Randi Weingarten must be watching the RNC goings-on pretty closely too. Minutes ago, the president of the American Federation of Teachers sent out a lengthy press release criticizing “Won’t Back Down,” the new movie about a mother and a teacher who use a parent trigger type law to turn around a struggling, inner-city school.
I mention the timing because StudentsFirst is sponsoring a special screening of the movie at the RNC this afternoon, followed by a panel discussion with Jeb Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Rhee and the movie’s director, Daniel Barnz.
In her statement, Weingarten specifically mentions the parent trigger debate in Florida earlier this year. Here’s an excerpt:
This movie could have been a great opportunity to bring parents and teachers together to launch a national movement focused on real teacher and parent collaboration to help all children. Instead, this fictional portrayal, which makes the unions the culprit for all of the problems facing our schools, is divisive and demoralizes millions of great teachers. America’s teachers are already being asked to do more with less—budgets have been slashed, 300,000 teachers have been laid off since the start of the recession, class sizes have spiked, and more and more children are falling into poverty. And teachers are being demonized, marginalized and shamed by politicians and elites who want to undermine and dismiss their reform efforts.
Parent engagement is essential to ensuring children thrive in the classroom. The power of partnerships between parents, teachers and the community is at the heart of school change.
But instead of focusing on real parent empowerment and how communities can come together to help all children succeed, “Won’t Back Down” offers parents a false choice—you’re either for students or for teachers, you can either live with a low-performing school or take dramatic, disruptive action to shut a school down.
