"When did Norma Rae get to be the bad guy?"

If you loved the bashing of teachers and their unions in the documentary "Waiting for Superman," you will be ecstatic over the new feature film "Won't Back Down."

While "Waiting for Superman" caused a stir, it didn't do well at the box office and its expected Oscar nomination never happened. "Won't Back Down" is a star-studded (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Holly Hunter, Ving Rhames, Rosie Perez) big budget feature designed to tug on the emotions. It is being produced by Walden Media, the same folks who brought you "Waiting for Superman."

The story is about a fictional law in Pennsylvania which allows parents and teachers to take over a school which is performing poorly. While these "parent trigger" laws exist in some states, they do not involve teacher participation. To get a feel for how teachers are viewed, have alook at the movie's trailer.

Frank Bruni wrote a column titled "Teachers on the Defensive" in this morning's NY TImes in which he points out that "... the main financing for the movie came from a school-privatization advocate who is no fan of teachers’ unions." [Emphasis mine.]

"And it actually takes pains to portray many teachers as impassioned do-gooders who are as exasperated as parents are by the education system’s failures — and by uncaring colleagues in their midst. But I understand [AFT president] Weingarten’s upset. The union that represents one of those do-gooders (Viola Davis) has lost its way, resisting change, resorting to smear tactics and alienating the idealists in its ranks. What’s more, some of the people who are assertively promoting “Won’t Back Down” are those who cast teachers’ unions as a titanic impediment to the improvement of public education. So “Won’t Back Down” is emerging as the latest front in the continuing war between those unions and their legions of critics, and it has become yet another example of how negatively those unions are viewed." [Emphasis mine.]

"“When did Norma Rae get to be the bad guy?” asks a union leader (Holly Hunter) in the movie. I don’t know, but that’s indeed the state of play when it comes to teachers’ unions, and it’s a dangerous one."

Bruni goes on to say "Perhaps most striking are the rifts that have opened between teachers’ unions and Democrats, who had long been their allies. In Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other cities, Democratic mayors have feuded bitterly with teachers’ unions and at times come to see them as enemies. And at a meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors in June, Democratic mayors joined Republican ones in a unanimous endorsement of so-called parent trigger legislation, about which unions have serious reservations. These laws, recently passed in only a few states but being considered in more, abet parent takeovers of underperforming schools, which may then be replaced with charter schools run by private entities." [Emphasis mine.]

"The unions have also run afoul of the grim economic times. “In the private sector, nobody’s got any security about anything,” said Charles Taylor Kerchner, a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University. So the unions’ fights over pay raises and pensions, he said, made previously routine negotiations “look like pigs at the trough.” [Emphasis mine.]

"Kerchner was being sympathetic and said that teachers were hardly overpaid. But they have unwittingly assisted efforts by Republicans in particular to turn them into caricatures of entitlement in an era when there are many Americans poised to see them that way." [Emphasis mine.]

As of this writing, Bruni's column has received nearly 100 comments from readers. I would categoize many of them as "I wish I had written that." I will pass along some of the better comments in a future post. Until then, watch your back because there are millions of dollars of publicity behind this movie.