Turning Lightning Into Electricity: Organizing Parents For Education Reform is the name of a new fifty-page report from The American Enterprise Institute.

Even though I couldn’t bring myself to read the whole thing, it does appear to be what you might expect from The Institute — focused on the typical school reformers and how they’re trying to get parents to support their agenda. I gave up on reading the report when they said Stand For Children and Parent Revolution were examples of “Alinsky-style” community organizing. As someone who spent nineteen years working as a community organizer for the group Alinsky founded, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that they are definitely not practicing “Alinskys-style” methods. In fact, I’ve written a couple of Washington Post columns explaining my position (see What’s really wrong with ‘parent trigger’ laws and “The ‘Parent Trigger’ doesn’t help schools or parents.”).

If you want to see what true community organizing with parents looks like, check out The Best Examples Of Parent Engagement Through Community Organizing.