Nashville Rejects Charter School, Forfeits Millions - Rhee Ex & TFA Link - TN Parent Trigger Attempts

From Madfloridian at DemocraticUnderground.com:

Metro Nashville Public Schools lose $3.4 million funding for rejecting charter school. Power play.
Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion
Tue Oct 02nd 2012, 01:01 AM
This is the third time that school district had rejected Phoenix-based Great Hearts Academies. It appears to be much like the situation in Florida now where the state board can overrule local districts about charter schools. Since the state school board is filled with charter school advocates, it is not a healthy thing for local districts.

Tennessee's Education Commissioner is Kevin Huffman, who is/was Vice President of Teach for America, also former hubby of Michelle Rhee. [They divorced in 2007. He has custody of their two tween daughters, probably because of her repeated public criticisms of their soccer abilities: "They suck at soccer," and again here. In the former cite, the Huffman/Rhee daughters were cringing in the audience.]

From Huffington Post:
Metro Nashville Public Schools Losing $3.4 Million After School Board Fails To Comply With Tennessee Charter School Law

The Tennessee Department of Education is withholding $3.4 million of non-classroom, administrative funding from Metro Nashville Public Schools due to the school board’s failure to comply with the state’s charter school law, the Jackson Sun reports.

Last week, the Metro Nashville school board disobeyed an order by the state Board of Education to approve an application from the Phoenix-based Great Hearts Academies, which it had already twice rejected.

The Associated Press reports that members of the school board raised concerns that the proposed charter school planned to draw from affluent white families, as opposed to cultivating a more diverse student body. They voted 5-4 to deny Great Hearts’ application, ignoring a unanimous order from the state school board to approve it.

The charter school has since dropped its effort to open a school in Tennessee, the Tennessean reports.

At the same time Parent Trigger law advocates are making their move in Nashville. It's like a double whammy of corporate education reform going on there.

From the Tennessean:
Parents explore trigger law to force takeover of Nashville schools

Tennessee’s trigger law passed with little fanfare in 2002 as part of a larger bill that ushered charter schools into the state.

When the state’s charter law was updated in 2011 to allow all students regardless of their academic standing or socioeconomic status to enroll, the trigger-law portion was updated as well. As a result, the trigger law can be used to target schools not categorized by the state as failing, such as J.T. Moore and Hillwood High.

The statute states that “an eligible public school may convert to a public charter school pursuant to this chapter if the parents of 60 percent of the children enrolled in the school or 60 percent of the teachers assigned to the school agree and demonstrate support by signing a petition seeking conversion, and the (local school board) agrees to the conversion.”

Evans said the law as written leaves many unanswered questions, such as how would the school district handle a possible conversion if parents were able to garner the necessary signatures? She said parents would be reluctant to pursue a conversion if they ultimately must cede control of the process over to the school district. The law does not define how a conversion would work, if the effort received school board approval.

The Parent Trigger movement is being presented as a grassroots revolution by parents. It is actually being pushed along by charter school companies and other education reformers.

In reality it is funded by big money groups to provide a quicker way to get charter schools growing. [Madfloridian article on CBS' Teachers Rock tie-in with "Won't Back Down", Teach for America and the parent trigger movement.]

Parents are led to believe they can lead a coup over public schools, but they may be surprised at how quickly the charter chains step in. They are being manipulated.

Huffman presents himself as "a lifelong Democrat:"

That's my view too. I'm a lifelong Democrat and the party hasn't been strong, historically, on this issue (Obama and Duncan are strong on it though).
But everyone I know in upper middle class America is picking their home based partially on school quality. It's de facto school choice. We just deny it to people without resources.

http://live.washingtonpost.com/kevin-huffman-a-rosa-parks-moment.html

The Politics Behind NBC's Education Nation / Won't Back Down Bombs as Gyllenhaal Lectures Teachers on their Unions

THE POLITICAL BACKDROP TO NBC'S EDUCATION NATION 2012 - REAL PARENTS REACT TO ASTROTURF FILM FOR ALEC-PUSHED AGENDA - PARENT ACTIVIST WRITES PIECE IN THE JOURNAL DISSENT

REAL PARENTS REACT TO ASTROTURF FILM FOR ALEC-PUSHED AGENDA As reported in the Hollywood Reporter, real New York parents protested the "Won't Back Down"'s September 23, 2012 New York premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater, the city's last classic showcase theater for films. Click on the video at right for New Yorkers for Great Public Schools and the parents' protest. The film had its nationwide theatrical opening on September 28. Mary Bottari and Sara Jerving in their September 19 story in the Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch deals with the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) promotion of parent trigger laws used in "Won't Back Down."

THE POLITICAL BACKDROP TO NBC'S EDUCATION NATION 2012 The Philip Anschutz and Rupert Murdoch bank-rolled agitprop pro-parent ideological trigger law tear jerker, "Won't Back Down" has been used by Michelle Rhee as a centerpiece for a film-promo-tour tie-in. What's better company for that ideological screed of a film-promo-tour than an NBC sponsored love fest of education reformers/deformers?

A CRACK IN THE TEACHER BASHING MANTRA As a New Jersey pro-public school parent and blogger noted, in her blog Mother Crusader blog, cross posting "We’re the real parents, and we won’t back down!" from WHYY's News Works, MSNBC's Alex Wagner slid in a reference to a Stanford study deflating the glories of charter schools.

The WHYY/NewsWorks piece further said,

The protest did not go unnoticed. Inside the premiere NBC News President Steve Capus made note of the "noisy welcome" attendees received, and claimed that he wants the discussion. Then why was NBC's parent engagement panel bereft of actual public school parents who don't want their children's schools closed or turned into a charter?
To date the research has not shown that closing a public school and reopening it as a charter will provide parents with the change they seek. One bright spot at the panel discussion was when the moderator, MSNBC's Alex Wagner, quoted from a Stanford University study that showed that only 17 percent of charters fair better than comparable public schools, while 37 percent actually fair worse and the remaining charters have similar outcomes.

CHOOSY MEDIA GUESTS, RIGGED PANELS
Education Nation was an unfortunate affair, with its banning of Rockaway Wave correspondent Norm Scott and with stacking of panels with pro-charter school zealots.
Why the slant? The corporate outlets that NBC proudly allows as guests, in their "cross-network" geniality. These outlets assert professional neutrality. But a critical mind recognizes the reality that much of their "coverage" of education topics amounts to subtle propaganda for education deform / corporate privatization of education.
This banning of non-major outlet journalists is an outrage worthy of a big stink.
DESPERATE FIRST LADY PHOTO PLACEMENT ALERT
While we're on the topic of exploiting images and messages, at the blog Lil Kid Things, check out the face on giant placard placed on the stage of Won't Back Down event.

Looks a lot like First Lady Michelle Obama. Are the Won't Back Down backers trying to imply that the first lady endorses parent triggers or charter schools?

We can bet that the Michelle Obama picture's getting plenty of use on Rhee's cross-country parent trigger / Won't Back Down promo tour.
Here's one parent's post on the above article about the film. She discusses her town's fight-back against a charter school invasion and its planned stripping parents of the democratic rights of any input in school governance.

Please understand that this film is part of a very well-funded movement right now to privatize public education. The “parent trigger” laws that the film promotes have never been successfully implemented, because they are a legal quagmire, involving a small number of parents at one school appropriating something that is owned by the taxpayers as a whole and giving management of it to a private organization. This isn’t a parent takeover, but a private takeover. The laws aren’t designed to give parents more power in the end, in fact, in Adelanto CA (where the first parent trigger may actually take place after a protracted legal battle) parents tried to rescind their signatures from the trigger petition but a judge ruled that they couldn’t.
There are tremendous corporate interests behind this movement.
My state PTA board recently voted to oppose a charter school ballot measure, because it would strip local, citizen, and parental control away from public schools.
When my children weren’t yet in school, I worried about our local public schools. Now that they are in 6th and 4th grade, I can look back and see that the vast majority of the teachers are trying incredibly hard, often with children who have tremendous challenges at home. If you are an involved parent and you bring your children to school prepared to learn, most of the time they will do very well.

EDUCATING MAGGIE AND MAGGIE LECTURING THE TEACHERS UNIONS
New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, a parents' group has released a great video, “Educating Maggie.” (Video uploaded at right.) Maggie, herself, has a word or two of instruction for public teachers and their unions. She now is posturing as a self-proclaimed leftist, chiding labor unions:

In the interview, Gyllenhaal said she comes from a family of proud leftists, and that she herself is staunchly pro-union. However, she also suggested that the quickness with which critics have come out to blast “Won’t Back Down” as a crack against the labor movement shows intolerance among the pro-union camp. “Can we not even take a look at ways that the teachers union isn't functioning without being called anti-union?” she said.  

Gyllenhaal's line falls in line with some conservative pundits who have tried to claim to be pro-teacher and to play up imaginary divisions in unions, over divisions between teachers that favor the test and punish mantra and those questioning the shifts in educational policy.

Potential viewers might not care either way. Since the film’s opening on Friday, reviews of “Won’t Back Down” have been mostly brutal. USA Today said it is “repeatedly focused on a superficial depiction of the powerful teachers union,” while the Washington Post called it “so didactic that viewers are likely to feel less uplifted than lectured.”

LESS STREET CRED THAN KLEIN, MORE LIKE BLACK
But who is Maggie Gyllenhaal to lecture teachers about conditions of public schools or the experience of learning or teaching in public schools. When we look at her biography we see that her parents are a film director and a film producer. Her father hails from Swedish nobility. Her school experience? Her secondary school years were at the Harvard-Westlake School, a prep school of the exclusive international G 20 classification of top “independent schools” --euphemism for super-elite prep schools.
Let's go back in time to 2010, when Cathie Black, Duchess of Bridgewater, Connecticut succeeded mere citizen Joel Klein. Much was made of how she had never any prior contact with an institution of public education. Compare Gyllenhaal and Black with Joel Klein, who at least attended public schools before he entered college.
Harvard-Westlake School, 2011-2012 tuition of 30,350 … what kind of test scores do you think Maggie's school has had? “In 2010, 566 Harvard-Westlake students took 1,736 Advanced Placement tests in 30 different subjects, and 90% scored 3 or higher.” --Wikipedia Harvard-Westlake School, whose “class of 2011 had 90 students out of approximately 280 receive National Merit recognition, with 28 students receiving consideration as National Merit Semifinalists.” --Wikipedia Gee, I wonder what kinds of student-teacher ratios her school had.

WON'T BACK DOWN'S FALLING STOCK
Professional critics at Rotten Tomatoes.com generally pan the film; an aggregate of 33% give positive reviews of Won't Back Down.
David Rooney at Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film is a "pedestrian and insultingly tendentious drama."
Initially, the film sufficiently pulled at the heartstrings of the audience and produced a 79% vote on the audience meter (as of Thursday), today the film has sunk to 58% on the audience.
Per Internet Movie Database, the film is floundering with an out-right poor rating of 4.9, a rating seldom scored by the better half of top Hollywood directors and actors. At metacritic.com “Won't Back Down” is bombing at 43 on a 100 scale, down there with “Hotel Transylvania,” and well below “Trouble with the Curve.” GYLLENHAAL'S UNCOMFORTABLE THANKSGIVING DINNER
The New York Observer reports that the film's stars "don't back down from the film's politics"

“You don’t want a movie to feel like it’s an issue thing. You want it to feel like a human drama. I mean Oscar Isaac’s character, his whole narrative is about someone who’s a big union believer and is struggling with that in the course of the movie.”

The film’s stars, wearing grave political faces in addition to red carpet gowns, were ardent about education reform but wary of appearing anti-union. Ms. Gyllenhall said that she came from “the most progressive left. I wouldn’t be allowed to go home for Thanksgiving if I made an anti-union movie.”

Well, we can feel sorry for Gyllenhaal's upcoming Thanksgiving. Maggie, your film is a tool for teacher bashing, for pulling public resource from public school and for enabling the further privatization of public schools. I just feel so sorry for you. Your progressive family will wax about how great Karen Lewis has been for the nation's teachers, and you will say ...?

MORE NICE RESOURCES ON WON'T BACK DOWN AND ITS ISSUES:
Liza Featherstone at the journal "Dissent," ""Empowerment" Against Democracy: Tinseltown and the Teachers' Unions", September 26, 2012 An excerpt:

Jamie crows to a throng of cheering parents—but democracy is the enemy. Getting rid of representative government and calling in a private entity to handle things, in our current Opposite Day political moment, represents a glorious triumph of people power. The “parent trigger” invites parents to use their vote to give up their vote—that is, to be enormously powerful for one short moment of direct democracy, which they will use to dispose, in the long run, with the “public” part of public school, and thus with any actual power over their children’s education.----Liza Featherstone, a real, not fictional, NYC public school parent, as linked at EdNotes.

DREAMers Chide StudentsFirst for Endorsement of Anti-Immigrant ALEC Treas. Ga. Senator

DAILY KOS ARTICLE NOTES THAT CAMPBELL BROWN MODERATED RECENT MICHELLE RHEE-JEB BUSH "WON'T BACK DOWN" SCREENING NEAR THE RNC -
STUDENTSFIRST BI-PARTISANSHIP CONTINUES: DEMOCRAT MICHELLE RHEE ENDORSES REPUBLICAN GA. SEN. MAJ. LEADER CHIP ROGERS - END OF THIS POST: PARENT ACTIVIST RITA SOLNET'S REVIEW OF "WON'T BACK DOWN"

DREAM Act activists have protested against Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst for its Educator Reformer of the Year endorsement of a Georgia politician that plays the blame the victim game. He actually blames immigrants for prejudice. Note the insensitive blame the victim spin that he puts on prejudice and immigration. Republican Chip Rogers is Senate Majority Leader in the Georgia State Senate, and is Treasurer on the Board of the American Legislative Exchange Council. He also sits on the Senate Education Committee. His north Georgia district is in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Posted yesterday at Daily Kos:
Laura Clawson, August 30, 2012, for Daily Kos Labor
StudentsFirst faces protest for naming anti-immigrant bigot 'education reformer of the year'

DREAMers protest StudentsFirst's anti-immigrant endorsement.

While Michelle Rhee has been in Tampa, accompanied by former Florida governor and presidential son and little brother Jeb Bush, to flog the "parent trigger"-themed movie Won't Back Down at the Republican National Convention, the New York outpost of her StudentsFirst organization has been facing protests from immigrant groups over the national StudentsFirst endorsement of Georgia state Sen. Chip Rogers as its "education reformer of the year."

Graphic from Better Georgia.com/Reality Check

StudentsFirst has circulated petitions supporting the DREAM Act, with people who signed the petitions being counted as StudentsFirst members. But the choice of Chip Rogers, among all the legislators around the country pushing corporate education policies, as the top "reformer" of the year shows just how false that interest is. In 2004, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that:

[Ed.: The SPLC article is "Xenophobic Hatred Grows with Latino Population in Georgia: In Georgia, where nearly 1 million Hispanic immigrants have arrived since 1990, xenophobic hatred and violence are on the rise" from the Winter 2004 issue. The SPLC article noted: "Rogers admires King's efforts with American Resistance, which he believes produces 'great research.' But he keeps a distance, he says, because, 'some of his associates are on the radical side.'" American Resistance has posted on the anti-immigrant website VDARE.]

In the Georgia General Assembly, State Rep. Chip Rogers of Cherokee County has sponsored three anti-immigration bills, one of which would cut off all state services to illegal immigrants. "I don't think these folks are coming to America so they can make use of our social services, our schools and hospitals," Rogers says.

"They're coming for work. But we can't fail to recognize what it's doing to our health-care system, our prisons and our schools. One study showed that the state of Georgia spent $260 million to educate illegal immigrants last year."

Rogers acknowledges that "some people are beginning to target people for hatred," but he lays the blame largely on the immigrants themselves. "I truly believe that if it weren't for the high levels of illegal immigration, we wouldn't have the targeting, the prejudice, even if there were still high numbers of Hispanic people in Georgia."

Rogers continues to tout his anti-immigrant work on his website today. So the supposedly pro-DREAM Act, supposedly pro-student StudentsFirst's favorite legislator authored a law to keep DREAMers and other undocumented immigrant kids from going to school. That's just perfect. StudentsFirstNY's super compelling response was to try to paint the protesting DREAMers as puppets of teachers unions.

Closing the circle nicely, the Rhee-Bush event during the RNC was moderated by Campbell Brown, who recently wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed attacking teachers unions without disclosing that her husband, Dan Senor, is on the board of StudentsFirstNY. Florida defeated a parent trigger bill just this year, in a fight in which "Not a single major Florida parent organization supported the bill, including the PTA," with parents' groups opposed to the bill believing it "would lead to the takeover of public schools by for-profit charter management companies and other corporate interests," but with such emphasis from people like Rhee and Bush, it's likely to reappear on the agenda.

Parent activist Rita Solnet's review of "Won't Back Down," as posted at Valerie Strauss (Washington Post - The Answer Sheet) -"‘Won’t Back Down’: Realities the movie ignores" and cross-posted at MadFloridian at DemocraticUnderground.com:

By Rita Solnet

"Change a school, change the neighborhood.”

That's a line from the controversial, star-studded movie, "Won't Back Down," scheduled to be released on September 28th.

I attended a Washington D.C. screening of this compelling movie over the weekend. I carried a small notebook and a long list of preconceived notions about what I expected to see in this film. I walked out with a long list of of questions as to what I didn't see portrayed in the film.

The synopsis describes this movie as: "Two determined mothers, one a teacher, who look to transform their children's failing inner city school. Facing a powerful and entrenched bureaucracy, they risk everything to make a difference in the education of their children.”

However, the messages in this feel-good, underdog-winning movie go far beyond what this summary depicts.

Within the first few minutes, projected on the screen in large letters are the words, "Inspired By True Events.” That conveys the message that parents and teachers took over and ran a school somewhere in our nation. That never happened. I suppose that sells better than opening the film with, "This is Fictitious.”

Outstanding performances by star-studded and new young actors will put this movie on the Academy Award nomination list, I'm sure. The actors did a superb job of drawing you into the movie.

I cried several times despite knowing that this movie was funded by charter school privatizers seeking fistfuls of dwindling education dollars.

I cried despite knowing that the story behind the “failing” school was not told.

I knew that the divisive and unsuccessful “parent trigger” laws that have been passed in California and a few other states — and are being considered in about 20 others — was intentionally disguised in this movie as a fictitious law cleverly named "Fail-Safe," yet I still wept.

I wanted to jump into the movie and help these moms win. The audience audibly cheered for the underdogs every step of the way. Who wouldn't? Moms in the face of adversity knocking down barriers to help their kids chances for a better future. Of course, I'm on their side.

Unfortunately, this film depicts a story that is more about good vs. evil than about the truth behind public schools today and the movement to privatize them. Portraying a complex public education system as irretrievably broken — and blaming abusive, older teachers and their rabidly protective unions is much easier than illustrating the complicated truth, I suppose.

Realities that make true school reform so hard were left out of the film.

Despite many classroom scenes, you never once saw a child even taking a test — and we know that standardized tests take many weeks out of instructional time, with even more for test prep.

You never heard why the school was labeled "failing" or what the criteria was for receiving a “failing” grade. Instead you heard teachers in their unusually large break room complain about other teachers who had "the highest salary with the lowest performance.” You heard comments like, "We don't coach teachers here; we protect teachers.”

As a parent volunteer in public schools for 16 years, it startled me not to see anyone working on the problems together in this movie. I didn't see parents talking to teachers to help improve the school. No sign or talk of School Advisory Councils, of PTAs, not even parent friends talking to each other over coffee about how they could organize to speak to the principal or district or board to improve the school. Not all principals are underhanded and despicable as they are in this movie.

There were no scenes or discussions of parents at school board meetings to formally complain and formally request solutions be put in place. When you organize and speak as a group, you can be heard.

Why was this mom and teacher's first step to conduct a takeover? Because it is fiction.

Yet I worry about the dynamic a movie like this creates.

Will this movie launch open season by shrewd for-profit charter operators — including some with abysmal academic records — to stir a commotion and skip directly to the takeover step?

Disgruntled parents and guardians will see this film that is supposedly "Inspired by True Events” (but those events are never mentioned or referenced) and think it's appropriate to storm the school board to demand a school takeover.

But before our nation agrees that it is a neat idea for parents to demand takeovers, everybody has to know the real issues that caused the problems. People can choose to blame teachers unions, but they should remember that the problems people are trying to fix in public education are the same in states with unions and without unions.

Are there teachers who don’t belong in a classroom? Yes. They should be removed. But the difficulties that schools face are long and deep, and they start with the impoverished conditions in which many children live. That doesn’t mean kids can’t learn. It does mean that ignoring their issues will make it much harder for even a great teacher to reach them.

There is no question that children who need help should get it now. But the answer isn’t the parent trigger. In fact, in Florida earlier this year, an effort to pass a parent trigger law died after not a single major parent organization — including the PTA — endorsed it for fear it would lead to the takeover of public schools by for-profit charter management companies.

Of course we need parent involvement in improving schools. But that isn’t enough.

We need significant change at the state and federal level. The failed No Child Left Behind bill, which has been sucking the life force out of our public education system, must end once and for all, and many of the policies states adopted to win federal dollars in President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative must be reversed.

And parents, grandparents, retired educators, and local citizens can partner with schools to improve the quality of public education. That creates good will among citizens vs. divisiveness, turmoil, and uncertainty inherent in a parent takeover.

"Change a school; change a neighborhood.” I'd modify that to 'Change school reform rules; change a neighborhood.”

The Parties are Linked: Rhee's Romney-Linked StudentsFirst to Show "Won't Back Down" at DNC Convention

WON'T BACK DOWN GETTING ADVANCE SCREENING AT BOTH DNC AND RNC

UPDATE: RHEE'S STUDENTSFIRST CREDITED ANTI-IMMIGRANT ALEC BOARD TREAS. REPUBLICAN GEORGIA ST. SEN. CHIP ROGERS AS EDUCATION REFORMER OF THE YEAR

It is official!: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are organically linked, and they are demonstrating so at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, in the right-to-work state of North Carolina, on the week of September 3, 2012.
Self-identified Democrat Michelle Rhee's thoroughly presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney-linked StudentsFirst is showing the propaganda pro-parent trigger drama film, "Won't Back Down" in the middle of the Democratic National Convention. (She is also married to a Democrat, Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento, who is also appearing a panel discussion after the screening.) The screening event is also sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and Parent Revolution (whose executive director Ben Austin is also appearing at the panel discussion).

Re-posted from MadFloridian at democraticunderground.com, from Karoli at Crooks and Liars: "Michelle Rhee Infiltrates Democratic Convention With Right-Wing Film:"

Not that this surprises me much, since Michelle Rhee pretends to be some kind of "different Democrat," but it's really pretty nervy of her to show up at the Democratic National Convention with a film funded by right-wing education deformers and pretend she's "one of us."

StudentsFirst is screening the film "Won't Back Down" in the middle of the Democratic National Convention in an effort to convince everyone her brand of education deform is the best pathway forward.

I wrote about this last week. The film is financed by Philip Anschutz, notorious winger. And StudentsFirst is spearheading an effort to deform New York schools in concert with right-wing funding sources. See this report revealing Romney and Republicans' involvement:

*StudentsFirst NY Board Members and funders are contributing over $2 million to Mitt Romney and Super PACs working to defeat President Obama;
*StudentsFirst NY is using a complex web of multiple tax designations and different names to shield donors and funders from scrutiny on campaign contributions and political activities;
*StudentsFirst NY is out of touch economically and ideologically with the education stakeholders—the students, parents, communities, and educators—it claims to represent in New York City;
*StudentsFirst NY is supporting market-driven restructuring and privatization of schools that goes even further than what Mayor Bloomberg has implemented in the past decade;
*StudentsFirst NY is using a plan developed by Bain & Company and advocating actions that will treat public schools the way Romney’s Bain Capital treated companies.

...No self-respecting Democrat should be caught dead at this screening. I plan to be out front with my camera to see who supports public schools and who doesn't. Please reach out to anyone you know who is attending the convention and encourage them to stand firm for public education.

Audaciously, StudentsFirst has their September 3, 2012 screening announced on their website. I have given links to their organizational affiliations, which I have inserted below.

Join Us Won't Back Down Screening at the DNC

You and your guests are cordially invited to a pre-screening of Won't Back Down at the Democratic National Convention sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform, Parent Revolution and StudentsFirst. The film will be followed by a panel discussion with Michelle Rhee (see how she has advised Republican governor Rick Scott), Ben Austin (Parent Revolution), Joe Williams (Democrats for Education Reform-DFER), Mayor Kevin Johnson and others.

Where: EpiCentre Theaters - 210 E. Trade St., Charlotte, NC 28202
Date: September 3, 2012
Time: 1:00 - 3:00pm

The fun site, RheeFirst, has listed several Florida links Rhee has with the Republican establishment there. It pointed to the [Talahassee] Florida Current as the source of its report.

“Most readers of The Florida Current who responded to last week’s poll thought it a bad idea to let parents be the finger on the trigger to start turnaround plans for failing public schools that could include a takeover by for-profit companies.

Such authority would be granted by HB 1191, which is waiting for heard by the full House, and its companion, SB 1718, which is scheduled to be considered Tuesday by the Budget Subcommittee on Education Pre-K – 12 Appropriations.

The measure has drawn opposition from Democrats and parent groups. Supporters include StudentsFirst, an organization founded by former Washington public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who has advised Gov. Rick Scott. It’s also supported by former Gov. Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future and California-based Parent Revolution, which successfully lobbied for a trigger law in that state.“

"WON'T BACK DOWN" GETS SCREENING AT RNC ALSO:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will attend a screening of a new movie dramatizing the national debate over so-called parent trigger legislation during the Republican National Convention.

AND IN LESS OBVIOUSLY PARTISAN SPACES:
Rhee has been busy with her political magic this summer, edging "Won't Back Down" into a central position at the July 19 meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The Conference has endorsed parent triggers.

UPDATED: Walmart & Teach For America Behind "Won't Back Down" - Parent Trigger Fact Sheet

UPDATED: MADFLORIDAN MAKES CONNECTIONS BETWEEN WALMART, TEACH FOR AMERICA AND WON'T BACK DOWN - IN THESE TIMES ON TEACHERS ROCK - PURE LETTER TO PERFORMERS -RAVITCH SUPPORTS BOYCOTT - PARENT TRIGGER FACT SHEET

More details are surfacing about the shadowy alliance behind "Won't Back Down," the film promoting parent trigger laws. (Parent trigger laws: Parents ID "bad schools;" insist on their closure; charter school replaces school; every test-taker lives happily ever after.) Teacher for America gets proceeds behind CBS' Teachers Rock event, August 17, 2012, 8 PM (7 PM, Central and Mountain Times).
Satire? Meryl Streep made angry call to CBS Teachers Rock. Josh Groban and mom speak out.

Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion Sat Aug 11th 2012, 11:26 PM All our tweets and all our emails and petitions did not get their attention as much as a paragraph in an ad for the show. It is anti-public school teacher, anti-union.

From a site called Students Last, a play on Michelle Rhee's anti-union Students First. (It appears to be satire, but it is surely calling attention to the CBS show. So that's good.)

Update: Stars Threaten to Walk

What bothered Ms. Felton lies in the fine print at the bottom of the concert promotion. Alongside food and tee-shirt vendors is listed an entertainment booth entitled "Rock-a-Teacher.” Further description reads, “Like an old fashioned dunking booth only better. Live teachers. Real stones. C’mon, you know you’ve always wanted to.”

Marsha was shocked. “I read it over and over again." She began to spread her rage, as so many do, by sending a Tweet that linked to the advertisement and read, "Teachers Rock=Rocks@Teachers.”

Los Angeles - TMZ is reporting that several stars scheduled to appear at the "Teachers Rock" concert have threatened to pull out if teachers are actually rocked. According to TMZ sources, Leslee Dart, Meryl Streep's publicist, made a fury-filled phone call to CBS, which is scheduled to record and broadcast the concert later this month. She is quoted as screaming at CBS President and CEO Les Moonves, "Meryl's in a god damn union for Christ's sake. She has to work with Teamsters. Damn right she wants this rectified." No word yet on Moonves' reaction.

Also unhappy about the "sport" of stoning teachers is Josh Groban. People magazine is reporting that Groban expressed his concerns to Walmart and Walden Media producers after getting an earful from his art teacher mom. According to sources close to the star, Groban's mother is angry about more than just the stoning booth. She objects to the entire event which is a publicity vehicle for the movie "Don't Give Up." "I don't want you lending your time and talents to a movie that glorifies yet another way to turn public schools over to charter chains," Lindy Groban is reported as saying. "They can call it whatever they want, but this concert is not about honoring teachers. It's being put together by the same people who did 'Waiting for Superman.'"

Here is some background on this event from my earlier post.

So many big stars on board for CBS Teachers Rock to push Parent Trigger laws. TFA to get proceeds.

The benefit concert will showcase live performances by Dierks Bentley, Fun. and Josh Groban and special appearances by Viola Davis from "Won't Back Down," Josh Hutcherson, Miranda Cosgrove, Pauley Perrette, Roshon Fegan and many more. Proceeds from TEACHERS ROCK will benefit three non-profit organizations: DonorsChoose.org, Feeding America and Teach for America.

..." The TEACHERS ROCK concert will feature scenes from Walden Media's upcoming motion picture "Won't Back Down," released by 20th Century Fox. The film stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis

Also in the concert are Carrie Underwood, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Garner, Matthew Morrison, Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Usher, Maroon 5's Adam Levine and James Valentine, and more.

Proceeds do NOT go to help public schools. TFA gets the proceeds. I hope more stars fight back against this outrage.

So many big stars on board for CBS Teachers Rock to push Parent Trigger laws. TFA to get proceeds.

Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion
Fri Aug 03rd 2012, 11:13 PM
I was just reading all the big-name stars who are getting on board for the parent trigger, and I am really stunned by some of the names. Do they know what it means to lightly turn a school over to parents who have no knowledge of how to run a school? To give them power to hire and fire teachers and principals.

Are they blinded by the glitz provided by all the money behind this corporate move to take over public schools? Or do they simply not care?

TEACHERS ROCK Presented by Walmart & "Won't Back Down"

Says it's a special benefit to help teachers. Guess which teachers? The article makes it clear it will benefit Teach for America teachers, recruits with 5 weeks training. They will be sent out thinking they are better than other teachers in spite of meager training.

The benefit concert will showcase live performances by Dierks Bentley, Fun. and Josh Groban and special appearances by Viola Davis from "Won't Back Down," Josh Hutcherson, Miranda Cosgrove, Pauley Perrette, Roshon Fegan and many more. Proceeds from TEACHERS ROCK will benefit three non-profit organizations: DonorsChoose.org, Feeding America and Teach for America.

..." The TEACHERS ROCK concert will feature scenes from Walden Media's upcoming motion picture "Won't Back Down," released by 20th Century Fox. The film stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis, who play two determined mothers, one a teacher, who will stop at nothing to transform their children's failing inner city school. Facing a powerful and entrenched bureaucracy, they risk everything to make a difference in the education and future of their children. This powerful story of parenthood, friendship and courage mirrors events that are making headlines daily.

"AEG and Walden are very excited to join efforts with Walmart in celebrating teachers. Honoring teachers and recognizing the importance of education have been bedrock values since the founding of our companies," said Anschutz Film Group & Walden Media CEO, David Weil. "We believe that TEACHERS ROCK and our upcoming movie, WON'T BACK DOWN, will both inspire parents to believe that they can make a real difference in the lives of students and teachers."

Also featured in the events are:

TEACHERS ROCK will be taped for a special one hour CBS television event broadcast Saturday, August 18th from 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET/PT, that will also feature taped performance and appearances from Carrie Underwood, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Garner, Matthew Morrison, Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Usher, Maroon 5's Adam Levine and James Valentine, and more.

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis won't back down from taking over their inner city school. Won't back down. Neither will the charter companies waiting to take over the schools from the parents who thought they were empowered. Not really empowered after all except to choose the charter company.

The parent trigger is an astroturf creation, not built by grassroots. It was pushed by ALEC and charter companies who want to take over public schools faster.

CBS is going along because that is apparently what networks do. Look at NBC and their corporate Education Nation.

Teachers in public schools do not have funds to fight back against such star power and big money interests. There will be less money for traditional public schools and more for those with the bigger voices.

Public school teachers indeed rock. Yet the benefits from the CBS show are going to Teach for America.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

In These Times, By Josh Eidelson, August 11, 2012 Walmart, Right-Wing Media Company Hold Star-Studded Benefit Promoting Education Reform Film

Viola Davis, shown here with her SAG award for Outstanding Performance by an Female Actor in a Leading Performance for "The Help," will be appearing soon in anti-teachers union propaganda at a theater near you. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

The world’s largest private-sector employer and the country’s most prominent conservative entertainment company have teamed up to sponsor a fundraiser called “Teachers Rock.” Backed by Walmart and Anschutz Film Group, the August 14 event will feature live performances from musicians like Josh Groban and appearances from actresses like Viola Davis; it will be broadcast August 18 as a CBS special with messages from actresses like Meryl Streep. And it will promote the upcoming feature film Won’t Back Down, Anschutz’s entry in the “education reform” wars.

Won’t Back Down is reportedly a highly sympathetic fictional portrayal of “parent trigger” laws, a major flashpoint in debates over education and collective bargaining. Under such laws, the submission of signatures from a majority of parents in a school triggers a “turnaround option,” which can mean the replacement of a unionized school with a non-union charter. Such laws have been passed in several states, but due to court challenges, the "trigger" process has never been fully implemented.

“It's another Waiting for Superman," says Jose Vilson, a New York City math teacher and board member of the Center for Teacher Quality. "You have these popular actors, who as well-intentioned as they may be, they may not know all the facts, but they’re willing to back up a couple of corporate friends or people maybe they've become familiar with" in "trying to promote this sort of vision."

Parent trigger is one of the model bills pushed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Adamantly opposed by teachers unions, parent trigger bills (as I’ve reported for Salon) have often been spearheaded and supported by Democratic politicians. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed slamming teachers unions, Campbell Brown highlighted Won’t Back Down as evidence that “teachers unions have become a ripe target for reformers across the ideological spectrum” and Hollywood “has turned on unions.”

Walmart, Hollywood and Anschutz Unite

According to a July 24 joint press release, Tuesday's concert is “presented by” Walmart and by Won’t Back Down, which the release describes as a “powerful story – inspired by true events” about “determined mothers who will stop at nothing to transform their children’s failing inner city school. Facing a powerful and entrenched bureaucracy and a system mired in traditional thinking, they risk everything to make a difference in the education and future of their children.” Proceeds from the fundraiser will go to the non-profits Teach For America, Feeding America and DonorsChoose.org.

According to the release, the benefit will “feature scenes” from the film, and Viola Davis, one of the film’s stars, will be among the performers making “special appearances” at the event. The CBS TV special will include additional appearances by celebrities including Streep, Adam Levine of the band Maroon 5 and NBC's The Voice, and Matthew Morrison, who stars as a beloved high school teacher on Fox show Glee. Representatives of Streep, Levine and Morrison declined requests for comment; representatives of Davis, Groban, and CBS did not respond to inquiries.

Reached over e-mail, Anschutz Film Group (AFG) CEO David Weil said that both the benefit and the film "highlight the importance of teachers and education and seek to inspire parents to believe that they can make a real difference in the lives of students and teachers.” The movie is produced by AFG's Walden Media subsidairy. AFG operates as a subsidiary of Anschutz Entertainment Group, which in turn is a subsidiary of the Anschutz Company. Philip Anschutz, the Anschutz Company's chairman and CEO and the billionaire owner of The Weekly Standard and other publications, has provided major funding to efforts to restrict obscenity on television and oppose bans on sexual orientation discrimination.

Walden also backed Waiting for Superman, the 2010 documentary that argued unions were a primary obstacle to improving education. Walden CEO Michael Bostick told the New York Times that, after Superman, the company "realized the inherent limitations of the documentary format." With Won't Back Down, the Times reported, "he said, the idea is to reach a larger audience through the power of actors playing complicated characters who struggle with issues that happen to be, in his words, 'ripped from the headlines.'" The film is being distributed as part of a joint venture with 20th Century Fox.

Asked over e-mail how AFG expected Won't Back Down to influence education policy debates, Weil said the movie "explores many different approaches to issues that parents face every day as they selflessly advocate for their children to receive the promise of a great education." Weil adds that the film does not "advocate any specific approach," and that, "If anything, we hope the film will inspire parents to be aware of and involved in their children's educations."

Vilson describeds Walmart’s involvement in "Teachers Rock" as evidence of an agenda “to Walmart-ize teachers" by securing the power to “totally strip collective-bargaining rights and health benefits," and exercise discretion to replace teachers at will. As David Moberg has reported, Walmart has had a hostile relationship with organized labor for decades. None of its U.S. stores are unionized.

Walmart was a member of ALEC until May, when it ended its membership following pressure from activists after the killing of Trayvon Martin. A Walmart vice president wrote, in a letter reported by the Los Angeles Times, that ALEC had lost its proper focus on advancing "Jeffersonian principles of free markets." According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the Walton Family Foundation has historically been a major donor to organizations seeking to privatize public schools. Walmart declined a request for comment.

Vilson says he was particularly disappointed by Viola Davis' participation, given The Help star's past comments about wanting to elevate the voices of often-ignored domestic workers.

"You should also see the alignment between that and what's going on with teachers," says Vilson, "and the bad tone that's being sent throughout the country."

"I'm sorry," Davis told the New York Times, "I just know if you don't have a strong advocate for a child, they're not going to make it."

The New York Times reported that the trigger law portrayed in Won’t Back Down differs from its real life counterparts in a key respect: Unlike standard parent triggers laws which require just a majority of parents’ signatures to trigger a turnaround, the law in the movie requires support from a majority of a school’s teachers as well. Asked why, Weil told In These Times, "It was important that the law used be fictional because the film is not based on a specific actual law," but instead "draws on many situations throughout the country."

Asked whether "Teachers Rock" would address education policy, including teacher layoffs across the country, Weil said it would not. "It's a celebration of a group of unsung heroes of our society - our teachers," he says. "It is not intended to be a political event."

An Anti-Union Lightning Rod

Won't Back Down will reach theaters next month amid increasing national traction for parent trigger. In June, the policy received a unanimous endorsement from the U.S. Council of Mayors. Its supporters scored a key legal victory last month, when a Superior Court judge found that the Adelanto School District had erred in allowing parents to rescind their signatures on a trigger petition. Without the rescinded signatures, the petition lacked a majority.

According to the Los Angles Times, the pro-trigger group Parent Revolution accused opponents of trying "to bully and trick parents into rescinding their signature." The school board's president told the Times that the pro-trigger organization Parent Revolution and another group misled parents into signing the trigger petition by presenting it along with another petition calling for reforms, and telling them that the trigger petition would serve as leverage to support the other one. He said he will reccomend an appeal.

“If you want to transform the system so that it gets better results,” National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel says, “collective bargaining is a must. … There’s got to be a way for professionals who are in the classrooms with the students to have a voice.” Van Roekel, who leads the nation’s largest teachers union, describes trigger’s backers as a mix of people who “have good intentions,” and others “who are privateers who are trying to find ways to make money off the education process.”

Parent Revolution national advocacy director Michael Trujillo acknowledges that parent trigger could lead to the elimination of union recognition at a school, but says ending collective bargaining is not the goal: “It just adds the love of a mom and a father to that [bargaining] table.” He describes parent trigger as a reform that “hands raw power to moms and dads, giving them the power to be the change in their child’s failing school.”

Fund Education Now co-founder Kathleen Oropeza contests the claim the trigger empowers parents. Once the trigger is pulled, she says, parents like her are “not going to be in there telling these for-profit charter developers how to run their school.” Oropeza’s organization was part of the successful campaign to defeat a trigger law in Florida's legislature. “Parents are being used as a tool,” Oropeza charges, by people trying “to create a revenue stream for corporations. And the children are losing.”

Vilson accuses parent-trigger advocates of seeking to “take advantage of an often misinformed public” in order to “get their own sort of reforms in those otherwise unbreakable schools.” He names Parent Revolution as a group whose sponsors are “anti-union and frankly anti-professional,” and seeking to rebuild schools “in the hands of the one or two people who have the funding.”

As David Sirota has noted, several studies have found that charter schools perform worse overall than other public schools. Teachers at charter schools are far less likely than their other public school counterparts to have union contracts. Van Roekel says that education reforms should include measures to improve teacher retention: "We lose 47% of teachers hired in America within five years. There is no business large, small, or medium in America that could survive with that level of turnover."

Vilson cited New York City as a school district that has seen an improvement in test scores due to improvements in teachers’ professional development, rather than restriction of their rights. “Unfortunately,” he says, “that doesn’t get a lot of attention.”

But Vilson says he expects the fundraiser and the film to be a boon for parent trigger supporters: “A lot of people are going to take it as fact.”

Parents United for Responsible Education's (PURE) letter to "Teachers Rock" performers, posted at PURE's site on August 11, 2012

Dear Teachers Rock performer:

As active parents, we thank you for your support for our public school teachers. We support them, too.

But you need to know that the agenda behind the “Teachers Rock” concert and the “Won’t Back Down” movie this concert promotes does not support teachers or our democratic public school system.

The WBD movie promotes a parent trigger law created by charter school operators and promoted by ALEC, which wrote the Stand Your Ground law. The real aim is to privatize public schools and get rid of union teachers.

The WBD movie is produced by the same company that produced the controversial documentary “Waiting for Superman,” which put teachers in a very bad light and presented false and misleading information about charter schools, which overall have not had any better track record in the US than regular schools.

We know that you, like the actors in the movie, aren’t aware that you are being used to promote school privatization in the guise of parent empowerment. We can’t afford a big show or Hollywood movie, but we do hope that you will at least listen to us and reconsider your participation in this event.

Thank you.

Parents United for Responsible Education (Chicago)

PURE's post calling for social media protests of "Won't Back Down": Guess who’s not backing down?

Check out the comments from outraged parents on the Facebook Page for the Won’t Back Down movie! Lots of parents are reading and sharing PAA’s Fact sheet, “Beyond the parent trigger hype: just the facts.”

Go here and “like” Facebook page “Boycott of Movie Won’t Back Down.”

DIANE RAVITCH STARTS BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN ON TWITTER
Tell “Won’t Back Down” to Back Off

A reader writes about the new pro-privatization movie “Won’t Back Down.” This is a movie celebrating the ALEC-inspired “parent trigger,” encouraging the public to think that parents should seize control of their public school, fire the staff, and hand the school over to a charter corporation. The film is produced by Walden Media, the same company that produced “Waiting for Superman.” It is owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz.

I’ve started a #BoycottWontBackDown campaign on twitter… blog about it and share it on Facebook as well. Tell the public WHY we should boycott this movie. This company should not make even more profit on the vilification of teachers and public schools.

PARENT TRIGGER FACT SHEET
From Parents Across America's site, August 13, 2012
Beyond the parent trigger hype and propaganda: just the facts

Facts about the parent trigger

Researched by Caroline Grannan, San Francisco

Parents Across America founding member

1. There have been no successful parent triggers anywhere.i

2. Two parent triggers have been attempted, both in Southern California.i

3. The organization that created the parent trigger, Parent Revolution, organized both of those parent trigger campaigns.

4.Parent Revolution has been inaccurately described as “grassroots” and as founded by concerned mothers. Actually, Parent Revolution was created by charter school operator Steve Barr, who founded the Green Dot charter school chainiv. Parent Revolution has a $1 million annual budget and 10 full-time staff members. Its funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and more.

5. In both of those two parent triggers, many parents at the targeted schools said they did not want their schools to become charter schools, and a number attempted to rescind their signatures from the petitions.v

6. In both of the two parent triggers that have been attempted, conflict and controversy exploded among the parents at the schools.vi

7. In the first of those parent triggers (McKinley Elementary School in Compton, CA, December 2010), the charter school operator that had been poised to take over the school didn’t do so; instead, it opened a new charter school a few minutes away. Only a fraction of the McKinley families (apparently between 12% and 20%) moved their children to the charter school.viii

8. With the charter school having opened nearby instead of taking over the school, the McKinley Elementary School parent trigger appears to have failed conclusively.ix

9. In the second parent trigger (Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, CA, January 2012), a July 2012 court ruling has been reported misleadingly as a victory for parents. But actually, what the court ruled was that parents who wanted to rescind their signatures from the parent trigger petition could not do so.

10. While Parent Revolution sometimes claims it is not attacking teachers and is not anti-union, its tactics have repeatedly attacked teachers, and it has accused teachers’ unions of intimidating and misleading parents. xi “[Parent Revolution's] Ben Austin has said that it’s an open secret that Desert Trails is where the district sends many of its least effective teachers,” former Los Angeles school board member Yolie Flores told Education Week.xii

11. The current status of the parent trigger at Desert Trails in Adelanto is that Parent Revolution is seeking a charter operator to take over the schoolxiii, although many parents have said that they don’t want the school to become a charter.xiv

Here are some basic facts about charter schools:

Charter schools overall have a less successful record than comparable public schools.

“Takeover” charters at low-achieving public schools, in which a charter operator steps in to run an existing struggling school, have an especially unsuccessful record.

Charter school operators generally do not want to take over existing low-performing schools with a pre-existing set of challenges. They prefer to start their own schools so they can choose their students and create their own procedures and policies.

Public schools are almost always governed by democratically elected local school boards. Charter schools are often run by unelected boards that are not answerable to the parents, voters or the community.

Endnotes:

Item 1:

iThere have been two attempted parent triggers, with petitions signed and turned in to officials. The first was at McKinley Elementary School in Compton, CA, in 2010. It has failed, with the school remaining under the same governance as before. The second is at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, CA, in 2012. It is still being fought out among factions of parents and school and district administrators. The ultimate outcome is unknown at this point.

Item 2:

iiSee previous endnote.

Item 3:

iiiThis is borne out by ample news coverage and other sources. Here’s what the Los Angeles Weekly reported about the Compton parent trigger (Dec. 9, 2010): Parent Revolution decided to focus on McKinley Elementary School and approach parents there after researching the worst school districts in California. … (Parent Revolution’s paid) field organizers have canvassed a large chunk of the 10-square-mile city of Compton, knocking on hundreds of doors, walking its sidewalks and driving its streets, asking people if their children attend McKinley. … [Organizing director Pat DeTemple] set up a computer program to track trends in the progress of his staff’s work. The Los Angeles Times reported (Jan. 13, 2012) on Parent Revolution’s involvement in the Adelanto parent trigger (this version of the Times article posted on the Parent Revolution website): In Adelanto, the process has been transparent and fair, said Gabe Rose of Parent Revolution, the Los Angeles educational reform group that helped train and organize parents in both cities.

Item 4:

ivThis Los Angeles Times article (May 11, 2009) describes how Steve Barr, founder of the Green Dot charter school chain, created Parent Revolution in 2009.

vThe Los Angeles Weekly (Dec. 9, 2010) described Parent Revolution’s funding: Parent Revolution, with 10 full-time staff members and a $1 million annual operating budget, is funded by blue-chip philanthropic endeavors, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.

Item 5:

viLos Angeles Times: Some parents are rescinding their signatures to convert McKinley Elementary into a charter school. Dec. 11, 2010) Widely reported, including in theSan Bernardino County Sentinel (April 7, 2012): [A]t least 97 parents rescinded their signatures [in the Adelanto parent trigger].

Item 6:

viiThe Los Angeles Weekly live blogging, Dec. 14, 2010:We’re reporting live from the [Compton Unified School District] board meeting, packed with press and hundreds of angry parents — many of whom say they were tricked into signing the Parent Trigger petition without understanding its gravity. Above all, the air is buzzing with confusion. … More and more, the crowd reveals itself as anti-Parent Trigger.

Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 2012: “Some parents say the Desert Trails campaign has divided the campus, destroyed friendships and given rise to charges on both sides of harassment and deceit.”

Item 7:

viiiThe Los Angeles Times reported on Nov. 14, 2011, that 1/5 of the families at McKinley Elementary had transferred their children to the new Celerity Sirius charter – amounting to 1/3 of the families who had signed the petition. But actually, California Department of Education data show a drop of considerably less: McKinley enrollment dropped 12.9% when the charter opened – from 426 students to 371.

Item 8:

ixThe Los Angeles Times (Nov. 14, 2011) described the outcome of the Compton parent trigger as “legal defeat when the petition was found lacking on largely technical grounds.” The Times editorial added: “Ultimately, the charter operator, Celerity Educational Group, decided to open a school a few blocks away instead, to predictions that this would wipe out McKinley by drawing away most of its students. But that’s not what happened.”

Item 9:

xLos Angeles Times, July 24, 2012: Ruling supports Adelanto charter school effort: Judge rules that California’s ‘parent trigger’ law does not allow signatures to be revoked, meaning Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto could become a charter.

Item 10:

xi The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 24, 2012, quoted Parent Revolution Executive Director Ben Austin accusing teachers’ union members of harassing parents: “About two weeks ago, the California Teachers Association flew in a cadre of paid operatives from Sacramento,” says Ben Austin of Parent Revolution, the liberal activist group that conceived of parent trigger and has supported the campaigns in Compton and Adelanto. “Suddenly parents were accosted in the parking lot by CTA operatives blocking cars from moving until the driver agreed to take a flier plastered with lies.”

Parent Revolution also accused Compton teachers of tormenting and humiliating the children of parents who signed the parent trigger petitions by refusing to allow them to use the rest room. Ben Austin made the accusation in detail in a Jan. 19, 2012, filmed interview with Choice Media. No evidence, further details or discussion have been available.

Los Angeles Weekly, Jan. 18, 2011: In Compton, Parent Trigger Supporters File Intimidation Charges With U.S. Department of Education

xiiParent Trigger’s First Test Case: An Interview with Yolie Flores, Education Week, Aug. 2, 2012

Item 11:

xiii KABC Los Angeles, July 23, 2012: Superior Court Judge Steve Malone ordered the Adelanto School District to accept the petition filed by the Desert Trails Parents Union within 30 days and to immediately seek proposals from charter school operators to take over Desert Trails Elementary School.

xivTweet from Victorville Daily Press reporter Natasha Lindstrom, the local reporter who has been covering the Adelanto parent trigger issue, July 23, 2012: Victorville Daily Press reporter Natasha Lindstrom, who has covered the story from the beginning, was tweeting updates the day of the ruling. Many (parents) told me they didn’t want a charter. Both sides of Parent Trigger like the current principal, who only took (the) helm in October.