National organization targets Wyoming teachers

Opponents say ads, documentary skew local reality

By JACKIE BORCHARDT – Star-Tribune staff writer

It’s no coincidence that a controversial education documentary is being shown in Wyoming’s largest cities during the a state legislative session focused on education reform.

The celebrated and controversial film “Waiting for Superman,” released in October 2010, will be shown in Casper and Cheyenne on request from John Wold, Casper oilman and Republican donor, and others.

Wold said the movie theater owners were paying the costs, but Mike Ito of Movie Palace Inc. did not know of such an arrangement when contacted by the Star-Tribune on Monday afternoon.

Wold has not seen the film, but said he read enough about it to think Wyoming should see it.

“I’ve heard it gives a pretty straight story to what the union situation has done to education in America,” Wold said. “This is a battle between the unions and those of us who feel the unions have wrecked American education.”

The Wyoming Education Association, a branch of a national teachers union, has been targeted in advertisements in newspapers, on the radio and during Sunday night’s TV broadcast of the Super Bowl.

The ads and the commercial blame teacher “union supported laws” for Wyoming’s “embarrassingly low math and reading skills.” The ads directs people to a website, stepupwyoming.com.

The ads were sponsored by Teachers Union Exposed, a project of the Center for Union Facts, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. The organization raised $4.5 million in 2008 for its research and advertising campaigns. More than half that amount paid for anti-union advertising, and about $1 million of that money raised went to public relations executive Richard Berman for “consulting fees,” according to IRS tax returns.

The organization does not release names of its donors to protect them from personal attacks, said Sarah Longwell, spokeswoman for the Center for Union Facts.

Longwell said the organization targets states where conversations about education reform are already taking place. Teachers unions block change, Longwell said, especially when it comes to tenure.

“Teacher quality has everything to do with tenure,” Longwell said.

The Legislature is discussing three bills addressing “continuing-contract” status for teachers, or what’s known as tenure.

Every lawmaker received a personal invitation on Friday to the screenings. Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, said he’s concerned about the national influence on education debate in Wyoming.

“This movement isn’t coming from the average Wyoming guy who’s working today to put food on the table,” Harshman said. “This is coming from the wealthiest, most privileged folks in our state, and why they decided to jump in on this I don’t know.”

Harshman, who has been a teacher for 23 years, said the facts used by the organization are a “total distortion” of the truth. For example, the site says one in four high school students doesn’t pass the exam required to join the U.S. Army. Wyoming actually has the lowest military exam ineligibility rate — 13 percent — in the country.

Statistics for performance on the ACT college entrance test are skewed, Harshman said, because Wyoming is one of a handful of states that tests all students. The nine top-scoring states test fewer than 25 percent of their students. Harshman said he’s unsure how the charter school-focused, union-busting “Waiting for Superman” can be applied to Wyoming.

“To think that Wyoming is anything like Harlem or inner-city Los Angeles is ridiculous,” Harshman said. “I’m concerned more about national struggle of power for things we don’t even care about in Wyoming.”

Kathryn Valido, president of the Wyoming Education Association, also said she was concerned about distortion of facts.

“We’re a right-to-work state, and we’re not a union — we’re an association,” Valido said.

Valido said she’s confident Wyomingites are smart enough to sort through the spin.

“It’s not something we do we in Wyoming — we don’t look to Washington, D.C., to tell us what to do,” Valido said.
Read more: http://trib.com/news/local/casper/article_58932d38-a7ea-5c85-9ba0-db8df0640f4f.html