"So now the corporate ed reformers are making a big movie about the "parent trigger.""

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/21/1067160/-So-now-the-corporate-ed-reformers-are-making-a-big-movie-about-the-parent-trigger-

What the movie Waiting for Superman did for charter schools, a new movie called "Won't Back Down" hopes to do for the parent trigger movement. That is a national movement started by charter companies to organize parents to take over their schools.

That is quite a risky business in my opinion since those groups of parents actually want to turn the public schools into charter schools. I fear it will cause a school to cave in to parents who are not educators, who are not informed as to effective teaching skills, and who might be using such an effort to avoid responsibility for their children as students. They are being manipulated by the billionaire education reformers.

<snip>

'How far teachers have fallen since the “Lean on Me” days.Due to be released in September, “Won’t Back Down” stars Viola Davis as a Pennsylvania teacher who joins with unexpected parent advocate Maggie Gyllenhaal in the push for a parent takeover of their school. Apparently the story hinges on so-call parent trigger laws, which allow parents to turn public schools into publicly funded charter schools if they can prove the teachers, administrators and curriculum are not serving the students. In real life, a handful of states have parent trigger laws on the books. To date, no trigger laws have turned a school over to parents, though today officials will decide whether to allow for just that at a desert school in Adelanto, Calif.

Parent trigger laws have many big corporate backers, including the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. This movie is being financed in part by Walden Media, which is backed by conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz. Walden Media also helped finance the making of “Waiting for Superman,” the 2010 documentary that made the term “charter school” as household name and also promoted teacher testing and an end to teacher tenure.'

Much more at the Kos link, where some of us will recognize the excellent work of a DU stalwart who is posting there now as 'floridagal'.

[Lifelong Protester]

1. The more I read about the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation

the more I distrust their motives.

[Starry Messenger]

2. Hi LP, here's a recent article about that:

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781

"Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools"

<snip>

Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with road) Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation—working in sync, command the field. Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making. And they fund the same vehicles to achieve their goals: charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing for students, merit pay for teachers whose students improve their test scores, firing teachers and closing schools when scores don’t rise adequately, and longitudinal data collection on the performance of every student and teacher. Other foundations—Ford, Hewlett, Annenberg, Milken, to name just a few—often join in funding one project or another, but the education reform movement’s success so far has depended on the size and clout of the Gates-Broad-Walton triumvirate.

Every day, dozens of reporters and bloggers cover the Big Three’s reform campaign, but critical in-depth investigations have been scarce (for reasons I’ll explain further on). Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that the reforms are not working. Stanford University’s 2009 study of charter schools—the most comprehensive ever done—concluded that 83 percent of them perform either worse or no better than traditional public schools; a 2010 Vanderbilt University study showed definitively that merit pay for teachers does not produce higher test scores for students; a National Research Council report confirmed multiple studies that show standardized test scores do not measure student learning adequately. Gates and Broad helped to shape and fund two of the nation’s most extensive and aggressive school reform programs—in Chicago and New York City—but neither has produced credible improvement in student performance after years of experimentation.

<snip>

Gates and Broad also sponsored the documentary film Waiting for Superman, which is by far the ed reform movement’s greatest media coup. With few exceptions, film critics loved it (“a powerful and alarming documentary about America’s failing public school system,” New York Times, September 23, 2010). Critics of the reform agenda found the film one-sided, heavy-handed, and superficial.

In 2009 the Gates Foundation and Viacom (the world’s fourth largest media conglomerate, which includes MTV Networks, BET Networks, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and hundreds of other media properties) made a groundbreaking deal for entertainment programming. For the first time, a foundation wouldn’t merely advise or prod a media company about an issue; Gates would be directly involved in writing and producing programs. As a vehicle for their partnership, the foundation and Viacom (with some additional funds from the AT&T Foundation) set up a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization called the Get Schooled Foundation. The interpenetration of foundations and the spawning of new ones is endless. In July 2010, Get Schooled hired Marie Groark, then senior education program officer at Gates, as its executive director. Among its initiatives, Get Schooled lists Waiting for Superman, which is produced by Paramount Pictures, a subsidiary of Viacom. This is how the New York Times (April 2, 2009) described the Gates-Viacom deal:

Now the Gates Foundation is set to expand its involvement and spend more money on influencing popular culture through a deal with Viacom….It could be called “message placement”: the social or philanthropic corollary to product placement deals in which marketers pay to feature products in shows and movies. Instead of selling Coca-Cola or G.M. cars, they promote education and healthy living….Their goal is to weave education-theme story lines into existing shows or to create new shows centered on education.

A long read, but rewarding.

[Lifelong Protester]

6. Thank you for that link, and I will share one

I was trying to do some research on the Common Core Standards, and a critique of them, and stumbled upon a LOT of Gates material. The site is mostly interested in tech stuff, but has a wealth of information on the Gates foundation, their 'billionaire's club' bent on reforming school in their image, etc.

I'm sorry, but I am not interested in this private school-college drop-out suddenly electing himself the nation's principal.

The site is http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critique

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Bill brought his reforms into our district

Completely upended several schools. And at the end of a year, Bill decided to regroup. So he pulled his money and programs and went home. Left a mess behind.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

4. Anshutz is a scumbag the likeness of the Kochs

And just as slimey. You don't hear his name much but he and his money are behind all sorts of crap.

[Starry Messenger]

5. You are totally correct.

Hannah Bell did a good thread on him at DU2: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9198233#9199756

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Another wealthy scumbag from Kansas

Makes me feel so special.