What A Terrible Video About Parents & Schools With A Terrible Message

Parent Revolution, the charter school affiliated group behind the faulty and ill-conceived “parent trigger” mechanism in California the facilitates charter school takeovers of schools, has produced an awful video to publicize this “trigger.”

It begins with this:

Our schools are failing because they are not designed to succeed. They are designed to serve the needs of special interests and bureaucrats — not children. The only way to change that is to give power to the only people who only care about children — parents.

Now, that’s what I call a positive message communicating the kind of cooperation we need to help our schools. Let’s start off with stomping on schools, then stomping on teachers and teachers unions (the “special interests”), and then let’s further increase the barrier by not acknowledging that most teachers are parents, too. And let’s not even mention the “special interest” of the charter school operator Parent Revolution works with.

The video goes on to not offer even a sliver of possibility of parents working with teachers and schools to improve them.

It’s amazing how much self-righteousness and hypocrisy can be combined into a four-and-a-half minute video.

2 thoughts on “What A Terrible Video About Parents & Schools With A Terrible Message

  1. Well it is certainly a polished commercial isn’t it? I am concerned more with the labeling of schools as “failed” and laying the blame on staff than I am on parent involvement. What is the track record on the Parent Trigger? Has it been used very much? How many public schools have been taken over by charter schools?

  2. I agree. At first I thought (by the title) ‘Oh, what a great idea: a movement to get more parents engaged in education.’ Then, I saw the move. What a BAD approach!
    Parent movements to take a bigger role in their kids’ education – absolutely! But not this way.

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