The Koch Brothers venture into the movie business.
Well-funded advocates of privatizing the nation’s education system are employing a new strategy this fall to enlist support for the cause. The emotionally engaging Hollywood film “Won’t Back Down” -- set for release September 28 -- portrays so-called “Parent Trigger” laws as an effective mechanism for transforming underperforming public schools. But the film's distortion of the facts prompts a closer examination of its funders and backers and a closer look at those promoting Parent Trigger as a cure for what ails the American education system.
While Parent Trigger was first promoted by a small charter school operator in California, it was taken up and launched into hyperdrive by two controversial right-wing organizations: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Heartland Institute.
ALEC brings together major American corporations and right-wing legislators to craft and vote on "model" bills behind closed doors. These bills include extreme gun laws, like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law implicated in the Trayvon Martin shooting, union-busting legislation, Arizona style anti-immigrant legislation and voter suppression laws that have sparked lawsuits across the nation. The organization's agenda is so extreme that in the last few months 40 major U.S. companies, including Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Kraft, and General Motors, have severed ties with ALEC.
http://www.prwatch.org/node/11763
While Parent Trigger was first promoted by a small charter school operator in California, it was taken up and launched into hyperdrive by two controversial right-wing organizations: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Heartland Institute.
ALEC brings together major American corporations and right-wing legislators to craft and vote on "model" bills behind closed doors. These bills include extreme gun laws, like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law implicated in the Trayvon Martin shooting, union-busting legislation, Arizona style anti-immigrant legislation and voter suppression laws that have sparked lawsuits across the nation. The organization's agenda is so extreme that in the last few months 40 major U.S. companies, including Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Kraft, and General Motors, have severed ties with ALEC.
http://www.prwatch.org/node/11763
3 Comments
chingaleraWhat a couplea Kochs!
All for publicizing the horror of programming that public education in America has been molded into and nurtured with tweaks over the decades. All for more and more private schools with academics above all else as core values.....fat chance.
Public schools in the U.S.rest on the real-estate of agenda and part of that seems to crank out more and more functionless imbeciles every year.
Go check out some of Charlotte Iserbyt's ramblings.....I'd trust her before I'd trust my own take on the state of education in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Thomson_
chingaleraEnlightened Social Engineering High School and Trade Mill
dystopianfuturetodayDon't buy into the propaganda, Choggie, the Koch's could care less about education, they just want to make a buck.
The charter school thing has been tried and they perform worse than regular public schools. The reason that many private schools do better than public schools is that they are highly funded and can blacklist students that don't do well in school, students that have mental or physical disabilities, students that have discipline problems and students that don't speak English. Public schools are inclusive by definition. If education were privatized, the exclusivity that makes private schools succeed would be lost.
Turning education over to corporations would mean subsidized high level education for rich people, and McSchools for everyone else.
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