The Truth About The Movie ‘Won’t Back Down (2012)’

Contact Your Elected Officials

By Glenn Garvin – Miami Herald ~ The movie Won’t Back Down (2012) has already accomplished the impossible: Making teachers’ unions demand strict accuracy in films about classroom education. For decades, Hollywood has been making movies that show teachers as superhuman caring machines without a peep from the unions. That math teacher played by Edward James Olmos in Stand And Deliver (1998), the one who took over a classroom of kids who couldn’t do simple arithmetic and in nine months had them acing calculus exams? History does not record a single union official complaining that, in real life, that process took several years.

Won’t Back Down (2012), however, is a different matter. It stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a single working-class mom driven frantic by the lack of help her dyslexic daughter is getting at school. Frustrated at every turn — administrators won’t let the girl transfer to another class, and the school superintendent won’t even see her — the mother is startled to discover that her state has what amounts to a nuclear option: a law that allows a majority of parents to take over a failing school. Enlisting the help of a sympathetic teacher (played by Viola Davis, who just won an Oscar for her role in The Help), Gyllenhaal launches a campaign to do just that.

Won’t Back Down (2012) is tough on teachers’ unions, treating them as an obstacle to school reform. And in return, the unions have labeled the movie a big fat lie that, for instance, doesn’t once show kids taking tests or parents at PTA meetings. Worst of all is its claim to be “inspired by true events.”

Won't Back Down

“That conveys the message that parents and teachers took over and ran a school somewhere,” wrote Rita Solnet, a founding member of the teacher-union front group Parents Across America, in a widely reprinted blog item. “That never happened. I suppose that sells better than opening the film with, ‘This is Fictitious.’ ”

Though laws similar to the one in the film are real — known as “parent-trigger laws,” they exist in seven states and are under consideration in several others — Solnet is correct: Parents have never managed to use one to take over a floundering school. That’s because when they’ve tried, teachers’ unions and school administrations, which have a common interest in protecting their failures from mere parents, have staged dirty, underhanded campaigns to prevent it.

Won’t Back Down (2012) was indeed inspired by two cases in California. One is McKinley Elementary School in Compton, which for six years has been on the state’s listing of failing schools, languishing in the bottom 10 percent — less than half of the students graduate, and only one in 50 goes on to college. In 2010, tired of beating their heads against a brick wall of administrative indifference, the school’s parents spent four months gathering enough signatures to activate the trigger law.

The teachers’ union struck back like a wounded snake, sending operatives out to get parents to remove their names. Those who had signed were told they had to show up during school hours with photo IDs so their signatures could be verified. (The progressive canon of faith that requiring photo IDs for voting is repressive and racist was apparently under temporary suspension.)

Read Full Article

 

The Thinking Conservative
The Thinking Conservativehttps://www.thethinkingconservative.com/
The goal of THE THINKING CONSERVATIVE is to help us educate ourselves on conservative topics of importance to our freedom and our pursuit of happiness. We do this by sharing conservative opinions on all kinds of subjects, from all types of people, and all kinds of media, in a way that will challenge our perceptions and help us to make educated choices.

Donald Trump’s Appointments Are Being Obstructed

Donald Trump is the only President in history that has had recess appointments blocked by his own party!

Trump Flag-Burning Ban: Unconstitutional, Un-American, and Trifling

Trump signed an EO to criminalize the burning of the American flag — the right to do which having already been adjudicated by the highest court in the land.

Using True Facts of History to Determine What is Right and What is Wrong

The amount of time separating a human act from a truthful description of it is not as important as the veracity of historians bringing it to light.

The Very British Stalemate: British Politics Explained for Americans

The assumption in the minds of American commentators, politicians, and analysts is that the UK has "gone to the dogs" with "woke" political ideology.

NFL Vikings Male Cheerleader Controversy  

The NFL under the leadership of Roger Goodell is back to yet another controversy that is causing backlash and a possible boycott.

HHS Threatens to Cut Funds for 46 States Over Gender Ideology in School Curricula

The agency recently canceled California’s grant program after giving...

Interior Department Plans to Revoke Permit for $11 Billion Maryland Offshore Wind Farm

The Trump administration is preparing to revoke a Biden-era permit for an $11.5 billion offshore wind farm planned off the coast of Maryland.

Kraft, Coca-Cola Defeat Lawsuit Over Ultra-Processed Foods

Judge dismissed lawsuit against major food and beverage manufacturers, ruling teenager who sued did not meet evidentiary standards for suit to proceed.

Judge Dismisses Trump Admin Lawsuit Against Federal Court in Maryland

Trump admin lost lawsuit against federal court in Maryland that's automatically blocking deportations for illegals who challenged their detention by fed govt.

Commerce Secretary Says Pentagon Weighing Equity Stakes in Defense Contractors

DOD is weighing taking equity stakes in defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and others, Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick said in an interview.

Here’s What Major American Retailers Are Saying About Tariff Impacts

American retailers are doing what they can to keep tariffs from affecting consumers, but they acknowledge that eventually something has got to give.

Trump Threatens Tariffs for Nations With Digital Taxes on US Tech

The president said other countries’ digital taxes and regulations were ‘all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology.’

On 4th Anniversary of Afghan Attack, Trump Honors Soldiers Lost in US Withdrawal

President Trump welcomed Gold Star families and issued a proclamation honoring military lives lost during withdrawal from Afghanistan.
spot_img

Related Articles