Won't Back Down - Infomercial

Yesterday, in 2012 Medley #18, I had a section about Won't Back Down, the movie which claims to be "based on something true." Of course, we know that it's actually based on nothing but the dreams of the corporate charter industry.

There hasn't been a parent trigger-based transfer of a school from public control to corporate charter control. There shouldn't be either, because, as much as "reformers" may want you to believe it, parents don't own public schools. The public owns public schools and a group of citizens, no matter how involved they are in a public institution, shouldn't have the right to sell that institution to a private enterprise. A little league group, for example, can't sell the public park in which they play simply because they use the park. I believe parents should be closely involved in their children's education, but that's not what the parent trigger laws provide for.

In yesterday's blog post I referenced a few locations which dealt with the new movie, Won't Back Down.

• Why do Teachers Unions Hate America? (hint: they don't!)
• "Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal
• Educate Maggie from the New Yorkers for Great Public Schools and their Youtube video, "EDUCATING MAGGIE" | The Real Parents #WontBackDown Against #ALEC | ***UPDATE***

There's more, though. As the movie begins to settle in as this week's main topic on the edublogosphere, more and more information and commentary is being produced.

REACTION

This morning, for example, Anthony Cody posted Reaction to "Won't Back Down" Shows Critics Have Learned Something which compares the reaction to Won't Back Down to the reaction to Waiting for Superman.

Reviewers were mostly favorable towards "Waiting For Superman." The web site Rotten Tomatoes aggregates reviews, and also collects feedback from ordinary folks who have seen the movies. "Waiting For Superman" got an overall rating of 89%, with an audience score that was 84% positive.

Flash forward two years, and witness the release this month of "Won't Back Down," another movie heavily financed and promoted by education "reformers," with a similar message that teacher unions are obstacles to school improvement. This time the reaction has been decidedly different. The Rotten Tomatoes site indicates a reviewer score of only 35% so far, in spite of efforts by staffers at Students First to boost the score.

Both movies are "reformer" propaganda focusing on the evils of teachers unions, the failure of public education and the need to fire "bad teachers." Waiting for Superman was a documentary which failed in this task, so the moneybags funding "education reform" decided a heart-pumping, good vs. evil, moms-beat-the-system, fictional movie might work better.

Many reviewers are taking issue with the use of an emotionally loaded story to push a particular political agenda, one which demonizes teacher unions and promotes charter* schools. But the movie is provoking some deeper discussions as well. Many reviewers are pointing out the source of funding for the film, and the strong political agenda that comes with it.

The Chamber of Commerce is seeking to gain access to the $500 billion spent on education each year for profit-making corporations. They characterize our system of democratically controlled, community-based public education as some sort of "government monopoly," in order to undermine support for public schools and build support for free-market alternatives.

Cody is not 100% correct when he defines public education as being a "democratically controlled, community-based" system. That's partly true, of course, but in some places, New York City and Chicago, for example, public education is controlled by the mayor who appoints the school board. I suppose that mayors, being elected (at least for the time being) officials, could be described as "democratically controlled," but school boards in such places are controlled by cronyism and political contributions. His point however, is well taken. Public education is not a government monopoly any more than public libraries are...or police departments...or fire departments. Such public institutions are services provided by the government under public control. There might be some extreme anti-government-types who would like to see all public services moved to private, corporate hands, but for most people, the thought of "charter" police and fire departments is out of the question.

INFOMERCIALS

In School reform’s propaganda flick, on Salon.com, Alexander Zaitchik writes,

[The film's production company], Walden Media, is linked at the highest levels to the real-world adult alliance of corporate and far-right ideological interest groups that constitutes the so-called education reform movement, more accurately described as the education privatization movement.

It is also

an educational content company with a commercial interest in expanding private-sector access to American K-12 education, or what Rupert Murdoch, Walden’s distribution partner on “Won’t Back Down,” lip-lickingly calls “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”

In other words, Won't Back Down is a feature film length advertisement for the corporate takeover of public education. It's an infomercial, if you will, using highly paid actors and featuring "facts" adjusted by the corporate interests for public consumption. There's nothing wrong with infomercials, of course, but TV networks generally require a disclaimer, such as, "the following program is a paid advertisement." It would have been nice if Walden Media provided the same for its "infomercials" Waiting for Superman and Won't Back Down.

Zaitchik is correct that Walden Media is run by "far-right ideological interest groups" but it's important to take note of the beginning of his sentence..."the real-world adult alliance of corporate and..." That alliance includes both of America's major political parties and most of it's major media outlets.

LINKS

Finally,

• The United Church of Christ's web site has an article entitled, Films that Attack Public Education. The site discusses the films, has links to supporters, financial sources, ALEC involvement, commentary and reviews. It's worth a look.
• Check out Bill Moyers Exposes the Stranglehold the Corporate & Right-Wing Alliance Has on Our Democracy. Moyers exposes ALEC.
• NPR, formerly a relatively unbiased news source, has fallen, too. The influx of money from the Walton and Gates foundations has led to things like Scott Simon's interview of Arne Duncan about the Chicago Teachers strike. Well informed readers know that money was among the least important items under contention and in fact, the strike started even after the money issues had been agreed upon. Simon, however, focused only on teachers pay. Nothing about lack of art or music education. Nothing about lack of libraries and world language teachers. Nothing about schools as sweatshops with leaky roofs. The truth gets lost during political campaigns.
• The nation's teachers unions are falling into line as well -- notice Dennis Van Roekel, president of NEA, following Arne Duncan around on a bus tour touting President Obama's education platform, seemingly without regard to the damage that Race to the Top has done to America's public schools.

*References to charters generally imply corporate, for-profit charter schools. Quotes from other writers reflect their opinions only. See It's Important to Look in a Mirror Now and Then.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education

The Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education (NEIFPE) has announced some events of interest to everyone concerned about Public Education.

Diane Ravitch author of The Life and Death of the Great American School System and a strong advocate for public schools will be speaking at the Auer Auditorium on the IPFW campus at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 13. Dr. Ravitch will be part of the Omnibus Lecture Series. Tickets, though free, are needed for this event. Call the IPFW box office at 481-6555 for further information.

As a prelude to Dr. Ravitch's appearance, NEIFPE has arranged for the showing of two films at the downtown Cinema Center.

Waiting for Superman will be shown on Sunday, February 26 at 4:15 p.m and on Monday, February 27 at 4:00 p.m.

As a response to "Superman," Cinema Center is showing The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman on Sunday, March 4 at 4:00 p.m. and on Monday, March 5 at 4:00p.m.

Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Educations will lead a discussion of the two films following the two Sunday showings. There will be no charge for these showings, but donations will be accepted to help the producers of The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman defray their production and distribution costs.

A flyer with information about NEIFPE will be distributed at the Cinema Center events. You can download a copy HERE.

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The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

From The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

We reject “Waiting for Superman” and the privatization of PUBLIC Education by hedge fund millionaires and corporate interests. PUBLIC Education is not for sale!

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman was produced by The Grassroots Education Movement. The film is present by Real Reform Studios, produced, directed, filmed and edited by; Julie Cavanagh (teacher), Darren Marrelli (school social worker), Norm Scott (retired teacher), Mollie Bruhn (teacher), Lisa Donlan (parent).

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SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH AND NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION

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Diane Ravitch Speaks in Colorado

This video posted on Sabrina's Failing Schools Blog is about 90 minutes long, but it's worth it. In it, Diane Ravitch outlines the corporate attack on public education and public school teachers. During this talk she covers, among other things...

• Waiting for Superman -- She debunks it detail by detail, and gives herself credit for preventing it getting an Oscar nomination.
• Poverty and how it affects education in America.
• Charter schools and how they are not better than regular public schools. Charters have become a stand-in for vouchers.
• The corporate reform movement demoralizes teachers and is doing "incalculable damage to public education."
• The status quo. She reminds us that she is NOT defending the "status quo." But she says schools should not be "reformed" by non-educators. The status quo is defined by No Child Left Behind.
• Schools for poor kids. What kind of school should we have for poor kids? We should have the "same kinds of school that's available for rich kids."
• Race to the Top. Closing schools is not a school improvement strategy.
• Voucher schools. She reports that "voucher schools" did not improve education in Milwaukee.

You're going to say, "This is too long...I don't have time to listen to it." But...you need to watch this. You need to pass this on to your friends, family, teachers, administrators, and political leaders. We need your voice. Watch 20 minutes each day for 5 days if you have to...



Click below to join others in helping to save public education in America. Tell corporate America, tell politicians: Enough is Enough!

http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/

http://parentsacrossamerica.org/

http://www.educationvotes.nea.org/

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Inside Job

Waiting for Superman has gotten a lot of publicity from millionaires and billionaires who stand to gain (for their investments in charter schools). Inside Job, however, a documentary about the current economic crisis, is one I hadn't heard of yet.

Kevin Welner wrote about it at the Huffington Post.

It offers an explanation of how the current economic crisis came about, describing the securitization of mortgages; the extraordinary leveraging of assets; the regulatory capture by Wall Street leading to minimal enforcement of federal regulations -- a deregulation intended to spur innovation; and the fraud, greed, hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans and others in the financial services world that they are infallible. The film also points out the growing and now extreme inequality of wealth distribution in the United States.

I knew that the "rich were getting richer" but I didn't realize the extent of it until I followed the link to this one statistic...

The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation's pretax income in 2007 -- up from less than 9 percent in 1976

Welner looks at Inside Job, compares it to Waiting for Superman, and comes to the conclusion that the former does a better job of explaining the "school crisis." Again, from his article at Huffington...

Rather than addressing these poverty issues, Superman serves up innovation through privatization and deregulation. We're shown charter schools that give hope to these families. But what we're not told is that the extra resources and opportunities found in these charters are funded in large part with donations from Wall Street hedge fund millionaires and billionaires. Problems of structural inequality and intergenerational poverty are pushed aside in favor of a 'solution' grounded in the belief that deregulation will prompt innovation, all the while guided by the infallible judgment of Wall Street tycoons.

The money to be made from charter schools is a lure that the rich can't ignore. America's public schools are paying the price.

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Superman/A Duncan-Krashen Conversation/Q & A

Three important items...

Fact-Checking Waiting for Superman

Has anyone bothered to check all the facts in Waiting for Superman? A case for teaching critical thinking. Thank you Leonie Haimson.

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Arne Duncan/Stephen Krashen "conversation."

1. by Arne Duncan: School Reform: A Chance for Bipartisan Governing

...no one likes how NCLB labels schools as failures...

...many people across the political spectrum support the work of 44 states to replace multiple choice "bubble" tests with a new test that helps inform and improve instruction by accurately measuring what children know...

...teachers, parents, and union and business leaders want a real definition of teacher effectiveness based on multiple measures, including student growth, principal observation and peer review...

School districts and their local partners in inner cities and rural communities are overcoming poverty and family breakdown to create high-performing schools, including charters and traditional public schools.

2. Krashen's response

...research indicates that there are very few high-performing schools in high poverty conditions...

Duncan gives the impression that "overcoming poverty" happens all the time under his administration. There is no real evidence that it happens at all.

There is no evidence that extensive testing does a better job than teacher evaluation done by professionals who deal with children daily.

There is no evidence that there is a crisis in teacher quality, no evidence that teacher quality has declined.

3 and 4. Duncan's "response" via CNN and Krashen's comments

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Wrong Questions = Wrong Answers

Newsweek journalist Daniel Lyons posed a series of questions recently to Bill Gates, a leading and powerful voice in the new school reform movement, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers—highlighting not what we need to address in our public schools but proving further that the media, celebrity/billionaire experts, and bureaucrats are themselves incompetent and should not be leading a discussion about education.

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Waiting for Sanity

From Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet

This was written by George Wood, principal of Federal Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio, and executive director of the non-profit Forum for Education and Democracy, a collaboration of educators from around the country.

America’s public schools are a national treasure and it is past time that we started treating them as such. Every one of you here today probably has a schoolteacher to thank for the fact that you can read, add, and think rationally. A teacher who opened your mind to new ideas, who helped you speak that mind and listen when others spoke theirs. It’s a great system, and it opens its doors to every kid no matter their race or nationality, no matter what language they speak or if they can speak at all, no matter rich or poor, motivated or not, whole or impaired.

We have spent too much time the blaming our schools for all that ails us. Sure schools could do better—but so could the banks, big business, and Congress. Schools, our teachers, and our kids, are not responsible for the economic strains our nation feels; or for the loosening bonds that threaten the civil discourse our republic requires. They are, however, part of the solution to these threats to our social security. But only if we come together on a few things in the name of a saner approach to making sure every kid has a good public school to attend.

First, we have to admit that as much as schools can do, they can’t do it alone. It is hard for a child who is homeless, hungry, or in pain to heed the lessons of her teacher. America should, as part of education policy, work to see that every child is safe and secure, has good medical care, a roof over her head, and food in her stomach.

Second, we must all admit that there is no doing a good school system on the cheap. America is 14th among the 16 industrialized nations in how much we spend on our kids’ education. But it is not just how much we spend, it is where we spend it. In the Harlem Children’s Zone, a project that considers all of what it takes to raise a child, the charter schools are spending one-third more than the public schools in the city, and they still are struggling.

This is not a condemnation of that important work—it just means we should admit that we are going to have to invest heavily and in a targeted way if we want our schools to work for all our kids.

Third, over 90% of our schools are good old regular public schools—not a charter or a choice, just where kids go to school. If we are serious about every child having a good school, it won’t be by creating a few fancy alternative schools. It will be by improving all of our schools.

Fourth, we already know what works. All our schools--charters, magnets, public--have had successes, but we don’t seem to learn from them. Successful schools are places filled with good teachers who are well supported, where strong connections are built with students and families, where kids do real work not just read textbooks or listen to lectures, and where kids are evaluated by what they can do not by what test question they can answer. They also are places not segregated by social class.

So what would a sane person, perchance a sane Congress, do to help and support our kids and schools? Hate to be simplistic, but here you go—We have to shore up our safety net for all kids to have access to health care, food, and shelter; use federal resources to get dollars to kid in the most need; and focus on all schools using the lessons learned from our most innovative and successful schools and getting the regulations and rules that prevent this change out of the way.

This is what I wish for my school, your school, all schools. We don’t need Superman. We just need some sanity.

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Et tu, United Way?

The United Way blogger, Lauren Kinsey, has written about Waiting for Superman. She has not only written about it, she has gushed that we should,

...join us in creating an open dialog around education in America. Watch the trailer below and pledge to see the film. Then stay tuned for how you can give, advocate and volunteer to help improve the public education system and help achieve our goal to cut the number of high school dropouts in half and create opportunities for a better life for our children. Visit waitingforsuperman.com/action and click "Get Local" to participate in a campaign in your community.

To her credit, she offers us an "open dialog" around education, something which the movie never did, and some readers have taken her up on it. Two comments to the blog entry are right on the mark.

One teacher wrote,

I will be happy to buy you a copy of Diane Ravitch's book "The Fall and Rise of The Great American School System" to offer you a different perspective. Ms. Ravitch has done actual research, not just anectodal accounts to back her assertions. Unfortunately, she doesn't have the huge promotional budget of Mr. Canada or those pushing this "crisis" agenda. Ms. Ravitch spoke recently at Wayne State. I wish you would have come to hear her. She worked for the elder Bush administration and eloquently lays out how the push for a national curriculum in the 1980's was highjacked by basic skills testing and charter schools in an attempt to privatize public education, using children to push an extreme political agenda that demonizes teachers. 

The other...

Teachers are among the strongest supporters of United Way, but now that they're getting political, maybe we should withhold our money from them. They obviously don't appreciate what we do every day in the classroom.

Maybe we should...

What's so bad about Waiting for Superman? Click HERE.

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Waiting for Superman the Truth!

Posted by Valerie Strauss:
By Caroline Grannan

“Woodside is a great school." -- Emily Jones

The movie “Waiting for Superman” tells the stories of five students around the country who are desperate to escape their “failing” public schools and get into the shining charters that are portrayed as their only chance of success – or at least that’s the tale the movie tells.

One of those stories takes place in my neck of the woods, here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The one white middle-class student among the five kids in the movie is Emily Jones, who lives on the suburban San Francisco Peninsula.

The story that Waiting for Superman tells is that Emily is desperate to escape her district public high school, Woodside High, because she’s a bright student who “doesn’t test well,” and due to Woodside’s antiquated and harmful tracking policies, she’ll be tracked into lower-level classes that will doom her to mediocrity.

She grasps at (as the movie shows it) her only hope – Summit Prep Charter, which does the opposite of tracking, requiring all its students to take six AP courses during high school.

Well, that story is false. Here’s the proof. On this video clip, John Fensterwald of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation interviews Emily.

The part in the movie illustrating how the horror of tracking sent her fleeing to Summit Prep features a graphic showing students on a conveyor belt, with the select few being elevated to higher-level classes and the rest being dropped onto a march to oblivion.

Yet in the video interview, Emily chats freely with John for five minutes and mentions a number of reasons for wanting to go to Summit instead of Woodside – but never mentions or even alludes to tracking. Just after minute five, Fensterwald brings up tracking. Emily comments on tracking only after Fensterwald prompts her.

And in fact, here’s what Emily says about Woodside High: “Woodside is a great school. I really liked it and I really wanted to go there before I saw Summit.”

That’s not what Waiting for Superman portrays. If the movie misled viewers with a false story about Emily, the line “fool me twice, shame on me” applies – we can’t believe anything it shows us.

Meanwhile, parents at Woodside High have created a huge banner and posted it across the front of the school:

“Woodside High School teachers – Man, You’re Super! Thank you for teaching ALL the students in our community!”

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