The Real Audience for 'Won't Back Down' May Not Have Been Moviegoers

[HiPointDem]

Those of us who thought that "Won't Back Down" was just a nasty propaganda movie with an A List cast (including the minor characters) may have missed the forest for the trees, so to speak. Hollywood is apparently teaming up with the same billionaires who have been funding the Astroturf groups Chicago has come to know (Advance Illinois, Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), and Education Reform NOW!) to bring a new front group into town behind the glitter of Hollywood stars...

A growing body of analysis, including this one, is showing that "Won't Back Down" is really being utilized to promote and build well-financed "Parent Trigger" cadre groups in different cities across the USA. That is certainly the case in Chicago, where the buses to take people to the screening of the "Won't Back Down" were filled by UNO and paid for by undisclosed philanthropists. How many poor people in Chicago will be loaded on to buses for the next round of "Parent Revolution" propaganda and have their pictures taken with members of the scab cast of "Won't Back Down"? Coming soon to a community struggle around charter schools in a Chicago ward near you.

Starting this week, the education reform group Parent Revolution kicked off a national 32-city tour with "Won't Back Down," the slick new Hollywood movie featuring the hot-button fight around a policy called the parent trigger. Parent Revolution wants to inspire parents to do what Oscar-caliber actresses Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis do in the film: Take over their failing schools.

Parent Revolution's idea is to host the film...and win over crowds. Screenings are free and accompanied by post-screening discussions with activists who discuss the film's themes and make an ask of the audience: Sign up to join the movement or stick around to learn more. The first stop: Buffalo, N.Y., where parents and the school reform organization Buffalo ReformED have been organizing to win the parent trigger for several years...

http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/10/ wont_back_down_goes_on_ tour_in_cities_debating_the_parent_trigger.html]

[msongs]

1. suck most of the $$ out the top and leave the crumbs for kids and staff nt

[eridani]

2. Presumably Diane Ravitch and her parents' groups are trying to counteract? n/t

[Igel]

3. I respect Ravitch. She has a healthy respect for the facts.

So much so that she's more than happy to change her opinion when the facts require it. She did so in the '90s. And she did so in the '00s.

On the other hand, the facts are in dispute or subject to change.

So she was wrong in the late '90s and early '00s. Absolutely, totally. But she was only cited by some people because others couldn't accept the facts as they were then. The facts were wrong, but being fact-based is still a good thing

Now Ravitch is cited by those who viewed her an as enemy because she says bad things about what she used to say good things about. Problem is that that's not defending the status quo. She can be selectively cited and made to appear that way, but she's really anti-high-stakes testing and against so many charters that the generalization is that she's against charters. One thing at a time is okay by her, it seems--dispose of what's wrong and then building what's right is easier.

But the approach she likes is based on her analysis of a kind of charter school, one that the successful charter schools use and which has been common in this one kind of charter school since before she was born. The public school system is antithetical to that kind of approach. And she's seldom cited for this because, well, those who cite her to bash charters and high-stakes testing really don't want the other things she wants, however fact-based it is.

[HiPointDem]

4. "The public school system is antithetical to that kind of approach." if i'm understanding you

correctly -- no, it's not.

what's antithetical to it is the profit motive and the marketization of education.

[Starry Messenger]

5. Diane Ravitch was born in 1938.

Charter schools didn't come into existance before 1938.