The political action arm of the California Charter Schools Association funded a political attack ad making fun of school board member Bennett Kayser’s disability.
Robert Skeels posts a blog by Scott Folsom of 4LAKids who asks the inevitable question:
“The appropriate quote here is from Joseph Welch to Joe McCarthy: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NO organization or individual who ridicules another for a disability, or who uses a disability of their opponent for their own possible personal gain does not, nor ever will, deserve to be in power or hold any sort of public seat. In fact, any organization that does such should be permanently disbanded and held accountable for all their actions immediately.
well said…. succinctly and eloquently
Just another example of how the charterite/privatizer movement uses the sneer, jeer and smear in their mad dog pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$.
And as I have written on this blog before, the enablers and enforcers of the self-styled “education reform” movement place the blame for THEIR mistakes—like their lockstep support for John Deasy as he inflicted monumental damage on LAUSD and public education in general—on the opponents of charterization and privatization and the advocates for public schools.
Are they even capable of feeling shame? At this point, I doubt it.
😡
The lucrative charter school industry has some very frightening issues with ableism. Sure most of it has to do with protecting their financial bottom lines, but some of it is probably due to their project’s prevailing ideology of meritocracy. To wit, for Students with Disabilities (SWD):
“SWD are disproportionately under-enrolled at charter schools”, and that “low incidence disablities enrolled at LAUSD charters are significantly under-represented” [1]
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[1] Office of the Independent Monitor. “Pilot Study of Charter Schools’ Compliance with the Modified Consent Decree and the LAUSD Special Education Policies and Procedures”., Los Angeles: Modified Consent Decree., 2009. Web.
All OIM reports here: http://oimla.com/ It was at my urging that the above report was done.
And the so-called reformers lecture us about civility…
California Charter Schools Association has some very big ed reform celebrities appearing at their next event:
http://www.charterconference.org/2015/
Note the “mission statement”: “The California Charter Schools Conference inspires academic excellence, operational integrity and unity among charter schools throughout California.” Nothing about equity, fairness or following the law….
Los Angeles activist Muffy Sunde on CCSA’s vile ableist attacks on SWD and Bennett Kayser http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2015/02/los-angeles-activist-muffy-sunde-on.html
I haven’t seen this ad, but apparently that doesn’t disqualify me from having an opinion about it, since it doesn’t appear that anyone else has seen it, either. Based on the description of the ad, it sounds like the ad is exactly what Jorge claimed on the other comment thread: a play off the movie “The Usual Suspects.” People need to relax and count to 10 before they pull the trigger on their outrage.
That would only be reasonable in a context where you don’t have a revenue hungry trade organization with a long, thoroughly documented history of ableism (cf. Office of Independent Monitor). Worst of all, CCSA’s eugenics tinged ableism has typically be directed at school children, rather than adults. Here they allowed their vile ideology and greed get in the way of good sense. Even if their primary motive was to allude to the film (and I’ve seen both the film and the ad, that latter, while derivative, doesn’t make sense outside the context of the disability given that the Keyser Söze being interrogated in the film was doing what? Feigning being disabled!). In other words, no matter how the vile folks running Steve Poizner and Reed Hastings’ deep pocketed trade association try to spin this, it mocks disabled people. If anything “The Usual Suspects” only serves to drive this point home, rather than provide cover for the monsters running the charter racket.
I’m not saying it’s a well-done ad, or particularly clever. I’m just saying that there is absolutely no question that the makers of this ad were trying to make a reference to a famous scene in a famous movie. One of the reasons it doesn’t work (in addition to the reason you point out, i.e. that it ultimately doesn’t make sense) is that many people won’t get the reference. On the other hand, more people are aware of that movie and that scene than are aware that this guy has Parkinson’s.
The sheer ferocity and duplicity of their attacks demonstrates the real nature of the endgame. The privatizers – working through CCSA – are in it win it, all the marbles.
Any candidate standing between CCSA and the huge bucket of taxpayer funds they covet can expect similar treatment.