr. Ravitch, and your readers, for everything you (we 🙂 are doing to get the truth out to everyone. I am grateful.
“Teaching standards that could revolutionize learning.”
As Ms. Ravitch and others have pointed out, the Common Core Standards haven’t been piloted, and some of the key principles may depend on logical flaws and questionable readings of research. Why would Ms. Winegarten be a zealot for an untested program with basic conceptual flaws? Again, it’s as if she wants to claim her reform credentials. But by meeting shaky reform ideas half way (or in this case, all the way), she undercuts her role as an advocate of students, teachers, and sound policy. And why would a union leader favor the sudden imposition of a set of standards that sprang from a foundation grant? Will this top-down mandate empower teachers and students? Not likely.
Judging from Mr. Coleman’s presentations on the English Language Arts standards, IF teachers are forced to comply with the CCS and related testing, I predict that kids will feel increasingly bored, confused, and oppressed. Learning will suffer.
Standards and practices should be developed from the ground up. In collaboration with researchers and experts in pedagogy, groups of teachers would develop protocols, based on subject matter and/or learning goals, to try in their own classrooms. (By the way,this already tends to happen when a teacher takes a graduate methods course, the sort of course Bill Gates dismisses as irrelevant.) Formal and informal research results, teacher reflection, and feedback from the best experts in pedagogy–the students–would then lead to adjustments and retooling. Teachers would report to the officials tasked with writing the guidelines for their subject area at the local and state levels. Various dimensions of actual student experience would be noted–difficulty of task, student interest and level of engagement, opportunities for invention, and so on.
Without a grounding in actual classroom experience, any “standards” imposed from above are likely to miss the goal, which is to improve student learning. The process I’m suggesting would be slower at first than the top-down approach, but the resulting guidelines would be more relevant to the students being served. Also, guidelines would evolve. Ongoing research would inform classroom practice and vice versa, but at a more responsive pace. Maybe the Gates Foundation, or the AFT, could fund a project like this. If we’re going to have “standards,” students and teachers deserve a say in them.
I find it more than slightly ironic that Michelle Rhee, a woman who has openly joked about putting tape over the mouths of young children to keep them quiet, has been chosen to promote “Won’t Back Down.” Apparently, one of the fictionalized events in the film that triggers the parents to revolt against the school is a nasty unionized teacher who locks students in closets. Surely, any parent who heard about this abuse would want to rise up and take action. But any parent who heard about a teacher taping their child’s mouth shut would also rise up and take action. It wasn’t a corrupt union that kept Michelle Rhee in the classroom, it was TFA. Maybe teachers in the Charlotte area can show up to the DNC screening of “Won’t Back Down” with tape over their mouths and signs that say “Won’t Shut Up.” Just a suggestion…
I saw it too with a group of Mocha Moms in the DC Metro area. I felt really divided. The movie’s feel was spot on. The frustration all felt was right. But it did exactly what the above article said it did. If a parent can put together that many signatures, couldn’t she have worked as a great PTA president. Here’s my review if you have a minute: http://bit.ly/PNSO3d