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

by Julianne Hing

Published on Sunday, October 7, 2012 by Color Lines 
Distributed by Common Dreams 

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/07-2

http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/10/wont_back_down_goes_on_tour_in_cities_debating_the_parent_trigger.html

Can life, in fact, imitate art? Organizers leading a
controversial new school reform movement are doing
their darndest to try. 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.
Critics--including teachers' unions and many of public
schools' staunches defenders--warn that real life
educating isn't that simple.Viola Davis and Maggie
Gyllenhaal in "Won't Back Down." Kerry Hayes/Walden
Media, LLC.

Parent Revolution's idea is to host the film, which
traces a fictionalized community's fight to overhaul a
struggling public school, 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.

The parent trigger is a policy, promoted by the Parent
Revolution movement, that allows parents whose kids are
in public schools that have been deemed to be failing
to demand an overhaul of the campus if more than 50
percent of parents sign a petition calling for change.
In 2010, California became the first state to pass a
parent trigger law, but since then a growing number of
states have followed. In 2011, lawmakers weighed the
idea in 22 states. In Buffalo, folks are gearing up for
the next state legislative session, when they hope to
introduce the parent trigger again.

Activists supportive of the parent trigger called the
Buffalo screening a success. "I heard a lot of clapping
in the crowds, and people were crying and laughing
especially at the end," said Hannya Boulos, executive
director of Buffalo ReformED, which is organizing to
pass a parent trigger law in New York.

"We're using the movie as a chance to re-motivate and
organize folks," said April Popescu, regional advocacy
director for Parent Revolution. She flew out from Los
Angeles to attend the Buffalo screening, and someone
from Parent Revolution will travel with the film to
each of its showings. The film is a key part of Parent
Revolution's organizing strategy to get local
communities to support not just the law, but the
possibility of pulling the trigger in their own
communities. "Our goal is to inspire. Our goal is not
to spark a debate or create an issue or a fight,"
Popescu said.

And yet, debate and acrimony is seemingly all that
trails the parent trigger. In California, where the
policy has been implemented twice, both efforts have
landed communities in court, with school districts and
parent activists fighting against efforts to bring in
charter schools to replace neighborhood schools.

Like just about everything in the education reform
world, it's a controversial tactic with clear lines of
support and opposition. The mainstream and bipartisan
education reform movement, including Education
Secretary Arne Duncan, have embraced the idea. While
the teachers unions and progressive public school
defenders have been deeply skeptical, arguing that it
only creates the illusion of parental empowerment while
fast-tracking the path for replacing public schools
with private and charter schools.

And it wasn't all supporters in the Buffalo theater
this week, attendees report. Ina Downing, an activist
with Alliance for Quality Education, a statewide
educational equity organization, headed to the
screening to hand out fliers about the policy and warn
audience members about the politics behind the film. "I
just want to share the facts with parents," Downing
said, whose primary organizing issue is a campaign to
address the racially disparate school discipline rates
in Buffalo and around New York State.

"I know all about poor performing schools," Downing
said. With 10 grandchildren and five godchildren in
Buffalo city schools, she says she's well-aware of the
levels of dysfunction there. "But my concern is that
parents know the facts. I know what the parent trigger
promises, but it's still fed by corporations."

That's something of an overstatement, but the web of
connections to corporate interests is clear. The parent
trigger as a policy has been backed by conservatives
and an increasing number of liberals whose education
reform ideology is based in market principles and a
belief that increasing competition and punitive
accountability measures will improve poor performing
schools. The Hollywood version of the policy is no
different. Walden Media, which produced the film, is
owned by Philip Anschutz, who has also supported ALEC,
the conservative legislative advocacy group that
adopted the parent trigger in its model policy lineup.
And the film's distributor is owned by Rupert Murdoch,
who has made moves into the $500 billion U.S. public
education sector with his News Corp.

Samuel Radford, president of Buffalo Schools' District
Parent Coordinating Council, isn't bothered in the
slightest by these connections. "My issue is not to
judge who comes to help," he said. "That's like me
needing a life raft thrown to me, and me concerned
about which boat it comes from? I don't get that
thinking. I'm willing to listen to anybody that's
willing to take the time, attention and resources to
turn around failing schools."

Radford, who heads a parent organization which has
coalesced around the parent trigger as its main
legislative campaign, sat on the post-film panel and
did his part to encourage folks to get involved with
their upcoming legislative fight. Seven of his kids
have gone through Buffalo city schools, and he's got
three more boys scattered throughout the district.

Neither is he concerned about the lack of
evidence-based research behind the parent trigger and
the turnaround models it'd lead to. The loudest voices
opposing the parent trigger are teachers unions whom
Radford believes have only their self-interests at
heart. Criticisms of the parent trigger sound too much
like excuses for failure to him. "Forty-four of 58
Buffalo city schools are in the bottom 10 percent of
New York state," he said.

But he's not alone in his frustrations with Buffalo
schools. "I've seen children pushed through just
because," said Downing, "and I've dealt with a teacher
that was treating my children unfair." Still, she
opposes a policy that would attempt to wipe the slate
of a school clean. After parents pull the metaphorical
trigger on their kids' schools, policies generally
allow parents to choose from one of a list of drastic
turnaround options, which include shutting the school
down entirely; replacing the staff and administrators;
or bringing in an outside charter school operator to
run the school. But there is no such thing as wiping
the slate clean with schools, Downing says. "You have
to look for solutions in schools, not punish students
and teachers. Giving up and starting new, that's like
throwing salt on an open wound. .. It's going to burn."

During its opening weekend, "Won't Back Down,"
incidentally, had the worst opening in box office
history for films released in over 2,500 theaters. Box
office analysts took gleeful jabs at the film's
numbers, noting that 20th Century Fox could easily send
the film into the world with little at stake because
"Won't Back Down" was financed by Walden Media, the
publishing and production company behind the
pro-charter education film "Waiting for Superman." But
the film, so poorly received by the wider U.S.
moviegoing crowds, may not have been meant for them
anyway. This week Parent Revolution hosted "Won't Back
Down" screenings in Fort Wayne, Ind.; Jackson, Miss.;
Cincinnati, Ohio; and Baton Rouge, La. (c) 2012 Color
Lines Julianne Hing

Julianne Hing is a reporter and blogger for
Colorlines.com covering immigration, education,
criminal justice, and occasionally fashion and pop
culture. In 2009 Julianne was the recipient of USC
Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism
fellowship, which funded a reporting project on the
impacts of criminal deportation on immigrant families.
Julianne's writing has appeared on AlterNet, Common
Dreams, Hyphen Magazine's blog, The American Prospect's
blog TAPPED and Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog at The Atlantic.
Julianne tweets at @[log in to unmask]

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