Mark Hall’s important new film about corporate reform and the assault on public education will be shown starting today in New York City at the Cinema Village, 22 East 12 street, at 7 pm.
The show will run for one week.
Mark will be there tonight, along with Sharon Higgins, an Oakland, California, parent who has written extensively about charter school scandals (she has a website called “charterschoolscandals”), especially the Gulen charter schools. I will be in the audience.
Hall is touring the country with his film. Check the schedule to see if he is coming to your city or state. If not, contact him to arrange a showing. @KillingEdFilm
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, I love your blog. Thank you for keeping the public informed about the corporate takeover of education. The film you mentioned “Killing Ed’ seems interesting however the description had me scratching my head when I read the last sentence claiming that the worst case scenario of charter schools being operated by an Islamic Organization called ‘Gulen Movement’. This sounds like right wing propaganda. Could you clarify if you know about who is sponsoring this film and what is their political stance. I like the fact that they are exposing the corporate take over of charter schools but that it would be back by an ‘Islamic organization’ sounds like tea party paranoia.
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Holliston,
The Gulen movement is associated with a cleric named Fetullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in Pennsylvania. His movement in Turkey is at odds with the Turkish government. There are about 150 Gulen charter schools. Their boards are composed of Turkish men. Some of the Gulen schools have been investigated by the FBI for rigging bids to favor Turkish contractors. The schools have been known for excluding children with disabilities. When Minneapilis turned a public school over to a Gulen charter, it immediately dismissed 40 children with autism. The question I raised in a recent post is why schools operated by foreign nationals should displace community public schools. How would you feel about a charter chain run by Russian nationals or Swedish nationals or Chilean nationals taking over local public schools and pushing out the kids they don’t want to serve?
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I add my voice in acclaiming your blog to keep u s up to date. I tried to get our school board interested in it but only 3 of the 4 people present even bothered to write down the info I gave t hem. Why bother with that when they have the corporate media to inform them.
Too, I wish devoutly that the research showing what is happening would make a difference to our lawmakers. Sadly, it does not and is a HUGE concern of mine.
A recent article in “In These Times” explained why Trump is doing so well with Evangelicals. A part of this was the lack of taking academic research seriously. The “faith” in which they believe “trumps” the research aspect.
I have a concern that Hillary may not be able to beat Trump although all polls shows her way ahead but she is a part of the “establishment” also and carries a LOT of baggage, some of which is of great concern to me also. That is why I LOVE Bernie Sanders. His polls against Trump are better than Hillary’s and I think that a great part of that is he is not part of what is perceived as the establishment, His message is against that.
Anyway,
Thanks for your work.
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Thanks for the info. about the movie. I’ll look forward to seeing it when it comes to my area.
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