America's education policies are brimming with contradictions, particularly in the movement surrounding charter schools. While the intent of some charter backers may have once been for educators and parents in a community to create a different learning space for students who weren’t being well served, that’s all changed now. Charters have instead ventured into a brave new world of a movement contradictory to the ends it purports to serve.

Sold as a way to “empower” parents to improve the education attainment of their children, school choice initiatives take on many forms, including vouchers, “scholarships,” and tax credits. The most radical form of school choice is the so-called “parent trigger.” But rather then uniting parents in doing what’s best for children, the parent trigger bring deception, division and disruption to the community and leaves parents overwhelmed and powerless.

Over 200 members of the Arkansas OTL Campaign made their way to Little Rock this week for an Education Advocacy Day! Their goal: show their support for education reforms that provide every student with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn and highlight the progress the state has made in the past decade by implementing sound, research-based policies.

The Arkansas Opportunity to Learn Campaign and other education groups in the state held a press conference this week to voice their opposition to several bills introduced in the state legislature that would expand the state's charter school network and undermine the principles of equity and adequacy that have guided the state's progress in public education over the past decade.

States are given a clear choice in this report: either you care about students, or about StudentsFirst. There’s little room for both. Here’s a list of 5 reasons why this State Report Card is a veritable wish list for privatization advocates and a recipe for failure for everyone else:

Public resources belong to the broader community. We ask people who don't drive to pay for roads and people who have a house that isn't burning to pay for the fire department. "Parent trigger" laws, which enable parents of current public schools students to "take over" a school (usually to turn it over to a private charger management company), deny the rest of the community a voice. Instead of privatizing our schools, parents should work with teachers to demand change by fighting for equitable resources for their schools so that all students have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.

Guess what the OTL Campaign won't be doing this weekend? That's right, we will not be taking our friends to see the premiere of Won't Back Down. The new film, which chronicles the fictional parent takeover of an underperforming school in Pittsburgh, is the latest creation of Walden Media, the same production firm responsible for Waiting for Superman. Here are 5 things you should know about the film.