Viola Davis is one of the most gifted actors of our time. She has won the Tony Award, the Academy Award, and many other awards. She has never forgotten her humble origins and those who helped her rise to the top.
When she received the Tony award in 2010, she gave a powerful speech. She thanked God, her parents, and her teachers at Central Falls High School in Central Falls, Rhode Island. In that order.
I recall leaping to my feet when I heard her speak in 2010, because that was the very time when the city of Central Falls and the state of Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the High School that Viola Davis attended. To fire them en masse, from the principal to the lunch room staff. Arne Duncan congratulated the state officials for having the “courage” to fire everyone, and President Obama echoed Arne’s insult.
It was also the year of “Waiting for Superman,” and the corporate assault on the public schools went into high gear.
But then there was Viola Davis, thanking her teachers. I learned later that her own sister was a teacher at Central Falls HS.
But…but…but…then, Viola Davis took a leading role in the film “Won’t Back Down,” funded and produced by arch-evangelical billionaire Philip Anschutz (one of the “Superman” funders). “Won’t Back Down” celebrates the parent trigger, telling the fictional story of a parent and a teacher who were so disgusted with their public school that they gathered signatures and flipped the school over to a charter operator. I didn’t get to see the movie because it opened in 2,500 theatres (Anschutz owns the Regal theatre chain) and its receipts were so bad that it closed within a month and disappeared.
Last night, Viol Davis moderated Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ extravaganza, which asserted that high schools are obsolete and need to be reinvented.
Viola Davis, please watch the speech you gave at the Oscars at 2010.
We need a real champion for public schools.
Trump and DeVos want to eliminate the schools that made you who you are today. Our public schools need your help. They are far from perfect. They need real reform, not a wrecking ball and disruption.
Viola Davis, help us. Join the millions of parents and educators who want better public schools.
The billionaires don’t need your help. We do. They are using you.
Join the Network for Public Education. Help the children and teachers whom the billionaires despise.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As you may know, Viola Davis’ sister, the teacher, was in attendance. Viola went into the audience, sat by her sister and celebrated her career…
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Where does her sister teach? A public school? Charter? Private?
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She was teaching at Central Falls High School, public.
Last I heard, Viola gave money to a charter. Must be a Hollywood mindset.
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VBravo! Diane, change Olivia to viola in your closing paragraphs.
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Thanks
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Done
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Many teachers are being used and arguably abused. Most are not enlisted to appear in a high profile movie or TV extravaganza, both funded for one purpose: To make public schools and those who teach in them look really bad, out of touch, uncaring, not hippity hop pop stars.
Viola Davis is in show business, and has no special wisdom about education. Viola Davis needs the kind of education that billionaires cannot buy.
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Black people are often sold the package that lack of success of many black children is due racist teachers is a systemically racist public school system. Charters represent black control of black schools. Faulty analysis but an attractive message to the AL Sharpton and Cory Brookes of the world.
Sent from my Samsung device
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Right, except the owners are white and the teachers are too. Eva Moskowitz is white. So are KIPP leaders. Etc
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jdouglaslittle,
But the point of the NAACP’s moratorium on charters is that many members have now stopped believing in the bill of goods they are being sold.
It is interesting to hear some of the people involved in the moratorium talking about it. Some of them even sent their own kids to charters. But they heard testimony and realized that even the high-performing non-profit ones that we are all supposed to embrace as saviors are not what they seem.
The NAACP didn’t give the typical leftist line that “we like good PUBLIC charters” that we hear from so many of the leading progressive politicians who shall go nameless. They understood exactly who was paying the price for these “good, high-performing non-profit public charters”. And it was other kids.
I only wish more progressive politicians would listen to them and support them.
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As someone in the film industry, I offer this:
Viola, let’s PLEASE remember, did a movie called “Won’t Back Down” . . . . about a parent group who wanted to take over their school by charterizing it.
During press conferences, Ms. Davis justified charter schools left and right, and said that choice was better than the status quo, with parents making that choice. She said that she could not care too much about what public school teachers had to say because children came first.
She is a talented actress, but has she done a 180 with regard to public education? I’m not holding my breath.
Hopefully, the film put some kind of dent in her career and that of Maggie Gyllenhaal. Maybe not, but Davis should come clean.
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Better to express hope than outright condemn.
Viola was saved by her public school, not by charters
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I agree with you. You make a strong point. Hope and educating others is more productive than scorn and condemnation.
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