"Waiting for Superman"- review

Last Friday, instead of going straight to the office, Alysa and I went to see the new movie "Waiting for Superman". The documentary addresses major issues in student retention, teacher evaluation, and quality of instruction here in America and takes a very critical look at the structure of our education system as a whole. Although it is very insightful and is able to offer a clearer picture into some of the more modern educational movements, the movie fails to reflect a completely accurate picture of what is going on.

The movie, although epic in scale, gets its emotional impact from a specific focusing on a select few children who are yearning to leave their public school and enroll in a nearby charter school or similar accelerated learning program. All of these schools have more applicants than open spots, and so as mandated by policy, the spots must be filled using a public lottery. This is the big dramatic moment in the end, as the children, one by one have their educational future determined by numbers drawn out of a hat. This lottery seems to echo real life, as some students simply are luckier than others and are able to attend schools that will offer a more competitive education, while other students, to no fault of their own, are left struggling in public schools which the director calls "drop-out factories". The focus on charter schools and alternate forms of education as an improvement to the public school system, is a consistent element of the movie.

Although the director acknowledges that not all charter schools outperform their public school equivalents, the movie frames them as the only hope for many children who are statistically more likely to end up in prison than college, based on their socio-economic status. What they fail to acknowledge is the kind of socio-economic status and lack of funding for many of these schools. And time and time again, the movie advocates for education to be run more and more like a business. Whether this perspective is correct or not, doesn't matter, because the issues that should be addressed are often ignored.

Although there has already been much criticism surrounding the movie in regards to the attacks on teachers' unions, I feel i should at least say something about it myself. The point made in the movie is that tenure has become one of the biggest failures in education, where teachers are able to do nothing and keep their jobs, letting their students go without an education. However the solution, to evaluate teachers more thoroughly, reward and punish accordingly, may be misguided as well. Evaluating a teacher running a classroom like a manager running a company (which many people advocate for) is not only ineffective, but ignorant of the way a classroom is run. Teachers' performances may not necessarily be directly linked to student test scores. If a manager in a company sees an employee continually under-performing, they are allowed to fire that employee and replace them with someone who is willing to work hard to earn their job. A teacher cannot fire one of their students. And when a handful of students are simply not going to do their homework, or are coming from troubled homes, or simply refuse to put forth effort, teachers may be the ones who end up being punished for their bad performance, regardless of how motivational and informative they may be.

The movie did however serve as a call to arms to save education.  It brought to light the fact that we are nowhere near our foreign friends when it comes to education, in either retention or quality. And many of the questions the movie asked, are important to consider while discussing education reform. Whether the answers provided are correct or not, only time will tell.