The Wall Street Journal Comes Calling on GEM: Who's Really on the Moral Defensive Now?

Did Real Reformer/GEM protest at film make Rupert's crew nervous?

This was the lead in an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal:

The new film "Waiting for 'Superman'" is getting good reviews for its portrayal of children seeking alternatives to dreadful public schools, and to judge by the film's opponents it is having an impact.

Astoundingly, the WSJ devoted one of its 3 major editorials today to the Grassroots Education Movement-led rally at the opening of the film on Sept. 24. My take is that it was our protest that had the real impact for the WSJ to do this editorial condemning the Real Reformers and trying to tie it into the unions.

Not only am I quoted but there is a plug for our upcoming film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman," – the trailer has already topped 6000 hits and our rally film has almost 800 hits.

Some more funnies from the editorial:

....leaving the monopolists to the hapless recourse of suggesting that reformers are merely the tools of hedge fund philanthropists.
....The odd complaint is that donors to charter schools include some hedge fund managers. [my emphasis]
....We saw a trailer for this anti-"Superman" film, which denounces most of the leading advocates for charter schools. The irony is that most of those criticized are Democrats or noted liberals [we actually agree here] who've been mugged by public school reality.

The editorial closes with:

The teachers unions continue to wield enough power to deny choices to these students, but their days as political supermen are numbered.

Ahhh, so right. The days of top-down worm-like teacher unions' days are hopefully numbered. As CORE in Chicago has proven. Yes, the editorial writers at the WSJ and the ed deformers should be worried.

Read this back story of my interview with the WSJ and then read the full editorial, but don't break a rib laughing.


I get this call late last week from someone named Bari Weiss who writes for the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Okaaaay, we know where she stands on ed deform before she utters another word. She wants to talk about "Waiting for Superman" and the protest held in front of the theater by GEM and the Real Reformers. I know, I know Bari. You loved the film and didn't love our protest. But Bari is not going to tell me that openly. She is posing as an unbiased reporter, after all.

So we talk for a good amount of time - at least 20 minutes or more. I tell her the protest consisted of public school parents and teachers. She asks about GEM and the protest. I tell her these are mostly young, activist teachers, some even Teach for America alums – an interesting development in that most of them have spent the overwhelming bulk of their careers working under BloomKlein. In some cases their activism has been fueled when their schools have been invaded by charters run by sons of billionaires, who get favored treatment over the public school. In other words, the actions of the ed deformers have done a whole lot o' organizing by default.

Then Bari gives herself up with this question: "What do you say to parents who I speak to who love their charter schools?" She brings up that loooong waiting list.

Oooh, boy. I go to town. "For every charter school parent who loves their school, I'll match you a hundred to one of public school parents who love their school. Why aren't you talking to them?

And why aren't you talking to the charter school parents who hate their charters schools? Or the numerous parents who have removed their children from the charter? Or who have been counseled out?" I tell her about the parent of special ed children who I interviewed at the Parents Across America/GEM/NYCPA press conference at Rockefeller Center last week. This parent had a child make the lottery for Harlem Success Academy but when they realized she was a 12-1-1 child, they told her her child couldn't be serviced. We know Bari ain't goin' there. This is the Wall Street Journal, after all.

And I got to town on that phony PR drummed up waiting list crap. I talk about the PR budgets of charter schools and ask her how much of a budget does she think public schools get for glossy PR brochures. I don't know if I brought up HSA's own head of PR Jenny Sedlis and how much she gets paid.

She asks me about myself and I tell her chapter and verse that I am not an anti ed deformer because of some ideology but because I spent 30 years in a classroom in the inner city and spent 40 years fighting the old status quo and am now fighting the new status quo. "How about that class size issue," I ask? I tell her about the difference between having 24 and 28 in a class. I even bring up how much longer it takes to line them up and take them to the bathroom with even just a few more kids. And some more blah, blah, blah.

Then we talk union and how the UFT had zero to do with this protest. At this point I hold back in criticizing the UFT since I am representing GEM and the RR's as the press contact and not my own positions on the UFT. So I am careful. I tell her that if she googles me personally she will see how the UFT views me and I view them and that personally I have been a critic for a long time though GEM has been focused on broader issues of defending public education than the UFT so far. But many progressive real reformers see the UFT as being way too cooperative with the ed deformers and not on the side of real reform. I think I mention Chicago.

Bari comes back with, "That's the left doing the criticising." Ahhh, that reveals where she might be going with this. I tell her there may be leftists involved it is broader than that. She then brings up the "other" group led by Marjorie Stamberg who were protesting at the same time and place. She wanted to know if that protest was part of ours. She even asked if it was ISO (International Socialists). Here this got tricky. Navigating through the left for someone like me who doesn't always get all the left messaging is always tricky.

I told her that ISO was working with us and that this was another group called Class Struggle. I told her it was a separate protest that GEM and the Real Reformers were not involved in planning and that when we heard about it we asked them to join our rap but that they declined and wanted to get their message across. I wanted to be clear and not have the Wall Street Journal brand this as some kind of left wing conspiracy. I could imagine her rolling her eyes.

I ask Bari if she is an education writer. She says "No." She certainly seems to be aware of the push button ed issues. I tell her I'm impressed. She tells me she also enjoyed the conversation and asked if it was ok to call again. "Anytime," I said. I won't hold my breath.

Before you get to the editorial itself, here are a few comments for your guided reading

Here is Mariama Sanoh, Vice President of the NY Charter Parents Association, one charter school parent Bari didn't talk to.

We’re still waiting for Superman here in Charterland

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2010/10/were-still-waiting-for-superman-here-in.html 

Note that Bari Weiss was present at the rally but did not interview one participant. Not one of the 50 people who were there to protest. Yet she spent 160 words of a 560 word editorial quoting one Harlem parent who was there with his son. I don't know if this was the same parent who was outside giving out literature, but there are stories out that some people were paid to do so at various theaters. Note he is a parent at Democracy Prep, which has been notorious for certain undemocratic processes.

Hating 'Superman'
Teachers unions are on the moral defensive.

* http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575520160925291820.html

The new film "Waiting for 'Superman'" is getting good reviews for its portrayal of children seeking alternatives to dreadful public schools, and to judge by the film's opponents it is having an impact.

Witness the scene on a recent Friday night in front of a Loews multiplex in New York City, where some 50 protestors blasted the film as propaganda for charter schools. "Klein, Rhee and Duncan better switch us jobs, so we can put an end to those hedge fund hogs," went one of their anti-charter cheers, referring to school reform chancellors Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The odd complaint is that donors to charter schools include some hedge fund managers.

Or maybe not so odd. Teachers unions and the public school monopoly have long benefitted from wielding a moral trump card. They claimed to care for children, and caring was defined solely by how much taxpayers spent on schools.

That moral claim is being turned on its head as more Americans come to understand that teachers unions and the public bureaucracy are the main obstacles to reform. Movies such as "Waiting for 'Superman'" and "The Lottery" are exposing this to the larger American public, leaving the monopolists to the hapless recourse of suggesting that reformers are merely the tools of hedge fund philanthropists.

The Manhattan protest was sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement, which was co-founded by Norman Scott, a retired public school teacher. Mr. Scott says the group has nothing to do with the United Federation of Teachers, and that it's comprised of New York City teachers and parents who have been "adversely affected by charter schools." Mr. Scott told us he and several others are developing their own film, "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for 'Superman.'" That's a nod to Davis Guggenheim, who directed Al Gore's climate change documentary before he did "Superman."

We saw a trailer for this anti-"Superman" film, which denounces most of the leading advocates for charter schools. The irony is that most of those criticized are Democrats or noted liberals who've been mugged by public school reality.

Though the protestors were the main spectacle that day outside the theater, two others in the crowd provided a counterpoint. Charter school parent Daniel Clark Sr. and his son Daniel Jr., a ninth grader at Democracy Prep, came down from Harlem. "The reason there's such a gravitational pull" to such schools, Mr. Clark says of parents in poor neighborhoods, "is not because they love charter schools. It's because they're the only game in town."

Mr. Clark thinks "Waiting for 'Superman'" is helping people get it. "There's a lack of information in general about the charter schools . . . the movie puts it in personal terms. You can see the kids, you can see the anxiety in the families." He describes his son as "a typical kid on 133rd street. The only difference is that he got lucky enough to get into a charter school. . . . God knows where he would be if he was at the public school he was meant to go to."

The waiting list in Harlem to attend a charter is more than 11,000 and nationwide it is an estimated 420,000. The teachers unions continue to wield enough power to deny choices to these students, but their days as political supermen are numbered.

After burn
Some ed deformer found a typo in our Truth About Charter pamphlet - a double negative - and condemned us as teachers for that error. I wonder - if he reads this editorial and finds a spelling mistakeiIn the WSJ whether that means capitalism is about to fall?