Movie Review: "Waiting for Superman"

I finally saw "Waiting for Superman", a heartbreaking documentary about the troubled, in some cases failing, state of public education in America. As someone who has written about education for the past couple of years, I was excited when the film came to the Garden Cinemas last week. I asked my childhood friend--a Teach for America Alum and former Ponus Ridge Middle School teacher to join me.

David Guggenheim, the film's director and co-writer , chronicles the stories of five adorable children from Harlem, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, the Bronx and Redwood City, CA who dream of going to college and a better life. The film paints a bleak picture of their neighborhood schools. Even if they even graduate, chances are they'll be several grade levels behind children in other schools and unprepared for college. In all the cases, the hardworking and caring families decide to apply to charter schools lotteries, where the chances of getting in are something like 50 out of 500. Predictably, at the end of the film there are a series of nail biting supspense scenes about who gets in and who doesn't. The film ends with a questionable assumption--all's well if you get into a charter school.

The movie is peppered with stats in a series of animated scenes about the flatlining of math and reading scores, high dropout rates resulting in "drop out factories", and America's standing in education compared with other countries. The film blames administrative bureaucracy and school unions for getting us into this mess. Like much of the education reform movement, the film both vilifies and celebrates teachers. Teachers' unions, according to the documentary, protect incompetent teachers, in some cases passing them from school to school, resulting in what is labeled a "Dance of the Lemons". There are several scenes in the film where Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, looks villanous and is presented as the roadblock for change. On the other hand, the film also cites research showing that teacher quality is the most important factor in student success.

If there are good guys in this story, they are charter school operators and "reformers" like Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's zone and Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the D.C. public schools who rebel against the status quo and rail against bureaucracy.

The strength of this film lies in its illustrating, through real life stories, a public education system in need of repair and in some cases, a complete overhaul. However, its analysis of solutions lacks depth. Like much of the reform movment, the film  places too much emphasis on charter schools which employ non-union teachers and are answerable to the state, not to local school districts. Studies have shown that charters are not the silver bullet -- less than 20 percent of charters outperform district schools. Not to mention that charter schools serve only a small minority of our nation's students. How can charters really be the answer to our problems? They do act as a laboratory for ideas, like extended day and early childhood learning, but then again so do many non-charter schools. The importance of teacher quality is not news to anyone, including parents and kids--it's a truth immemorial. The question is how to cultivate and support good teaching. It seems unwise to demonize unions, they must be part of any meaningful change.

So does "Waiting for Superman" apply to Norwalk"? I think so. Thankfully, we are not in as dire a situation as Harlem or Washington D.C., but I don't believe we are doing all that we can to have student's reach their full potential or to get to college. At the last Board meeting,  I was reminded that only 30 percent of Norwalk's 10th graders reach "goal" in math. That's deeply troubling. However unlike the film, I don't believe that any one Canada/Rhee-like figure can save us (though I secretly hope Susan Marks is Wonder Woman) nor do I think that a charter school is the only way to a superior education. It'll take a village of school leaders, parents, taxpayers, students themselves and fairly-treated unions to roll up their sleeves and engage in complex problem solving.
 
Did you see the film?  What did you think?